The intentional mentor: Strategies and guidelines for the practice of mentoring.

How can faculty in professional psychology programs become more intentional and effective mentors? Many psychology graduate students are never mentored, and very few psychologists have ever received training in the practice of mentoring. This article briefly summarizes the nature of mentoring, the prevalence of mentoring in psychology, primary obstacles to mentoring, and some ethical concerns unique to mentoring. The article provides several strategies to enhance mentoring and guidelines for the profession, departments of psychology, and individual psychologists who serve as mentors. This article is designed to help readers take a more deliberate approach to the practice of mentoring. Our system of higher education, though officially committed to the fostering of intellectual and personal development of students, pro-vides mentoring that is generally limited in quantity and poor in quality. (Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, McKee, 1978, p. 334) Are psychologists equipped to mentor? Do most psychologists who develop long-term helping relationships with graduate stu-dents and junior colleagues consider mentoring a distinct area of professional practice? Although mentoring relationships clearly benefit those mentored, the mentors themselves, and the profession of psychology (Bogat Redner, 1985; Clark, Harden, Johnson, 2000), and although psychologists are increasingly called upon to