Mentoring is an essential part of the practice in any business and field of activity. Watson (2020), in her article “The virtue (and necessity) of mentorship,” examines positive examples of mentoring at university to highlight its importance and usefulness. Thus, although the article does not have all the scholar research elements, it is suitable for studying business mentoring by real-life examples given by the author.
This article demonstrates various examples of professors mentoring students that have enabled them to achieve academic and life goals. Although Watson does not highlight the research question, it can be defined as the ways and impact of professors’ mentoring on the academic and personal success of students. The author’s main argument is that teachers’ and students’ spiritual closeness in small universities is often necessary to reduce the stress students face and retain their attendance of classes. Watson quotes Professor Easton: “Each professor absolutely is an open door of knowledge, commitment, dedication, and faith” (2020, p. 7). In other words, successful mentoring depends on the skills and qualities of professors who engage students in conversation.
This article can be used to justify the need for mentoring in other organizations, for example, business or non-profit companies and any field of activity, although the author does not discuss this fact. This article is qualitative research as the primary method of data collection is interviews, although it does not have clear-cut methods, conclusions, and results that the author discusses. For example, the reader needs to choose and interpret the ways of mentoring according to his or her observations because: “There is no How Your Professor Can Help You Navigate College guide handed out with each syllabus.” (Watson, 2020, p.7). For this reason, the article is open to interpretation and criticism. In addition, in this paper, mentoring is discussed in the context of Christian values, which limits its fundamental principles for application. Thus, although the article has many different examples supporting the benefits of mentoring, it lacks the specificity of methods, results, and conclusions.
Reference
Watson, K. (2020). The virtue (and necessity) of mentorship. Christianity Today, 64(2), 73–84.