#AcademicChatter Universities are promoting faculty "inclusive excellence" by investing in better mentoring program for underrepresented scholars. I assure you, achievement gaps have much more to do with disparities in ADVOCACY than mentoring. I've been saying this for 2 years...

Focusing on mentoring suggests there is a gap in faculty knowledge, rather than an issue with the system. Advocacy is imperative for getting grants, awards, etc.- "success metrics" in academia. Traditional "elite" academics are surrounded by advocates lifting up their work.

The rest of us recruit hard creating an advocate network to support our research, and honestly sometimes run the risk of having our ideas stolen in the process! Constantly selling ourselves and our ideas to senior colleagues to get buy-in, and then getting left in the dust.

Don't get me wrong, mentoring is great and all early career faculty would benefit from improved mentoring. My point here is mentoring won't decrease gaps in academic success because success in this arena is centered on having advocates in your field who praise your work.

So can we focus more on training senior faculty to be better advocates for early career faculty who don't look like them or didn't come from the same academic lineage? Nominate them for awards, reach out to them to collaborate, include them on grants with financial support...

...praise their work to all your academic buddies during meetings and at conferences. You know, all those things you do naturally for that young male faculty who reminds you of yourself when you were that age.