Deepening Roots: Building a Task-Centered Peer Mentoring Community

The article describes a task-centered, peer-mentoring (TCPM) group initiated by a group of female junior faculty to support one another toward tenure and work/life balance. It describes a qualitative study that investigated the peer-mentoring experiences of the participants and explored the implications and complications of peer-mentoring relationships for women in academia. The article begins by describing the group's formation in the context of literature that highlights challenges faced by untenured female faculty; next, it describes the task-centered group process and offers a theoretical framework based on feminist pedagogy. The results of the study and implications for further research and peer-mentoring practice in higher education are presented.