Mentoring junior faculty members

One of the most difficult tasks for academic administrators (particularly those in the biosciences) is the challenge of properly mentoring junior faculty members. The crux of course is the tenure clock and the generally accepted metrics for promotion–grants and publications. The other complication lies in the fact that junior faculty members act to build favorable impressions with their academic leaders (and senior colleagues) and that these actions may take away (or at least compete) for the crucial time and energy that must be devoted to scholarship.

So the problem then becomes one of trying to focus the junior faculty member’s energies in what will be best for them (in terms of that tenure clock) rather than necessarily what is best for the academic unit.

This is one of the rare cases, where a good academic leader will put the unit’s interests as secondary to that of the individual faculty member.

But the issue becomes more nuanced when a junior faculty member is providing a crucial service function to the unit (for example teaching an introductory course). Here the complexity that arises is the weighing of the loss to the unit (course not taught) against the loss to the faculty member (not enough time to pursue scholarship).

From an ethical standpoint, I think the proper action remains the same: counsel the junior faculty member to focus of his or her scholarship. At the same time, it sure becomes a painful mentoring moment.

Jim