ABSTRACT
Although researchers support the notion that college- and university-sponsored mentoring programs effectively academically transition and retain postsecondary students from a variety of sociocultural backgrounds, researchers have not examined how mentoring programs address the ‘mentorability’ or the ‘ability to be mentored’ of their mentees. Employing a quantitative content analysis, we examined postsecondary mentoring program websites (n= 187) at public, four-year institutions in Texas (n = 44). Findings suggest only 19% of all mentoring programs address ‘mentorability’ by defining mentee characteristics and expectations, compared to 37% of all mentoring programs which define mentor characteristics and expectations. Furthermore, only 4% of mentoring program websites included mentee applications, and mentoring programs were four times more likely to address their mentors (1,023 occurrences) than ‘mentees/protégés’ (237 occurrences), speaking to the lack of focus on mentee ‘mentorability.’ Implications for practitioners and future research is addressed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.