Mentoring early career academics with kindness, generosity and compassion

Authors: Betty Exintaris and Nilushi Karunaratne

Importance

Early career academics often find themselves pulled in multiple directions, struggling to juggle their new roles. This can leave them feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and disconnected (Exintaris et al., 2023). Mentoring stands out as a valuable way for senior academics to offer support to early career academics, offering practical advice on goal achievement and work prioritisation. Additionally, fostering a culture of collegiality and support within departments and institutions can greatly ease the transition of early career academics into their professional environment (Hollywood & McCarthy, 2019).

With over 30 years of combined experience in academia, the significance of nurturing early career academics resonates deeply for us. We believe that it’s vital for those who’ve already navigated the academic world successfully to mentor early career academics, making the journey seem less daunting and more manageable (Exintaris et al., 2023). Understanding the challenges faced by early career academics, often navigating uncharted waters with little guidance, has shaped our commitment to embodying the principle of “be generous with others; be kind”, specifically being generous with our time and being kind and supportive to our early career academics, reflecting that we were once in their position. As a senior academic and an early career academic respectively, we’ve witnessed the toll of self-doubt and burnout on early career academics, particularly those transitioning into scholarship of teaching and learning post PhD. It’s within this context that we have dedicated ourselves to mentorship, specifically compassionate mentorship, understanding its pivotal role in the academic journey.

Scenario

In the last 5 years, our research-intensive faculty has made numerous early career, education-focussed appointments (~10 individuals and growing). An education-focussed academic staff member’s primary role is to provide a high standard of teaching, be involved in educational design and delivery, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. In our experience, the transition from a discipline specific PhD in a research-intensive university to an education focussed position can be daunting, despite numerous support avenues and courses available at the university (Whitton et al., 2021).

For these reasons, we embarked on mentoring a new cohort of early career academics in our institution, with our commitment to championing generosity and kindness. It is also worth noting that while our case study concentrates on mentoring education-focussed academics, we have also previously mentored teaching and research academics. The principles are the same.

The principle of “being generous with others; be kind” underpins every aspect of our leadership approach to mentoring early career academics. Our approach goes beyond imparting knowledge; it revolves around cultivating a nurturing environment where early career academics not only gain knowledge but also feel supported and empowered to thrive. By fostering a culture of inclusivity and encouragement, we prioritise the well-being and professional development of our early career academics. One of the ways we achieve this is through regular (weekly to fortnightly) informal individual coffee sessions in the university campus coffee shop, where we can have candid conversations and connect with our early career academics on a ‘level playing field’ as it were, rather than an office, where perceived power dynamics can hinder open discussion. These sessions serve as invaluable platforms for sharing experiences, offering advice, and building rapport.

Our commitment to mentorship is unwavering; we believe in the power of collaboration and mutual support. As experienced academics, we recognise our role as mentors and allies, offering guidance, encouragement, and opportunities for growth. For example, we provide opportunities for early career academics to become involved in established education-research projects to build confidence and get them thinking about the scholarship that they’d like to get involved in. Other early career academics have more concrete ideas that they would love to ‘get off the ground’ but don’t have an education research ‘toolkit’ to be able to achieve this. We endeavour to connect them with academics who are experts in the methodologies or areas that they’re interested in or try to encourage them to attend education research courses offered by the university. In addition, we actively encourage and support our early career academics to apply for education innovation and education research grants offered at our faculty, often as part of a larger team.

Another strategy that we’ve used to instil confidence is to ask early career academics to think about the conferences that they’d like to present their work at and work towards that goal. In the previous 12 months alone, we have 6 early career academics showcasing their work at various conferences. In our experience, this not only boosts their confidence and visibility within the academic community, but also gets them thinking about the education research path that they would like to pursue.

Another strategy we use to encourage and mentor early career academics, particularly the standout educators, is to work towards applying for local and national education awards. We ask them to start crafting their teaching philosophy, to think about what’s their unique flavour that makes them great teachers, and we interview them to capture their ‘narrative’. Of course, we also ask the early career academics to start gathering evidence to uphold their claims of teaching excellence. Our experience is that these sessions are invaluable in sparking creativity and confidence, no matter the outcome. Having said that, our success rate is very high, with 5/5 of our mentees receiving an education award at a Faculty level and 2/5 at a University level!

In the current scenario, where we are continuing to mentor the next generation of education focussed academics, our vision is clear- in an environment of kindness and generosity, every member, regardless of experience or background, can successfully navigate academia and thrive. The outcomes speak volumes:

• nearly all our early career academics have either planned to present at conferences or have successfully presented at conferences
• many of our early career academics have pursued and obtained awards and grants
• most of our early career academics are more confident and have made clear decisions about their next steps of education scholarship

Our results demonstrate the transformative power of kind, generous and compassionate mentorship in fostering success.

Reflection

Our commitment to compassionate mentorship has profoundly impacted the early career academics in our faculty. By prioritising kindness and generosity, we’ve created an environment where individuals feel supported and empowered to thrive in education-focused roles. While reflecting on this case study, we both agree that it might be time to start encouraging our more experienced education-focussed early career academics to start taking on the role of ‘mentors’ such that this model is also sustainable beyond us!

It is also worth noting that while our motivation to nurture early career academics wasn’t part of academic promotion, since embarking on this journey, mentorship can now be used as evidence of leadership in the university promotion application-this should be championed at other research-intensive universities.

Advice

By providing mentorship through a lens of kindness, compassion, and generosity, we can support and guide early career academics as they navigate the challenges of academia and succeed in their respective careers. In this scenario, based on our own experience, our top tips for cultivating kind, generous and compassionate mentorship are:

• Be approachable: Create a safe, positive and inclusive environment so that early career academics feel comfortable reaching out to you for guidance and support. Be generous with your time.
• Build trust and rapport: Be patient, empathetic and kind. Be a sounding board. Take the time to listen to the early career academics concerns and challenges without judgment.
• Share your experiences: Draw from your own experiences as an academic to provide practical insights and advice. Share both successes and failures to offer different, realistic perspectives.

Importantly, in our case, the senior academic initially mentored the early career academics, which evolved into an extremely fruitful partnership in education innovation and research and a lifelong friendship (Exintaris et al., 2023).

References

Exintaris, B., Karunaratne, N., & Kaur, A. (2023). Navigating and building resilience in academia: Dual perspectives. In I. Fatimawati, A. Badiozaman, VM. Ling, K. Deep Sandhu (Eds.) Women practicing resilience, self-care and wellbeing in academia. Taylor & Francis Group.

Hollywood, A., McCarthy, D., Spencely, C., & Winstone, N. (2020). ‘Overwhelmed at first’: The experience of career development in early career academics. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 44(7), 998–1012. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2019.1636213

Whitton, D., Parr, G., & Choate, J. (2021, September 20). Teaching-focused academics: Five ways to beat the struggle for identity. Education Research Matters. https://blog.aare.edu.au/teaching-focused-academics-five-ways-to-beat-the-struggle-for-identity/