Mentoring revisited: Interventions build international competence

Abstract

Mentoring is herein defined as the careful and caring nurture, guidance and sponsorship of a fellow professional (protege) by a senior experienced associate. Mentoring is reintroduced as a time-constrained, on-site, intervention strategy, which can produce a desirable and enduring effect in the “internationalization” of land grant faculty members. This introduction and pursuant description of intervention dynamics addresses a need in faculty development for a global interdependency. Such interventions are considered a unique niche for mentoring as a strategy in the career development of selected individuals. The author describes the dynamics of the mentor/protege relationship in the overseas setting and in the context of multi-sensory exposure toward sensitization within the affective domain. He does this by examples drawn from personal experience during an extensive international career. Results are described in terms of proteges' subsequent behaviors, personal and professional. Approaches to program and attitude toward program are examined. Lasting perceptions and enduring values are enumerated. Benefits to mentor are likewise disclosed. There is an urgency across America that cries out for a network of university faculty members to become internationally competent in order to share the academic and programmatic excellence that happens around the world.