TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of mentorship in protégé performance
AU - Malmgren, R. Dean
AU - Ottino, Julio M.
AU - Nunes Amaral, Luís A.
PY - 2010/6/3
Y1 - 2010/6/3
N2 - The role of mentorship in protégé performance is a matter of importance to academic, business and governmental organizations. Although the benefits of mentorship for protégés, mentors and their organizations are apparent, the extent to which protégés mimic their mentors career choices and acquire their mentorship skills is unclear. The importance of a science, technology, engineering and mathematics workforce to economic growth and the role of effective mentorship in maintaining a healthy such workforce demand the study of the role of mentorship in academia. Here we investigate one aspect of mentor emulation by studying mentorship fecunditythe number of protégés a mentor trainsusing data from the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which tracks the mentorship record of thousands of mathematicians over several centuries. We demonstrate that fecundity among academic mathematicians is correlated with other measures of academic success. We also find that the average fecundity of mentors remains stable over 60 years of recorded mentorship. We further discover three significant correlations in mentorship fecundity. First, mentors with low mentorship fecundities train protégés that go on to have mentorship fecundities 37% higher than expected. Second, in the first third of their careers, mentors with high fecundities train protégés that go on to have fecundities 29% higher than expected. Finally, in the last third of their careers, mentors with high fecundities train protégés that go on to have fecundities 31% lower than expected.
AB - The role of mentorship in protégé performance is a matter of importance to academic, business and governmental organizations. Although the benefits of mentorship for protégés, mentors and their organizations are apparent, the extent to which protégés mimic their mentors career choices and acquire their mentorship skills is unclear. The importance of a science, technology, engineering and mathematics workforce to economic growth and the role of effective mentorship in maintaining a healthy such workforce demand the study of the role of mentorship in academia. Here we investigate one aspect of mentor emulation by studying mentorship fecunditythe number of protégés a mentor trainsusing data from the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which tracks the mentorship record of thousands of mathematicians over several centuries. We demonstrate that fecundity among academic mathematicians is correlated with other measures of academic success. We also find that the average fecundity of mentors remains stable over 60 years of recorded mentorship. We further discover three significant correlations in mentorship fecundity. First, mentors with low mentorship fecundities train protégés that go on to have mentorship fecundities 37% higher than expected. Second, in the first third of their careers, mentors with high fecundities train protégés that go on to have fecundities 29% higher than expected. Finally, in the last third of their careers, mentors with high fecundities train protégés that go on to have fecundities 31% lower than expected.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77953221215&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77953221215&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nature09040
DO - 10.1038/nature09040
M3 - Article
C2 - 20520715
AN - SCOPUS:77953221215
VL - 465
SP - 622
EP - 626
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
SN - 0028-0836
IS - 7298
ER -