Despite institutional claims to value increased racial diversity in higher education, Black women in faculty roles perpetually navigate oppressive cultures across all institutional types. The ability to build and foster mutually beneficial interracial mentoring relationships is vitally important to move beyond performative diversity and build…

Success in higher education is often measured by one's ability to conduct research, effectively disseminate findings, and competently teach in a collegiate setting. These measures are not entirely developed during doctoral school, let alone as a classroom teacher. In order to increase the likelihood of success at the higher education level,…

This study is a preliminary investigation of faculty attitudes toward the processes of promotion and tenure in higher education. It began when several colleagues joined to submit proposals to a national conference establishing a panel to discuss promotion and tenure, which were subsequently accepted. The panel proposal consisted of: (1) a…

Chronicles a year-long mentoring relationship at Kean University (New Jersey) through the eyes of the participants: one senior and tenured faculty member and one junior, first-year faculty member. States that the program is very successful in providing support to both new and seasoned faculty and allows participants to develop relationships with…

From the time a new faculty member is hired until a final decision is made on promotion and tenure, his/her record will undergo constant scrutiny by departmental personnel committees, school and/or university-wide committees, external reviewers, and administrators. A formal and clear-cut mentoring system can benefit new faculty members: senior…

Although mentoring is a popular practice in academia, mentor-protegee relationships are, for women faculty, problematic in several areas including power dynamics and cross-gender interactions. This paper discusses mentoring among academic faculty in the context of a feminist analysis of mentor-protegee relations, and suggests a feminist mentoring…

Observes that mentoring programs for new faculty have grown in recent years. Argues that such programs, although having laudable goals, may have unintended, undesirable consequences. Discusses several possible problems associated with formal mentoring programs and suggests that emphasis would be better placed on improving the graduate training of…

A study was done to explore the perceptions of senior and junior faculty women regarding the barriers to success experienced early in their academic careers. The study population was drawn from a colleague pairing program at a major urban research university in the western United States and consisted of 22 junior faculty in tenure track positions…

Problems of new faculty acculturation at liberal arts colleges were studied by the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) with the help of a 40-month grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Discussions with faculty members had revealed that many new faculty members were not comfortable at their institutions,…

This report, based on a series of interviews and document analyses, presents a case study of one new college faculty member showing the relationships between a department chair, program head, and the new faculty member concerning research expectations and development. The report argues that to be successful in the contemporary research university,…

This qualitative study attempted to answer the question of what constitutes a collegial environment. New faculty members (N=258) at five institutions were surveyed and 92 new faculty were interviewed. The study utilized a methodology of quantifying data from interviews, the Rasch analytic technique, in which the definition of collegiality was…