Mentorship: a critical component for professional growth and academic success.

Faculty in a twenty-first century school of dentistry face a variety of daily challenges. Balancing teaching, research, and scholarship can be an overwhelming task for junior faculty and is influenced by the environment and the interactions we have with colleagues. Effective mentorship can play a critical role in professional growth and development as well as academic success. Excellent mentors provide a distinct vision and can guide their protégés to achieve the goals associated with these visions. Current literature supports the definitive characteristics that potential protégés and effective mentors exhibit and delineates how mentoring can enhance productivity, efficiency, and motivation. There is also evidence that formal mentoring programs have an overall positive impact on junior faculty and may assist in retention of dental school faculty. Successful mentors take protégés under their wings for guidance, inspiration, and encouragement and in the process create motivated, productive, and successful teachers and researchers, thus leaving a legacy. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding the importance and benefits of excellent mentorship.