ABSTRACT
Mentoring has traditionally been an important apprentice model determining the advancement and success of graduate students. Unlike the more specific role of dissertation advisor discussed in the previous chapter, embedded in the concept “mentor” are a number of interpersonal relations. Two decades ago, Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, and McKee summarized the mentor’s diffuse roles:
• A teacher, by enhancing an individual’s skills and intellectual development;
• A sponsor, by using influence to facilitate an individual’s entry and advancement;
• A host and guide, by welcoming the individual into a new occupational and social world and acquainting the individual with its values, customs, resources, and role players;
• An exemplar, by providing role modeling behavior. (Levinson et al. 1978 cited in Luna and Cullen 1996, 4)
More recently, mentoring has come to be seen as a panacea: empowering faculty, retaining students, improving curriculum and the quality of higher education, and offering particular benefits to minority students and women (Johnson 1989; Rendon and Justiz 1989; Pounds 1989; Rendon 1992; Luna and Cullen 1996; Faison 1996). A few scholars have approached the topic critically, warning of potential drawbacks to the mentoring relationship: it may be overly protective, stifling, egocentric, exploitative of the protégé (Levinson et al. 1996;
Fury 1979); may limit the protégé to a single relationship (Fury 1979); and may benefit the mentor more than the protégé (Rawles 1980; McGinnis and Long 1980 cited in Mirriam 1983, 170). Despite the notice of possible drawbacks, most writers proceed from the perspective of the institutions of higher education to emphasize ways that mentoring helps students (Luna and Cullen 1996). However, mentoring as an institutional practice has rarely been examined structurally or analyzed critically.
