Academic

Mentoring Junior Faculty: Confidentiality versus Conflict of Interest

By Jacqueline Lipton

As a research dean, one of my roles is to ensure that we have a workable mentoring program in place for tenure track faculty.  For some years, the school has been playing with the structure and contours of its tenure track mentoring program.  In recent informal discussions with colleagues, I have again confronted the perceived conflict between the roles of formally appointed mentors as confidential advisors to their mentees and ultimately as colleagues who have to weigh in on promotion and tenure decisions.  In particular, colleagues raise concerns that in a faculty of a limited size, if a lot of people are serving as mentors, who is left to do the adjudicating of candidates without a conflict of interest arising?

Fair point ... in theory.  But I wonder if it's really so significant in practice?  It seems to me that the kinds of things my colleagues are concerned about are the less likely scenarios - concerns, for example, that a mentor discovers that a mentee is a less-than-stellar scholar or teacher.  What position is that mentor in when it comes time for the faculty promotion vote on the candidate?  Can (s)he disclose what she knows about the candidate's writing or teaching?  The reason I don't think this is so much of a problem is that scholarship and teaching (at least when it comes time for a faculty vote) are pretty public activities.  By the time the faculty votes, there should have been multiple formal internal and external evaluations of teaching and scholarship.  How likely is it that the mentor is the only person who has realized that there is a serious problem with the candidate's work in one of these areas and is thus in a position of conflict at the faculty meeting?

My view is that it's more likely that some degree of confidential relationship between a mentor and a mentee can be useful in circumstances where the mentee has personal problems and needs some friendly advice, or maybe where the mentee is having difficulties with a particular colleague (hopefully not the mentor) and needs advice on how to handle that.  If these are the main scenarios for which confidence is important, then I wonder how realistic the concerns are that confidence will ultimately lead to a conflict of interests in a tenure vote?

I'd be interested in whether other schools have formal policies about these aspects of the mentoring relationship.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on September 11, 2009 (boomark / email).