Changing Institutional Culture through Peer Mentoring of Women STEM Faculty
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Changing Institutional Culture through Peer Mentoring of Women STEM Faculty Nicole Thomas & Jill Bystydzienski & Anand Desai
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract Higher education institutions often use mentoring to socialize faculty members into their academic disciplines and to retain them. Mentoring can also be used to change organizational culture to meet the needs of historically marginalized faculty members. In this article we focus on peer mentoring circles for women STEM faculty at a large, midwestern research university. Participants reported diverse, context-dependent mentoring needs and expressed interest in communicating issues raised in the circles to administrative leaders. A workshop for circle participants and administrators led subsequently to college-wide teams that addressed problems identified in the circles. We conclude that peer mentoring as a means to facilitate institutional change has great potential. Keywords Peer mentoring circles . Culture change . Women STEM faculty . Higher education The cost of faculty attrition in institutions of higher learning is substantial, and mentoring has been proposed as one strategy for reducing this cost (National Academy of Sciences, 2007). Nicole Thomas is a doctoral candidate at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs of The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Jill Bystydzienski has a Ph.D. from SUNY Albany and an M.A. and B.A. from McGill University. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Her current research focuses on women and gender in STEM fields. Anand Desai is Professor in the John Glenn School of Public Affairs of The Ohio State University, in Columbus, OH. His current research focuses on the role of complexity in public policy research. A summary of this project was presented at the 6th Annual Mentoring Conference at the University of New Mexico and recorded in the proceedings of the conference distributed to conference participants. N. Thomas (*) : A. Desai John Glenn School of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University, 1810 College Road, Columbus, OH 43210, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Desai e-mail: [email protected] J. Bystydzienski Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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Mentoring of faculty members in higher education has been identified as a significant mechanism for helping them to obtain tenure and promotion and to develop a sense of support and belonging, and thus remain at their institutions (Baldwin et al., 2008; Berk et al., 2005; Chesler & Chesler, 2002; Cunningham, 1999; Mathews, 2003; Sambunjak et al., 2006; Stockard et al., 2010; Yen et al., 2007). In addition, many scholars have suggested mentoring as a strategy for faculty members to become socialized into their respective academic disciplines (Cawyer et al., 2002; Schrodt et al., 2003). Despite the attention paid to mentorship, effective forms of
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