Faculty knowledge, actions, and perceptions of sponsorship: an institutional survey study

ABSTRACT

Background

Women and underrepresented in medicine and the health sciences (URiM) faculty face inequities in advancement. Career sponsorship may be a remedy. Few studies have described sponsorship in academic medicine and none across an institution.

Objective

To examine faculty awareness, experiences, and perceptions of sponsorship at a large academic health center.

Design

Anonymous online survey.

Participants

Faculty with a ≥50% appointment.

Main Measures

The survey contained 31 Likert, multiple-choice, yes/no, and open-ended questions about familiarity with the concept of sponsorship; experience of having or being a sponsor; receipt of specific sponsorship activities; sponsorship impact and satisfaction; mentorship and sponsorship co-occurrence; and perception of inequities. Open-ended questions were analyzed using content analysis.

Key Results

Thirty-one percent of the surveyed faculty (903/2900) responded of whom 53% (477/903) were women and 10% (95/903) were URiM. Familiarity with sponsorship was higher among assistant (91%, 269/894) and associate (182/894; 64%) professors versus full professors (38%, 329/894); women (67%, 319/488) versus men (62%, 169/488); and URiM (77%, 66/517) versus non-URiM faculty (55%, 451/517). A majority had a personal sponsor (528/691; 76%) during their career and were satisfied with their sponsorship (64%, 532/828). However, when responses from faculty of different professorial ranks were stratified by gender and URiM identity, we observed possible cohort effects. Furthermore, 55% (398/718) of respondents perceived that women received less sponsorship than men and 46% (312/672) that URiM faculty received less than their peers. We identified seven qualitative themes: sponsorship importance, growing awareness and change, institutional biases and deficiencies, groups getting less sponsorship, people with sponsorship power, conflation with mentorship, and potential for negative impact.

Conclusions

A majority of respondents at a large academic health center reported sponsorship familiarity, receipt, and satisfaction. Yet many perceived persistent institutional biases and the need for systematic change to improve sponsorship transparency, equity, and impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• faculty development
• mentoring
• sponsorship
• equity
• advancement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2023.2218665.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University of California, San Francisco.