Mentoring Program for Senior Women
What value can a UAEW/LH Martin Mentoring Program Add?
Surveys of Australian universities show that close to half have mentoring programs for women and that groups such as ATN-WEXDEV and its constituent universities have been leaders in this field in Australia. Yet there is also evidence that women may not always be well placed to develop relationships with influential mentors.
In this program our response to the significant change in our sector is firmly directed towards future needs whilst drawing on the wealth of experience of the past. This future orientation generates one of the most significant challenges for a mentoring program: the capacity to draw on past experience whilst simultaneously transforming that experience into leadership responses appropriate to current and future contexts. It is our hope that both mentors and mentees will use their knowledge and share their experience whilst doubting what they know.
Devos (2005) argues that the growth of mentoring of women in Australian universities may be seen as linked to the development of the enterprise university in which individualism and competitiveness are increasingly valued. If this is the case one important objective of the program will be to provide women with the strategies to negotiate this competitive environment whilst remaining simultaneously collaborative.
The UAEW/L.H.Martin Mentoring Program aims to implement an evidence based approach to implement positive and effective change through strategic targeting of specific obstacles in the ‘career labyrinth’ of senior university women; and to therefore advance the cause of their professional development.
The LH Martin/UAEW mentoring scheme will be structured on the basis of matching mentors’ experience and potential to address specific challenges identified by mentees. It will have three components:
- The mentoring relationship with a recently retired VC/DVC/Registrar
- A shadowing component with a current VC/DVC/Registrar
- Peer networks facilitated through shared experience and workshops.