Mentoring in Criminology and Criminal Justice Doctoral Education: Doctoral Program Coordinators’ Perspectives

Abstract

The importance of mentoring and supervising students has been a concern for criminal justice and criminology doctoral education. Doctoral students’ perceptions on the impacts of mentoring have attracted scholarly attention, but little attention has focused specifically on faculty perspectives. This study reports survey results from 21 doctoral coordinators in criminology and criminal justice doctoral programs. Topics include the prevalence of both informal and formal mentoring programs, the doctoral coordinators’ perceptions of the ways in which mentoring contributes to academic success, and the functions and aspects of their own mentoring programs that are most significant to the academic success of doctoral students. Findings reveal that not all doctoral programs provide mentoring. The coordinators’ perceived values of mentoring programs vary by the type of mentoring (formal or informal). However, the coordinators report that their mentoring programs influence students’ academic success regardless of the type of mentoring. The manuscript concludes with implications of the results and recommendations specific to mentoring doctoral students in criminology and criminal justice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences on 21 February 2014 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

¹ The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for future study.