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Mentoring and Difference:

The project

The model

The challenges

The opportunities

Miriam Marty Clark, Associate Professor of English, Auburn University

Francine Parker, Associate Professor of Nursing, Auburn University

Pamela Stamm, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice, Auburn University

What We Can Learn from Students Who are Not Like Us

+The Project and its Context

Auburn is Alabama’s largest land-grant university with an enrollment of about 20,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate and first professional students.

The ePortfolio Project serves as the “Quality Enhancement Plan,” required by our regional accrediting agency. It is associated with an expansive University Writing Initiative and supported by the Office of University Writing.

+A Provocative Model

Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree

“Because of the transmission of identity from one generation to the next, most children share at least some traits with their parents. These are vertical identities. Attributes and values are passed down from parent to child across the generations not only through strands of DNA but also through shared cultural norms. Ethnicity, for example, is a vertical identity.”

“Often, however, someone has an inherited or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity.

“A child’s marked difference from the rest of the family demands knowledge, competence, and actions that a typical mother and father are unqualified to supply, at least initially.”

+Not Lost in Translation

Students’ professional paths are “like ours.” Our own experience equips us to mentor their professional development.

Students follow paths that are distinctively different from ours. Mentoring them requires knowledge, competence, and actions we may need to develop.

Vertical Horizontal

+Perspectives: English

There are very few jobs “like ours” for new Ph.D.s

Students know little about employment outside academia.

Faculty know little about employment outside academia.

+Effective Mentoring in English

Identify components of discipline specific skills.

Recognize the transferability of these to other kinds of work.

Design experiences and assignments to help students master component skills.

Design ePortfolio guidelines that help students assess, integrate, and demonstrate these skills.

+Perspectives: Nursing

Challenges

Ways of Thinking

Openness: Cultivating a Career Path

+Mentoring vertical horizontal Mentor students earlier in the professional program

Facilitate cultivation of nursing philosophy

Provide opportunities for reflective practice in classroom and clinical learning experiences

Modify existing method of ePortfolio assessment

Year 4:

Year 3:

Year 2:

Year 1:

Perspectives in Pharmacy

Advanced Practice in Hospitals, Clinics, and Community Pharmacies

Drug ScienceSkillsEarly PracticeElectives

Drug ScienceSkillsEarly PracticeManagement & Communication

Drug ScienceSkillsEarly PracticeDrug Information & Law

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Pharmacy

Academia Patient Care Provider

Community Pharmacist

Owner / Manager

Hospital Pharmacist

Insurance / claims reviewer / formulary reviewer

Drug information

Long Term Care / Consulting

Home Infusion

Medical Writer / Editor

Informatics

Poison Control

Medical Missions

Specialty Pharmacy

Compounding

Clinical Coordinator

+Horizontal Thinking & ePortfolios:Be Open, Aware, and a Connector Guide students toward identifying personal

and professional goals

Encourage formalized career exploration

Discuss how knowledge, skills, and attitudes learned apply to their career

Encourage extra-curricular activities consistent with their chosen path

Connect students with vertical mentors

+Thinking H

orizontal

+ Knowledge, Competence, and Action: Equipping ourselves as Mentors

Describe vertical and horizontal identities within our own disciplines.

Identify the specific mentoring needs of students whose paths diverge from our own.

Share this knowledge with our colleagues in our discipline and work with them to tailor ePortfolio strategies and assignments to the needs of divergent students.

+Faculty Development and Collaboration Across the Disciplines Identify common needs of divergent students

Develop broad ePortfolio assignments, strategies, attitudes, and practices that encourage personal and professional self-discovery for all students.

Share mentoring experiences and challenges.

Maintain wide-ranging conversations about the ePortfolio and its use by students and programs.