According to Dr. Joel Lavine, Columbia Professor of Pediatrics, mentoring is essential for improving the career success and satisfaction of junior medical school faculty.
Mentoring helps both the faculty members and the institution, says Lavine. Mentoring helps align the individual assistant professor’s goals with the institution, fosters career satisfaction, and improves retention. It also helps to develop leadership skills, enhances professional progress, and enables the junior faculty member to overcome obstacles. He also says it can help the institution with its succession planning and increase collaboration.
Formal Mentoring Yields the Greatest Benefits
While informal mentoring is helpful, Columbia University Professor Joel Lavine believes institutions and faculty benefit more readily from a formal mentoring program. Lavine suggests formal mentoring for every assistant professor in medical schools who is less than five years from completing their fellowship.
In an ideal program, full and associate professors would volunteer to be mentors and receive a small stipend and a commendation in their personnel files. In exchange, they’d commit to meeting at least two hours a month with mentees. Discussions and advice would include topics such as:
- work and family balance
- conflict resolution
- teaching tips
- program building
- research
- clinical care
- emotional problems
As part of the formal program, mentors and their proteges would also document the day and time of each meeting so that management can ensure that each protege is receiving the coaching they need.
Mentors Need Particular Qualities
To be effective, mentors need certain qualities, says Lavine. First, they need to be willing to help a junior colleague succeed. They need to be kind and personable, with good listening skills. They need discretion and to understand that building trust is critical to their relationship and must occur before they can help design a career vision for their mentee. He says that mentors also need to be adept at motivating others to change their behaviors.
About Columbia University Professor Joel Lavine
Dr. Joel Lavine is a tenured professor of pediatrics at Columbia University in New York. He has strong research skills and has worked with the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. He has served in many capacities in his department and currently reviews promotion files for tenured and nontenured faculty.
Before joining Columbia, he was a tenured professor and vice chairman in the University of California at San Diego’s pediatrics department. He started the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at UCSD in 1995. He also previously served as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
He earned his M.D. at UC San Diego and his Ph.D. in molecular biology and genetics at UC Santa Barbara. He was an intern, resident, and fellow at the University of California in San Francisco.
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