Definitions of Mentors

Career Mentor

A career mentor is a senior faculty member assigned for the purpose of mentoring a junior faculty member in the same department through his or her early career development.  Ideally, this mentor is a successful senior member of the faculty who serves as the primary mentor following the needs and goals outlined by the mentee. The career mentor helps the mentee navigate through the new environment of the academic health science center. The focus of a career mentor is on more global aspects of an academic career, including juggling the different aspects of academic life (teaching, administration, clinical care and research), transitioning from training into a position of faculty member as well as transitioning into a new community, and making major career decisions such as changing institutions or research direction, career promotion and balancing family demands and work. Different skills are needed for each type of focus. Commonly, career mentors have accumulated years of experience and wisdom in academia and possibly the institution in which they serve as a career mentor. They understand the political environment and can help the mentee with the simple to the complex questions of whom to go to and why.  Because individual career mentors cannot be expected to serve or meet all needs of the mentees, they may choose to invite others to serve as project mentors when appropriate.

Career mentors may or may not wish to serve as a research mentoring team leader.  Research mentoring team leaders may be well versed in epidemiology, biostatistics and other specific research methods and techniques, but may lack skills needed to be a career mentor such as comparable years of experience in academic medicine or the institution. When the career mentor does not wish to serve as the research mentoring team leader too, it is their responsibility to invite another senior faculty member of the mentee’s department to serve as the research mentoring team leader.  In our medical school, research and scholarship take many forms, including basic and collaborative research, clinical and translational research, development of policy, and historical and ethical literature. A simple mentoring relationship between a mentor and mentee in the domain of research involves acquiring research skills, selecting and conducting research projects, presenting research findings at national meetings, ensuring the completion and submission of manuscripts, assisting in networking and finally, teaching the mentee how to obtain extramural funding. 

Project Mentors

A project mentor is a senior faculty member invited to participate in mentoring a junior faculty member. His or her specific role is to assist the mentee with a specific project or area of focus.  Assigned based on the mentee’s personal career goals, this mentor may be any faculty member who is asked by the career mentor to serve one-on-one or as a member of the research mentoring team in support of any given project or skill which is not the expertise of the career mentor or other team mentors.  Project mentors may or may not be from the mentee’s department and may be ask to serve for 2 reasons: 1) when the career mentor feels additional expertise beyond his or her own is needed for the mentee’s project, or 2) when the mentee requests the assistance of a specific individual.

Examples of mentors may include but are not limited to:

• a research/scholarship mentoring team leader.
• a biostatistician mentor.
• a collaborative clinical mentor.
• a mentor from the community or other school of medicine in a related field of research.
• a clinical practice or surgical mentor.
• a leadership/administrative mentor.
• a work/life balance mentor.
• a mentor from Women in Medicine and Science (WIMS) organization or the Office of Cultural Enhancement and Diversity (OCED).

The role of research mentor is tied to a specific project(s) through the duration of the project: grant writing, paper or related publication, presentations and networking.  At least one of the research team mentors should be a member of the mentee’s department.  Mentees may have more than one research mentoring team for each grant or research project and based on the subject matter and direction of the project.

Examples of mentors for various types of junior faculty mentees may be found in Appendix 1.

The 4 Types of “Toxic” Mentors

While high quality mentoring is acknowledged to be a critical component in the development of junior faculty members, mentors need to be carefully selected. Mentors need to be committed to the development of the next generation of academicians. In the mentoring literature, there is a discussion of the characteristics that should be avoided in the selection of a mentor. These harmful characteristics define the “toxic mentor.”