Navigating Barriers and Challenges to Achieving Critical Career Milestones Among Faculty Mentees

For faculty members, job satisfaction, compensation, and career advancement hinge on achieving 'critical' career milestones (e.g., external funding, tenure). Faculty face unique barriers to achieving career milestones (Bagley et al., 2018), and therefore must employ tailored strategies to overcome challenges. The current project extends research on barriers to career milestones (Soller et al., 2022) to examine strategies faculty employ to overcome barriers in the pursuit of critical career milestones. Thirty-seven faculty members participated across eight US academic institutions, including 22 under-represented minorities in science (URM-S; women or racial/ ethnic minorities). Respondents identified critical career milestones they achieved or will pursue within the next 24 months and then discussed strategies used and suggestions for achieving milestones during semi-structured qualitative interviews. The research team conducted a thematic, qualitative, descriptive analysis of qualitative data using NVivo software in a systematic, interactive, team-based process. Four key strategies emerged for navigating barriers in the pursuit of critical career milestones: 1) Careful engagement of mentors and allies; 2) Collaborate and network; 3) Set boundaries and prioritize; and 4) Reflect on values and use personal strengths. Administrators should aim to remove structural barriers, particularly those that reduce equity (Davis et al., 2022). Identifying strategies that faculty employ to overcome challenges can enhance mentoring by helping mentors understand how mentees overcome unique challenges, particularly those that are not easily addressed through structural interventions.