Hospitality faculty mentoring program for assistant professors

Assistant professors will be the staple of future hospitality programs within academia. Given that most tenure-track professors being older than age 50, colleges and universities acknowledge that attrition might have a significant impact on future academic learning environments. Many hospitality programs have devised current mentorship programs to assist tenure-track assistant professors during their maturation process to associate professor. The conundrum lies in knowing what constitutes an effective mentorship program, especially when there is no notable research on mentorship programs within the hospitality academy. A phenomenological study was used to explore the lived experiences of 8 tenure-track and tenured faculty members within the hospitality academy. Results indicated that leadership traits were synonymous with servant leadership, which prompts the need for a new model for mentoring hospitality faculty.