By Steve Tokar via UCSF.edu
What makes a good mentor?
Previous studies have shown the professional benefits of cultivating a strong mentoring relationship, but a recent study co-led by UCSF researchers delved further to analyze the attributes that make a successful mentor-mentee pairing.
“We know from previous research that robust mentorship helps people with their career development and career satisfaction, supports faculty retention and contributes to academic productivity,” said Mitchell D. Feldman, MD, MPhil, a UCSF professor of medicine and senior author of the study, published in the January 2013 issue of Academic Medicine.
“But there is a lot we still don’t know, especially if we want to provide institutional support for mentoring. What do we mean by the word ‘mentor’? What are the competencies of a good mentor? How do we measure and teach these things? That was our thinking behind this paper,” he explained.
Feldman, associate vice provost of faculty mentoring, founded the UCSF Chancellor’s Council on Faculty Life Faculty Mentoring Program in 2006 and currently serves as its director. Since 2007, he has also been co-director of the Mentor Development Program at the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Read more at UCSF.edu
UCSF Faculty Mentoring Program
The UCSF Faculty Mentoring Program was launched in 2006, with the goals of supporting the recruitment and retention of the highest quality faculty, increasing faculty diversity through improved mentoring of under-represented faculty and improving faculty career satisfaction and success.