Mentoring and the AAG Mentoring Task Force

Serving as president of AAG has afforded me the privilege of participating in several of the AAG’s regional division conferences in the fall. These conferences often showcase students’ research, whether as papers or posters, and it is a delight to see all the innovative work that students do around the country. The quality of this research and its presentation also show the tremendous mentoring by faculty at a variety of institutions who support students and encourage them to participate in conferences and present their work. Mentoring is a critically important part of our work as we educate the next generations of geographers and prepare them for a variety of careers.

Research shows that effective mentoring has positive outcomes for faculty careers and for careers outside the academy (Fain and Zachary 2020). Mentoring helps early career scholar-educators and aspiring geography practitioners better prepare for and navigate academic and non-academic job markets, and aids in the transition from graduate school to professional careers. Mentoring enhances professional development and provides networking opportunities for early-career professionals, supports early-career geographers throughout the promotion and tenure process, and is particularly important for those in temporary/precarious positions who often lack institutional support structures. Ongoing political assaults on academic freedom and DEI work on many college and university campuses have only increased the need to better support marginalized faculty.

Mentoring is a critically important part of our work as we educate the next generations of geographers and prepare them for a variety of careers.”

But mentoring does not just benefit mentees. Scholars working on mentoring and consultants for industry and academy, such as Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, consider ‘mentoring as transformational’ and as ‘mutually empowering’ for mentors and mentees. There are thus benefits for mentors, especially if these mentors appropriately recognize and address mentoring needs across social difference. This is one of the important lessons of research on mentoring: not all mentoring is equal, nor does mentoring necessarily achieve its goals, especially when goals and expectations for mentoring relationships are unclear.

Recognizing that many departments are stretched thin, and that plenty of geographers work as ‘stand-alone’ geographers in their department or even college, the AAG Mentoring Task Force has focused on examining how AAG can expand its mentoring efforts to better address our members’ needs. Since fall 2023, members of this Task Force have been collecting, reading, and discussing scholarship and literature on mentoring strategies. We have been hosting a series of listening sessions at the Honolulu Annual Meeting, as well as at different regional meetings, including the 2023 West Lakes and SEDAAG regional division conferences and at the joint REP/MAD conference in Washington DC. These listening sessions yielded a broad array of insights that will inform our recommendations.

The Mentoring Task Force also facilitated an in-person panel session at the last Annual Meeting in Honolulu on “How to Survive Your First Year as a Faculty Member.” Skillfully chaired by Jack Swab, the session featured four panelists (Clare Beer, Shamayeta Bhattacharya, Bill Limpisathian, and Fikriyah Winata) who shared their experiences, insights, and recommendations as first-year faculty members. Conversations with the audience following the panel’s initial discussion revealed the challenges of job searches as well as great advice on how to overcome them, and to thrive in a new position. I was impressed, as well, by more senior scholars who said they attended the session in order to learn what challenges face current early-career geographers in order to better mentor their own students. To me, this is an example of the two-way street that is mentoring: those of us at more advanced career stages have a lot to learn from those who are just starting out their own. (Look for a second iteration of “How to survive your first year as a faculty member” at our next Annual Meeting in Detroit!)

Our listening sessions taught us that different but important needs for mentoring emerge at different times in one’s professional life. The Mentoring Task Force is keenly aware of the spatial unevenness of mentoring resources available across a variety of institutions and career stages. R-1 institutions often provide their faculty and graduate students with access to commercially available mentoring programs through institutional memberships, while smaller colleges and less well-funded institutions are not able to provide such access. It is also easier in larger departments or colleges to find mentors willing to step up while the service and teaching loads at community colleges and smaller, regional campuses of public institutions are already taxing. For these reasons, a major goal of the AAG Mentoring Task Force is to explore how the AAG can develop and support more diverse mentoring structures, provide guidance to departments and colleges on best practices for mentoring.

While the Mentoring Task Force continues its work, the most recently revised and updated AAG Statement on Professional Ethics (Section IV in particular) reflects more attention to mentoring. It includes expanded recommendations for graduate student mentoring in departments and clarifies that preparation for job searches as part of graduate advising commitments. The statement also links to a guide on ‘How to Advise Graduate Students’ from the University of Michigan, which may serve as a possible model to adapt for a variety of institutions.

Existing mentoring initiatives at AAG have long included the AAG Leadership Workshop for department chairs and other (or aspiring) administrators, as well as the Geography Faculty Development Alliance which offers an annual summer workshop for early-career geographers. Beginning in Honolulu in 2024, the AAG began hosting a Student Day at its Annual Meeting, adding to its daily offerings for students with a full day of sessions dedicated to, among others, methods and professional development workshops, career panels, and offering networking opportunities over lunch. The AAG’s next Student Day will take place on March 26, 2025 in Detroit. And I am sure a number of you have seen AAG’s most recent work within its Research Partnerships initiative, calling on members to submit their ideas on new mentoring efforts to AAG, with the opportunity to collaborate on grant proposals to fund these activities. That effort, the Targeted Mentoring Networks request for partnerships, has attracted numerous ideas and will likely see the submission of two grant proposals this fall.

There are other helpful tools available to begin facilitating mentoring. My own department has encouraged using Individual Development Plans (IDPs) for graduate advising. IDPs originate from the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and enable post-doctoral scholars to better articulate and successfully pursue their career goals. My department has amended these plans to accommodate graduate student career goals and planning, whether they intend to pursue academic or non-academic careers. As multi-year planning tools, IDPs are helpful because they encompass a broader timespan than the more common annual progress reviews and check-ins and I encourage you to check out this resource.

As the Mentoring Task Force continues its work, we would love to hear from AAG members about your experiences, needs, and insights. Please also feel free to let us know of excellent examples of mentoring policies and workshops at helloworld@aag.org!

Finally, here are the members of our Mentoring Task Force:

• Mark Barnes
• Clare Beer
• Guillermo Ramos Douglass-Jaimes
• Lorraine Dowler
• Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux
• Patricia Ehrkamp
• Caroline Faria
• Matt Gerike
• Aretina Hamilton
• Frank Magilligan
• Marcus Seepersad
• Sara Smith
• Selima Sultana
• Jack Swab
• Marissa Wald
• Antoinette WinklerPrins
• Gary Langham (ex officio)

References:

Fain, Lisa Z. and Lois J. Zachary, 2020, Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring: Lean Forward, Learn, and Leverage, Berrett-Kohler Publishers

Audrey J. Murrell and Stacy Blake-Beard (eds.), 2017. Mentoring Diverse Leaders: Creating Change for People, Processes, and Paradigms.

Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at P.Ehrkamp@uky.edu to enable a constructive discussion.