ABSTRACT
As researchers have increasingly examined the workplace bullying issue in higher education, the field has not benefited from an analysis that considers if faculty mentoring can assuage junior faculty member’s perception of a workplace bully. As entry-level faculty, regardless of the institutional type, assistant professors are one of the more vulnerable populations on campus because they are at the whims of senior faculty who will vote for their tenure. Applying the family systems theory to the junior faculty experience and mentoring, I considered the following central question: RQ1 What aspects of faculty mentoring, (the mentor's time spent with a mentee (IV1), mentor's knowledge as faculty (IV2), mentor's career support (IV3), mentor's impact on mentee's productivity (IV4), and mentor's counsel of personal matters (IV5)), and the intensity of workplace bullying that junior faculty perceive. With n= 128 junior faculty, a multiple regression analysis of the five independent variables revealed a statistical significance at the p <. 05 level, that the mentor’s knowledge of the faculty experience helped to minimize the junior faculty’s perception of workplace bullying. The findings of this chapter strengthen the argument for both formal and informal mentor/mentee networks for junior faculty development.
