Mentoring Programs: Readings and Articles

Files JA, Blair JE, Mayer AP, Ko MG. Facilitated peer mentorship: A pilot program for academic advancement of female medical faculty. Journal of Women’s Health. 2008; 17: 1009-1015.

This paper reports the experience of a pilot program at the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale in which four instructors, all Women’s Health internists, participated in a year-long, senior faculty–facilitated, peer mentoring program primarily focused on learning how to produce a scholarly manuscript. Generalization of the reported positive results is limited by the small size and pilot nature of the program.
(31 references)

Feldman MD, Huang L, Guglielmo BJ, et al. Training the next generation of research mentors: The University of California, San Francisco, Clinical & Translational Science Institute mentor development program. CTS. 2009; 2: 216-221.

This paper describes the first two cohorts of a program for mid-level to senior-level clinical and translational research faculty to improve their skills as lead mentors for the postdocs and junior faculty on their research team. Utilizing the resources of the campus-wide UCSF Mentor Development Program, a curriculum was developed with sessions devoted to defining mentorship, rewards and challenges of mentoring, communicating effectively with mentees, balancing work and life, understanding diversity among mentees, understanding academic advancement policies, understanding economic and fiscal realities for successful academic careers, leadership skills and opportunities in building a successful research team, understanding intramural and extramural grants, and navigating the IRB and the UCSF grant application process. The 26 participants who completed the program in its first two years reported feeling that it had helped them to become better research mentors, increased their confidence in their mentoring skills, and increased their understanding of important mentoring issues at UCSF.
(14 references)

Pololi LH, Knight SM, Dennis K, Frankel RM. Helping medical school faculty realize their dreams: An innovative collaborative mentoring program. Academic Medicine. 2002; 77: 377-384.

This paper describes a facilitated collaborative (meaning peer) mentoring program for assistant professors at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.  Two cohorts, each with nine participants from across the medical school’s departments, took part in an 80-hour, eight-month-long program focused on the development of skills in key areas of academic medicine career development, a structured values-based approach to career planning, and instruction on scholarly writing. Participants positively evaluated the program for helping them identify their core values, develop a career plan based on those values, develop close collaborative relations with others, develop skills in understanding and dealing with gender and power areas, negotiation and conflict management, improve their scholarly writing and presentations, and reinforce their desire to stay in academic medicine. The peer learning was facilitated by a senior medical school official and various content experts over the course of the program.
(20 references)