First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether minorities in the University of Wisconsin (UW) System holding category 1 (executive/administrative/ managerial) and category 3 (professional non-faculty) positions perceived mentorship as influential in their career progression, and whether there were statistically significant differences in these perceptions by gender, employment category, or age of the respondents. The survey instrument used in this study was the Minority Perceptions of Mentoring and Career Progression (MPMCP). The surveys were distributed to the population by the Affirmative Action Officers at each of the 13 UW System institutions. Of the 430 surveys distributed, 207 usable surveys were returned and included in the study, resulting in a 48.1 percent return rate. The microcomputer program PC Statistician was used to conduct frequency counts and to analyze the date using chi-square. The analyses showed that male respondents reported mentorship to be influential in their career progression significantly more often than did female respondents. No significant difference was found in the perceived influence of mentorship on career progression by employment category or by age. Post hoc analyses showed that there was no significant difference in the number of mentors by gender reported by male and female respondents who did not perceive mentorship as influential, but a significant difference was found when comparing males and females who perceived mentorship as influential. As a group, the female respondents reported fairly equal numbers of male and female mentors, whereas the male respondents reported a much greater percentage of male mentors. Although the data show that males reported more mentoring experiences than females, had a disproportionally high percentage of male mentors as compared to female mentors, and considered these mentoring relationships to be more influential on their career advancement than females, the reasons for these differences are not known.

While mentorship has been shown to be critical in helping graduate students persist and complete their studies, and enter upon and succeed in their academic careers, the under-representation of faculty of color and women in higher education greatly reduces the opportunities for graduate students from these selfsame groups to find mentors of their race, ethnicity or gender.Recognizing that mentoring across gender, race and ethnicity inserts levels of complexity to this important process, this book both fills a major gap in the literature and provides an in-depth look at successful mentorships between senior white and under-represented scholars and emerging women scholars and scholars of color. Following a comprehensive review of the literature, this book presents chapters written by scholars who share in-depth descriptions of their cross-gender and/or cross-race/ethnicity mentoring relationships. Each article is co-authored by mentors who are established senior scholars and their former protégés with whom they have continuing collegial relationships. Their descriptions provide rich insights into the importance of these relationships, and for developing the academic pipeline for women scholars and scholars of color. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the literature and of the narrative chapters, the editors conclude by identifying the key characteristics and pathways for developing successful mentoring relationships across race, ethnicity or gender, and by offering recommendations for institutional policy and individual mentoring practice. For administrators and faculty concerned about diversity in graduate programs and academic departments, they offer clear models of how to nurture the productive scholars and teachers needed for tomorrow’s demographic of students; for under-represented students, they offer compelling narratives about the rewards and challenges of good mentorship to inform their expectations and the relationships they will develop as protégés.

The unique relationship between mentors and students informs the art of teaching and enhances the intellectual vitality of higher education and quality of teacher and student life. This collection of original essays presents autobiographical vignettes of important professors of our time. These essays reflect the appreciation of the authors-now successful academics-for their teachers/mentors, whose drive and creativity had such on influence on the careers of their students. No other collection presents such an autobiographical and biographical portrayal of college of education faculty. The essays examine what it means to be a professor in today's academia, with its erosion of the professoriate and the emergence of a questionable entrepreneurial pragmatism. The writers and their subjects explain their vision of the academic life sustained by a community and perpetuated through the lives of their teachers and their students, a tradition not only in teaching but also in mentoring.