Mentoring programmes: structures and cultures

There are few formal mentoring programmes at RU and generally in HEIs in SA, and a noted concern is the ‘lack of mentorship programmes to guide the potential next and new generations in their academic careers’ (HESA, 2011, p. 8). The literature regarding

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mentoring suggests that mentoring programmes that have a co-ordinator/ administrator and reporting obligations are more successful than programmes that do not (Girves, et al., 2005). The Co-ordinator of the Accelerated Development Programme concurred that mentoring programmes that have reporting requirements are more likely to succeed than a mentoring system without such structures. She believed that it is these structures that ‘help those relationships stay glued together’. While there are Institutional structures which advocate mentoring such as the HoD Guide (2008), which stipulates mentoring as one of the responsibilities of the HoD, and the Staff Development Policy (2010), which encourages the mentoring of colleagues, mentoring does not appear to feature consistently in the Institution. Where formal mentoring is a component of a specific programme with reporting deliverables, mentoring appears in most cases to be successful. Two such programmes are the Accelerated Development Programme and WASA, both of which require annual reporting.

In 1.2.5.3.1, I discussed the Accelerated Development Programme in terms of an institutional structure that provides support to some academics. I noted that the Programme aims to accelerate the academic careers of individuals from designated groups, one such group being women. A central component of the Accelerated Development Programme is mentoring, and each Accelerated Development lecturer is assigned a mentor by the HoD. As is often the case with formal mentoring programmes, the mentoring aspect is dyadic in nature in that junior staff members are matched with more experienced senior staff members. The mentors are based in the same department as the mentees. The programme co-ordinators and the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) provide additional Institutional mentoring, particularly in relation to teaching and learning.

Another formal mentoring programme of a different nature was offered by WASA. From 2004, WASA provided informal mentoring, but in 2007, a structured mentoring programme was introduced for two years. In formalising the mentoring programme, the WASA committee decided to create a programme that was ‘woman-specific, collaborative and mentee-driven’ (WASA report, 2009, p. 13). Between 2007 and 2009 fourteen mentoring relationships were established (WASA report, 2010). Many of these relationships, but not all, involved women academics who mentored postgraduate students or junior lecturers and occurred independently of RU academic departments, i.e. there was cross-departmental mentoring.

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While the mentors on the WASA mentoring programme received a modest financial compensation, one concern that arose out of the WASA mentoring programme was how to generate academic recognition for WASA mentors. Research claims that women determine career success based on subjective criteria such as job satisfaction rather than objective criteria such as remuneration (Allen, et al., 2004). One of the WASA mentors felt that ‘recognition [is], to me, more important and productive than payment’

(WASA Report 2010, p.17). The majority of my questionnaire respondents (83%) felt that mentors receive personal satisfaction from mentoring but are not rewarded by the Institution. Lack of Institutional recognition for mentoring was mentioned by one of my questionnaire respondents, who felt that the mentoring and nurturing roles she performed were not recognised or rewarded by the Institution. One professor interviewed concurred when she said:

At the moment [mentoring] is not recognised much anywhere. So it’s left to individuals to decide whether it is something they want to do. It does just get squashed out because it is not something that is automatically happening. (Lindi) The revised Personal Promotions Policy (2009) partially recognises mentoring. Leadership is one of the categories of performance and mentoring is cited as an example of evidence of leadership. However, one of my interviewees who had been on the Personal Promotions Committee for a few years suggested that involvement in mentoring is not really taken into account by the committee. She said:

The current systems don’t recognise mentoring at all, or in a very, very, slight way. You are not going to get your promotion because you are a fantastic mentor. You’re going to get your promotion because you’ve done a whole bunch of other things. The big problem with the promotions is that you have to be able to quantify it. You have to be able to prove that you are a jolly good mentor and spend lots of time mentoring junior staff. I think it needs to be a change in institutional culture and it is perhaps starting to happen with the formal mentoring. (Carol)

In the new knowledge economy where value appears to be measured in quantifiable terms, it would seem that mentoring, which is difficult to evaluate, does not receive due recognition. However, the fact that mentoring is a core component of the formal Accelerated Development Programme indicates that mentoring is seen by the Institution as a means of increasing research productivity and improving career advancement of young academics. But the perceived lack of recognition and reward that

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the Institution places on the service of mentoring suggests that mentoring is perceived to not be sufficiently valued by the Institution, although there is an indication that this might be changing. This suggests conflicting cultural items about the value of mentoring.

While most academics who provide mentoring may be motivated by the resultant personal satisfaction, lack of institutional recognition for mentoring could be a disincentive for mentors and potential mentors and could be a reason why almost half of my questionnaire respondents (45%) had provided minimal or no mentoring. Two of the main reasons that the questionnaire respondents cited for not providing mentoring were that the opportunity had not arisen (cited by 54%) and that no existing programmes or structures were in place to facilitate mentors to undertake mentoring (cited by 24%). This could suggest that the paucity of structures that facilitate mentoring may inhibit some women from providing mentoring.

Having looked at the structures and culture of mentoring, I now discuss agency in terms of how the agency of mentors impacts on the quality of mentoring they provide; and, how mentoring impacts on the agency of women academics.