Women's Future in Higher Education: Directions for Future Research

It is my hope that this special issue on women, tenure, and promotion will foster discussion, research, and positive institutional changes about the significant challenges still facing women faculty—primarily the need for equal opportunity to enter, advance, and gain overall gender parity in academia. Among the topics requiring further discussion are mentoring of graduate students and faculty members, professional development of women faculty, the role of women's studies scholarship, and the impact of corporatism. As we and the authors in this volume have noted again and again, women obtain more than half of the Ph.D.s granted in this country, with higher percentages in the humanities and social sciences than in the sciences, yet we do not constitute half of the faculty in most academic units in the U.S. academy. To foster intellectual breadth, varied methodologies, and practical impact of work on these issues, we suggest, as have contributors to this issue, the formation of interdisciplinary teams to conduct research on these topics.

Mentoring of Graduate Students and Faculty Members

Mentoring is an essential activity that retains women Ph.D.s in the "pipeline" from the time they are hired into tenure-track positions, to their conducting valuable and valued research, doing teaching and service, and to their being granted tenure and promotion to associate professor. In her report, "Mentors and Tormentors," Meryl Altman reflects upon mentoring for women graduate students and assistant professors. She problematizes the mentoring process because the mentor, not always omniscient, gives helpful, and sometimes unsolicited, advice. The mentor also may have input into a decision regarding whether a mentee passes a dissertation defense or receives a positive vote for tenure. Does this pose a conflict of interest for the mentor, especially if the mentee, exercising her own judgment, does not strictly adhere to the mentor's advice? Additionally, how does the gender of the mentor influence mentoring?

Should mentoring be formal or informal or some combination of the two? More formal examples of mentoring are provided in this issue by April L. Few and Sue V. Rosser. Few's departmental tenure and promotion committee provided formal feedback in her second and fourth years regarding her progress toward tenure. Few's article features comments from both her department chair and the chair of her tenure committee regarding their evaluations of her prospects for tenure. While the two male professors acknowledge that quantity is a critical criterion of productivity and necessary for Few's survival in a Carnegie Research I institution, they understand her commitment to teaching and outreach activities; that is, they do not want to squelch her other professorial passions.¹ Because she is held to the quantity requirement, they advise her to combine her teaching and service with scholarship but also suggest that she reduce her service activities. Simultaneously, Few is aware she serves as a role model for women and men of color on her campus and in the profession, and that she has some obligation to mentor them. Rosser's report on ADVANCE Professorships and mini-retreats where junior faculty members meet senior administrators is an excellent example of formal mentoring planned to be institutionalized at the end of Rosser's institution's grant period.

Mentoring can be a nebulous concept if it is not tied to the strategic goals of an academic unit, a college, or a university. Having considered formal mentoring as illustrated above, I return to the more informal mentoring described by Altman in her report. Mentoring need not always be imposed from above. Some junior faculty members seek informal or unofficial mentors to have more confidentiality in communicating about a combination of personal and professional goals as well as climate issues they might experience in their academic unit. Junior faculty members may have more than one mentor, who provide different perspectives on work in the academy. As Ines S. Shaw (2005) points out, to be successful, mentoring must be "meaningful" both to the monitor and the mentee; the relationship must entail a genuine rapport.

Furthermore, as Shaw suggests, incoming faculty do not usually receive adequate, if any...