Mentoring in All Directions: Influence and Focus Throughout the Department
Abstract Mentoring in higher education is most often conceptualized as the relationship between a more senior and less experienced faculty member or between faculty and student in the process of imparting knowledge and skills from the mentor (senior member) to mentee (junior member). The top-down approach to mentoring is well described in educational and clinical teaching literature. This article describes the development of a multi-directional mentoring model that is employed within one academic department in communication sciences and disorders. In the multidirectional model, all members of the mentoring group including senior faculty, junior faculty, and students benefit from the experience of each member. The application of a multidirectional mentoring model is applied to the reciprocal teaching and learning processes between senior and junior faculty, a process in which the roles of mentor and mentee change related to the specialized expertise of each member.