Comment: New models of successful academic mentoring.

Mentorship goes beyond the simple passing on of knowledge and skills. It consists of encouragement, support, constructive feedback, role modeling, and a vision for a journey to the highest academic, professional, and personal goals. Increased subspecialization and the multidisciplinary nature of translational science in modern academic departments call for new mentoring paradigms. Faculty seek career advice from various sources and the traditional one-on-one mentorship model is no longer adequate to meet the full spectrum of academic faculty needs. An advisory peer group or committee mentoring within and across departments or across institutions has emerged as an alternative to the traditional mentoring models. Despite the importance of academic mentorship, career advancement, and faculty retention, there are no evidence-based standards recommended for academic …