Studies show that mentoring can also benefit the mentors decades after experiences
LAWRENCE — Mentoring is often touted to help young people succeed in their personal and professional lives. But what is often overlooked is the benefit that relationship can have on the person providing the guidance. Two University of Kansas studies have found that mentoring relationships had benefits people still drew on a decade later, while one peer mentoring group benefited a group of colleagues for 20 years.
Strong Girls
Mary Fry, professor of educational psychology at KU, started the Strong Girls program at KU to provide positive sporting climates and teach life skills to adolescent girls. The program paired girls with college student mentors for a semester. Fry and colleagues surveyed about 20 former mentors a decade after they volunteered.
“We’ve always thought it’s powerful for the kids, and we have research supporting the benefits to the mentees,” Fry said. “But we’ve also come to realize just how important this volunteer work was for the mentors. When we reached out to former mentors a decade after they volunteered, some remembered it was impactful at the time and that it was empowering to be around other strong women. Several told us they still list Strong Girls on their resumé and currently use the skills they learned in their careers.”
The volunteers received training on how to involve the young girls in physical activity in an environment based on research Fry has conducted on a caring and task-involving climate. The approach rewards effort, learning from mistakes, encourages teamwork and reinforces lessons such as body positivity.
The surveyed mentors said not only did they enjoy working with the youths, they also benefited as much as the younger participants. Nearly all reported that they learned lessons they’ve since used in graduate school and in careers such as counseling, medicine, teaching and community health.
The study, co-written by Taiylor Sharp and Jacob Chamberlin, doctoral students at KU, and Theresa Brown of the University Missouri-Kansas City, was published in the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action.
Fry, who has published numerous studies, books and chapters on positive sport environments, said it is rare to get a look at the long-term benefits of mentoring relationships, especially as it relates to the mentors. The findings may help youth development programs recruit student volunteers for such positions.
“I’ve always found college students hungry for meaningful relationships that allow them to get involved and build skills, especially those that are vital beyond college,” Fry said. “These mentors brought passion while they were part of Strong Girls, and with this study, we were able to fast-forward and see the benefits carrying on, which is a great snapshot of what these types of programs can be for mentors in the long term.”
The Posse
Fry was also co-author of a study examining a 20-year peer mentoring group that supported scholars seeking tenure, writing grants and publishing research as well as raising kids.
Fry was professionally familiar with a group of academics who all studied achievement goal perspective theory at Purdue University. They would often see each other at professional conferences but were the only ones studying the topic at their respective universities.
“Academe can be a lonely place,” Fry said of being the only researcher in a discipline at an institution. “We thought it might be fun to have our own mini-conference.”
Twenty years after they started meeting to discuss their research, members of the group, which became known as “The Posse,” are all still active in academic careers, and the meetings evolved to include talks on career advancement, publishing, grant writing, the unique challenges facing women in higher education and support through life’s everyday ups and downs.
Co-written by Lori Gano-Overway of James Madison University, Maria Newton of the University of Utah, Marta Guivernau of Kent State University and Mi-Sook Kim of Cal State University, Dominguez Hills, all members of The Posse, the article was published in the journal Quest.
While mentoring is common in higher education, there is often limited guidance on how mentors and mentees should structure those relationships. The success of the group’s members shows that “sideways mentoring,” where all members are equals, could greatly benefit academe by encouraging and supporting such arrangements, the authors wrote.
“Across all disciplines, women are underrepresented among tenure-track and tenured faculty despite receiving an ever increasing share of doctoral degrees. Furthermore, women are underrepresented in leadership positions in higher education,” the authors wrote in the study. “Faculty in kinesiology and exercise science departments are under increasing pressure as the number of majors has grown substantially, whereas departmental budgets and the number of faculty serving students have remained stagnant in proportion to increased enrollment. Accompanying the stressors of instructing larger class sizes are increased pressures to publish and accrue external funding to support research and the university.”
The authors encourage universities to support mentoring efforts that might not fit the traditional mold but especially encourage women and other underrepresented groups to seek out such relationships themselves. Specifically, they recommend being intentional in identifying collaborators, discussing mentorship needs, establishing structures that fit the group and regularly assessing the effectiveness.
Above all, supporting and learning from like-minded scholars can help address the challenges inherent in the business and build working relationships, according to the authors.
“It doesn’t always have to be someone with gray hair providing wisdom to a younger or less experienced colleague,” Fry said of mentoring. “We made each other better, caring about each other and our work, and I think faculty members everywhere could benefit from this type of mentoring. There’s no one path, but sharing and support are the keys.”