Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Qualitative Data
Service to the Profession: The Forgotten Element of Tenure and the Importance of Faculty Mentoring 325
After collecting and coding the responses from the open-ended statements, three
primary themes emerged regarding the ways in which tenured faculty could be of assistance
to junior faculty concerning service requirements: (1) mentoring them in the area; (2) sharing
service opportunities with them; and (3) modeling behaviors that encourage junior faculty to
become involved in service endeavors.
Mentoring. Mentoring provides tenured faculty opportunities to assist junior faculty
with the transition from the public education sector to that of higher education (Boreen,
Johnson, Niday, & Potts, 2000). Novice professors face many challenges as they make this
change and acclimate themselves to their new positions and responsibilities. One area of
concentration for new faculty is recognizing the importance of tenure and how it is achieved.
Because the process of achieving tenure is university specific (Stalcup, 2006), members of the
existing faculty who have already achieved tenure seem the most likely mentor for newly
hired assistant professors.
Villani (2006) posited that if mentoring from tenured faculty occurs the performance
and success of newly hired professors may be beneficial to helping junior faculty acclimate
themselves to their roles in higher education. As one respondent shared, “[We should] act as
mentors to navigate the [tenure] system and [help them] locate service opportunities.”
Another professor felt that there should be “formal and informal mentoring related to
teaching, scholarship, and service…in that order.” Tenured faculty who serve as mentors
should provide a positive and lasting impact on the professional lives of junior faculty to
enable them to “find success and gratification in their new work” (Rowley, 1999, p. 20).
Striving to reach tenure (Greene, et al., 2008) coupled with understanding their new roles as
assistant professors leaves many junior faculty members needing words of encouragement and
elements of a supportive effort to sustain them. This is mentoring at its simplest.
Sharing. The professors also identified that sharing was vital when assisting young
faculty in locating and providing service opportunities. Junior faculty members may face
several obstacles when deciding on what service opportunities are and how they can take part
in those opportunities. Again, this constitutes the need for a mentor to help guide them in the
area of service.
For mentoring to prove successful, senior faculty members who have agreed to be
mentors invest a great deal of time and effort to share information about service opportunities
with non-tenured faculty (Rowley, 1999). This kind of energy consists of, as one participant
suggested “include them [junior faculty] in activities and recommend them for opportunities
of which they are unaware.” Other professors shared that they had a responsibility to
“[connect] them with organizational leaders who can provide meaningful experiences” as well
as “[partner] with them in various activities.” Excelling in the area of service may rest in the
willingness of existing faculty to share service opportunities with novice assistant professors.
Participants wrote that they saw sharing as a means of helping junior faculty with
service activities by nominating them for various committees as various levels of higher
education, by involving them in already existing service events, and providing networking
possibilities from involvement in professional organizations and civic happenings. Trying to
identify and find ways to increase the amount of service to the profession is somewhat
unknown to junior faculty members, but with the help and guidance of tenured professors, as