The role of mentorship in protege performance

TL;DR

This study analyzes mentorship fecundity among mathematicians, revealing its stability over time and its correlation with academic success, while uncovering patterns in how mentors' career stages influence their proteges' mentorship outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of mentorship fecundity, demonstrating its stability over decades and its correlation with success, providing new insights into mentorship dynamics in academia.

Findings

Mentorship fecundity correlates with academic success.

Mentors with small fecundity train proteges with larger fecundity.

Mentors' career stages influence proteges' mentorship outcomes.

Abstract

The role of mentorship on protege performance is a matter of importance to academic, business, and governmental organizations. While the benefits of mentorship for proteges, mentors and their organizations are apparent, the extent to which proteges mimic their mentors' career choices and acquire their mentorship skills is unclear. Here, we investigate one aspect of mentor emulation by studying mentorship fecundity---the number of proteges a mentor trains---with 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 uncover three significant correlations in mentorship fecundity. First, mentors with small mentorship fecundity train proteges that go on to have a 37% larger than expected mentorship fecundity. Second, in the first third of their career, mentors with large fecundity train proteges that go on to have a 29% larger than expected fecundity. Finally, in the last third of their career, mentors with large fecundity train proteges that go on to have a 31% smaller than expected fecundity.