Students' reflection on the university professors' mentorship

Abstract

Purpose: Mentoring is an important process that characterizes the type of university education management and is one of the most responsible jobs of a university teacher. An appropriate system of the university mentorship should be based on an adequate preparation of professors for the mentorship role.

Methods: This research posed the following survey questions: What are the necessary skills that make one university professor an effective mentor from the students’ point of view? How beneficial is the mentor’s work for the students? Do students think that the mentorship work represents a certain challenge that university professors have to face?

Results: The techniques used are the scaling technique and the instrument of gradual scale assessment SPUOM. The research was realized by means of the quantitative method and qualitative analysis of the obtained results. The obtained data were processed by the software package SPSS, the program for statistical analysis in social sciences, and were presented in the tables and graphs.

Implications: The obtained results reveal students’ opinion that an effective mentor should possess appropriate communication and interpersonal skills, be interested in the academic and professional advancement of their students and be able to see the signs of students’ emotional and physical stress. As regards the challenging character of the mentorship, students think that mentorship presupposes a heavy workload (M=4.05), great responsibility (M=4.37), as well as a professor’s full engagement (M=4.16).