National Leadership Workshop on Mentoring Women in Biomedical Careers

• About the Workshop
• Purpose and Goals
• Planning Committee
• Final Agenda
• Posters
• Table-Talk
• Concurrent Workshops
• Other Mentoring Resources

Workshop Session II: Determining Gaps in Mentoring Programs and Developing Novel Models for Successful Mentoring

Chair: Hannah A. Valantine, M.D., M.R.C.P., F.A.C.C., Professor of Medicine - Cardiovascular; Senior Associate Dean for Diversity & Leadership – Stanford University School of Medicine.
Co-Chair: Christy I. Sandborg, M.D., Professor Pediatrics - Rheumatology; Chief of Medical Staff, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital - Stanford University School of Medicine; Chair - Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance.
Co-Chair: Linda McLaughlin, Director of Academic Affairs and Faculty Development, Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine

Introduction and Background

The original mentor, a faithful friend of Odysseus who tutored Odysseus' son Telemachus in Homer's The Odyssey, tutored beyond traditional subject matters addressing virtue and integrity, responsibility, and character development. Today, the term mentor has come to mean a coach, an advisor, a teacher, a role model, a friend, a consultant, a critic and an advocate. Since one individual cannot fill all of these roles, the term ‘mosaic mentoring’ has been coined indicating that faculty should have a network of mentors who support their personal and career development. At an institutional level, a culture of mentoring needs to be created and fostered as a revered core value that is expected, measured and rewarded. In a culture of mentoring, both mentee and mentor benefit from the relationship. Mentors help junior faculty to grasp the ‘nuts and bolts’ of academic work, and rapidly gain understanding of institutional procedures and cultural expectations. Achieving these objectives has been shown to directly contribute to the academic success and productivity of the mentee (http://www.provost.wisc.edu/women/what.html). The relationship provides the mentor with an opportunity to give back to the community and to gain recognition as an institutional leader who models commitment to institutional values and goals.

Despite the existence of mentoring programs in many academic institutions, few have been successful in creating a culture of mentoring that is needed for effective faculty career and personal development, and that ultimately supports excellence and faculty retention. This is in part due to the use of models based on “assigned “mentors, compounded by the confusion of the roles of mentors, versus those of persons who provide performance evaluations such as the department chair or division chief.

Using surveys and focus groups to thoroughly evaluate the mentoring needs of junior faculty in an institution where all faculty had an “assigned” mentor, we have identified the gaps inherent in this system, both at institutional and individual levels. The gender and generational differences between mentors and mentees resulting from our changing faculty demographic contribute to the lack of clarity in the roles and expectations of mentors as well as mentees. Our findings have shaped the development of new approaches to mentoring, the core goal of which lies in creating a culture of mentoring that addresses the needs of all junior faculty. Our new approaches deliberately do not separate out women and minorities mentees from the rest of the faculty, but rather provides mentors with particular expertise in mentoring along these dimensions.

Workshop Objectives

1. To describe our approaches to achieving a culture of mentoring and engage in discussion on how to optimize and broadly disseminate the models used towards achieving our overarching goal.
2. To generate recommendations on important aspects of developing, implementing and measuring mentoring programs.

Workshop Agenda

1. A centralized institutional structure charged with responsibility for developing new approaches to effective mentoring: Office of Diversity & Leadership.
   
   Hannah A. Valantine, M.D., F.A.C.C.
   Dr. Valantine will describe how Stanford University School of Medicine is incorporating mentoring into its institutional leadership programs (Faculty Fellows Program & Physician Leadership Programs) as a strategy to prepare leaders for excellence in its core missions.
2. Departmental based program: Pediatric Pilot Mentoring Program: A model for “stable of mentors” and mentor-mentee training.
   
   Christy I. Sandborg, M.D.
   Dr. Sandborg will describe a novel mentoring program that highlights the process of establishing a program, beginning with a needs assessment, and program design to incorporate contemporary concepts of mosaic of mentors using a “stable of mentors”; mentor/mentee training; mentor training in how to give effective feedback; and mentor expertise selection.
3. Range of novel models & approaches to mentoring: Open Discussion
   
   Drs. Valantine & Sandborg will moderate a discussion on the novel models and approaches to mentoring (focusing on mosaic of mentors), and will capture the range of experience amongst the institutions represented in the audience.
4. Structured small group discussions in key areas
   1. Methods for assessing mentoring gaps and faculty needs
   2. Strategies for establishing an institutional culture of mentoring
   3. Accountability for mentoring, including strategies to leverage institutional commitment at the highest level – (Dean/ provost/president).
   4. Practicalities of designing a new mentoring program: goals/objectives/ real-time evaluation & course correction
   5. Program evaluation including success metrics & calculation of ROI
   6. How to identify, train, compensate and evaluate a cadre of mentors
   7. Stable of Mentors – Essential expertise areas: Academic; Research; clinical/teaching; life-work balance; women and underrepresented minorities.
   8. Role of peer and small group mentoring
   9. How to incorporate informal mentoring and leverage networking
5. Feedback - Reports from each small group discussion
6. Summary – Recommendations

 

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