"Women grow and develop through their relationships with others, especially other women, as their development concentrates more on connection and interdependence. "

Dr. Bonnie Holaday

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Dr. Bonnie Holaday

The Role Mentoring Plays in the Retention of Female Doctoral Candidates

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PEOPLE WITH IMPACT INTERVIEW - Dr. Bonnie Holaday is now a professor of nursing at Clemson University's School of Nursing. She has been a faculty member at Utah, Emory, UCLA, and UCSF, as well as a visiting professor in Israel, Japan, and Thailand.

Having taught in graduate (master's and doctoral) programs, chaired theses and dissertations, and served as a dean, Dr. Bonnie Holaday possesses a unique perspective on the role mentoring plays in the retention of female doctoral candidates, particularly those in the sciences. She shares her insights in the following interview.

Q: Why have female attrition levels traditionally been higher than their male counterparts, specifically in the sciences?
Bonnie Holaday: Women face unique challenges and gender-related barriers as they progress in their academic careers, especially women that take time between their degrees. Many women face issues related to family and other responsibilities. Historically, in academe, women have been outsiders - they were eventually accepted, but I still see some gender stereotyping and tokenism, for example, cases where women receive less financial aid and less support. This often results is lower female persistence rates in their programs, higher program dropout rates, and less diversity in the disciplines.

Q: What can institutions do to retain female doctoral candidates in the sciences?
Bonnie Holaday: Women grow and develop through their relationships with others, especially other women, as their development concentrates more on connection and interdependence. A considerable amount of growth-fostering occurs within a mentoring relationship, particularly between a female protégé and a female mentor. I believe such relationships increase retention and the likelihood of graduation of female PhD students.

My first experience with this approach to mentoring dates back to when I was working toward my PhD in Nursing, a field that regularly engages in the growth fostering through mentoring with another female. At the same time, my sister was pursuing her PhD in Genetics. My experience versus that of my sister was eye-opening—she would tell me about how the ideas of women were either disregarded or put down in lab, and how women were rarely assigned career-making research projects in the hard sciences and engineering fields.

Even years later as a graduate dean, I still see some of that behavior. The work of two people - Carol Gilligan, a psychologist who wrote Women’s Ways of Knowing, and Sandra Harding, a scientist who authored Who’s Science and Who’s Knowledge - discusses the fact that relationships are critical to a woman’s identity, and that women grow and develop through their social relations with others. I completely agree, and my experience suggests that growth fostering and mentoring not only increases retention of women in PhD programs by improving persistence, but the relationship results in a variety of additional positive outcomes:

• Women have the support and encouragement needed to come out of their shells, and they are empowered to act on their ideas.
• Women cultivate a sense of professional worth and increased confidence. Research has revealed that women writing in academic areas are less likely to think their work is important enough to publish, they are slower to submit for publication, and they are less likely to resubmit when they are rejected.
• Women begin to define themselves, and they get a clearer picture of what I call their professional self. They gain a sense of being capable and demonstrate increased productivity and performance.
• Women develop an increased passion for the discipline relationship they are empowered to act and act on their ideas.

While the notion that female mentoring positively affects retention is purely qualitative observation, it is based on years of my experience in academe. I think, however, if a study were conducted examining retention rates of females in nursing PhD programs, where this female mentoring is almost a given, compared to the rates of female retention in hard science programs, I think we would see much higher retention and graduation rates in nursing as opposed to the hard sciences.

This growth-fostering/mentoring can also play an important role with minorities in PhD programs, who, like women, often feel like outsiders and have a difficult time progressing through their graduate studies. Feelings of isolation and loneliness are common among graduate students, especially populations that experience stereotyping and tokenism.

Q: Is this approach a trend that other institutions are picking up on and utilizing within their doctoral programs?
Bonnie Holaday: Unfortunately no, we are not seeing this type of female to female mentoring enduring in the sciences. Programs talk a lot about mentoring, but mentoring that specifically looks at the relationship between the student and the mentor is unique. A friendship is almost developed - the relationship will most likely continue through the graduate studies and until they get the student launched, after which it tapers off. Mentoring in this capacity goes both ways - the protégé must accept the mentor and the mentor must accept the student, and both are actively working on the relationship.

Q: How could an institution practically implement a growth - fostering mentoring program for female PhD candidates?
Bonnie Holaday: Institutions should first examine retention rates of men, women, and minorities and have a series of small-group discussion regarding the patterns. Faculty, both women and men, must accept the idea women are wired differently, and that gowth-fostering through relational mentoring can benefit the individual students as well as the institution as a whole. For naysayers, the outcomes are very compelling: women stay in their programs, often move into their careers very quickly, and cultivate increased passion to become stewards of the discipline.

Formerly a dean of graduate studies at Clemson University, Dr. Bonnie Holaday is now a professor of nursing at the university. She has been a faculty member at Utah, Emory, UCLA, and UCSF, as well as a visiting professor in Israel, Japan, and Thailand. Dr. Holaday has also served as Director of the PhD program in Nursing Vanderbilt. Having authored over 100 publications, Dr. Holaday was honored with the prestigious Book of the Year Award from the American Journal of Nursing not once, but twice.

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