Recently I had the opportunity to think about mentoring in the context of a semester study abroad program with undergraduate research (UR) mentors working with DIS, Study Abroad in Scandinavia. Before talking with the mentors, I had asked their students…

Just like any other relationship, differences in opinions, values, and desires can lead to problems in mentoring as the relationship advances. Problems in mentoring might lead to superficial interactions, below-average engagement, unmet expectations, and difficulty relating to one another (Eby…

Student-faculty, student-staff, and student-student relationships contribute significantly to student learning, motivation, identity development, well-being, graduation rates, and post-graduation career and civic outcomes in higher education (Mayhew et al. 2016; Felten and Lambert 2020). The effects of student-faculty interactions are particularly…

Mutual trust is widely recognized as a significant component of effective mentoring relationships because emotional and psychological safety allows both mentors and mentees to use their energy for learning and productivity rather than self-protection. Unfortunately, limited research exists on building…

As we explored in a previous post, if we take mentoring relationships seriously, as recent mentoring scholarship compels us to, our orientation shifts. It calls on us to understand mentors and mentoring – those sets of meaningful relationships – within…

As we have earlier explored, recent mentoring scholarship argues that our definitions of mentoring should move away from role-based orientations towards a relational-orientation that defines mentoring “in terms of the character and quality of the relationship and in terms of…

As scholarship on mentoring moved away from roles and actions towards processes and relationship development, definitions of mentoring have developed greater commonality not only around a shared focus on relationships, but also a shared focus on the general functions and…

If mentoring matters, what is meant by mentoring, and what does high-quality mentoring entail? Despite over four decades of research on mentoring, there is no universally accepted definition (Mullen and Klimaitis 2021). Ubiquitous use of the term has not only…

Recently, I co-facilitated an undergraduate workshop about intentionally building connections with supportive faculty, staff, and peer mentors. In alignment with principles from relational mentoring, we collectively acknowledged that embracing some personal vulnerability was crucial for building meaningful interpersonal connections (Johnson…

Decades of research demonstrates that student learning and well-being in higher education are enhanced by positive relationships with peers and instructors (Felten and Lambert 2020). Yet, one common challenge with relationship-rich education is scale. How is this possible when I’m…