How difficult do you think it is to assess mentorship success in the context of the academic hiring process? What kinds of things do you think would constitute evidence or honest signals of being a good mentor in application materials and/or things a candidate says during an interview?
I think demonstrating prior success should matter to some extent, but I think a demonstration that one's priorities are aligned with student success is more critical. To be clear, I don't think I have all the answers here. We don't have a standard of practice here and I think moving forward we need to establish how this would look. That said, here are some thoughts:
I think looking at success based on outcomes of trainees can be problematic, because it's easy to cook the books by only taking in students who are well primed for success by being well prepared, well-resourced, and coming from the right zip code. I think this is a problem in hiring, when we see applicants who have lots of undergrads who went on to prestigious grad programs, and falsely attributing this to mentoring success. When it was all about picking students who were on that trajectory anyway.
I think like evaluating DEI statements, evaluating mentoring statements would involve asking people about their mentoring philosophy, what steps they have taken to improve their mentorship, asking how they would respond to certain kinds of situations, looking at how they have allocated resources to their trainees, seeing how they attribute their own successes to the work of the team, specific plans for recruitment and retention, etc.
Totally agree. Being a mentor takes focus and effort, and some people just don’t want to spend their time on that. Those people shouldn’t be in education.
Excellent points! Mentoring is difficult to evaluate; in one program I applied for (it was not a faculty position, but a postdoc funding program), the applicants had to have two letters of support from people they had mentored sent in. Even though I never heard of this for a faculty search, it might be a good practice, maybe at the final step.
I couldn't agree more. I think mentorship should be the top priority in faculty hiring. It depends on the institute, but the primary job of many faculty is mentorship and management. As others note, it will be hard to evaluate what constitutes a good mentor. I think that is fine! I think our reliance on using metrics that are easy to track is part of the problem. In a non-academic setting, no one in a consulting firm or business would hire someone for a management role without training and experience as a manager. I also think we need to develop more roles within universities for permanent research staff. There are some folks who might want a TT role who might be better suited for a technical role in which their main job is to actually do science.
Hiring for good mentorship would probably have the side benefit of hiring less jerks in general.
How difficult do you think it is to assess mentorship success in the context of the academic hiring process? What kinds of things do you think would constitute evidence or honest signals of being a good mentor in application materials and/or things a candidate says during an interview?
I think demonstrating prior success should matter to some extent, but I think a demonstration that one's priorities are aligned with student success is more critical. To be clear, I don't think I have all the answers here. We don't have a standard of practice here and I think moving forward we need to establish how this would look. That said, here are some thoughts:
I think looking at success based on outcomes of trainees can be problematic, because it's easy to cook the books by only taking in students who are well primed for success by being well prepared, well-resourced, and coming from the right zip code. I think this is a problem in hiring, when we see applicants who have lots of undergrads who went on to prestigious grad programs, and falsely attributing this to mentoring success. When it was all about picking students who were on that trajectory anyway.
I think like evaluating DEI statements, evaluating mentoring statements would involve asking people about their mentoring philosophy, what steps they have taken to improve their mentorship, asking how they would respond to certain kinds of situations, looking at how they have allocated resources to their trainees, seeing how they attribute their own successes to the work of the team, specific plans for recruitment and retention, etc.
Terry, I appreciate the TLDR version (and your use of the acronym!), but I request the long version too!!! Sabbatical writing project?
Totally agree. Being a mentor takes focus and effort, and some people just don’t want to spend their time on that. Those people shouldn’t be in education.
Excellent points! Mentoring is difficult to evaluate; in one program I applied for (it was not a faculty position, but a postdoc funding program), the applicants had to have two letters of support from people they had mentored sent in. Even though I never heard of this for a faculty search, it might be a good practice, maybe at the final step.
I couldn't agree more. I think mentorship should be the top priority in faculty hiring. It depends on the institute, but the primary job of many faculty is mentorship and management. As others note, it will be hard to evaluate what constitutes a good mentor. I think that is fine! I think our reliance on using metrics that are easy to track is part of the problem. In a non-academic setting, no one in a consulting firm or business would hire someone for a management role without training and experience as a manager. I also think we need to develop more roles within universities for permanent research staff. There are some folks who might want a TT role who might be better suited for a technical role in which their main job is to actually do science.
Hiring for good mentorship would probably have the side benefit of hiring less jerks in general.