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Submitted
April 19, 2024
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December 15, 2024
Published
December 26, 2024
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Abstract

Mentorship involves exchanging knowledge, skills, and experience between a more knowledgeable and skilled individual and a less experienced and skilled one. Mentorship fosters professional skill development, confidence, scholarly productivity, career advancement. It also helps in stress reduction, and increasing job satisfaction. There is limited research on academic staff mentorship in tertiary institutions in Uganda. This study sought to address this knowledge gap by examining how mentorship is undertaken by academic staff, the challenges it faces, and how it can be improved at Makerere University in Uganda. This study was conducted using a qualitative research design. The participants were purposively selected from three colleges at the university. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and manually analyzed using a thematic approach. The major results revealed that mentorship among academic staff at this institution was practiced informally as there were no formal structures to guide and facilitate mentorship practice. Therefore, we recommend that formal structures be implemented to guide, facilitate, and enhance this practice.

Keywords

Mentorship Collaboration Tertiary institutions Academic-staff

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Copyright (c) 2024 Tina Kantono Walube , Paul Makoboza, Murindwa Rutanga

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Author Biographies

Tina Kantono Walube , Makerere University, Uganda

Tina Kantono Walube graduated from Makerere University, School of Social Sciences. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Post Graduate Diploma in Education and a Masters of Public Administration and Management from Makerere University. She is interested in in developing her research skills and competencies.

Paul Makoboza, Makerere University, Uganda

Paul Makoboza is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the School of Social Sciences, Makerere University. His research interests include vaccine trial acceptance, criminal justice policy research, forensic criminology research, HIV, and dementia. He also has experience conducting and analyzing qualitative research studies.

Murindwa Rutanga, Makerere University, Uganda

Murindwa Rutanga is a professor of Political Science at Makerere University, School of Social Sciences. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Makerere University, a Master of Arts degree in Political Science from the same institution, a one-year certificate from the Centre for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Political Science from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He has authored and published numerous articles both locally and internationally.

How to Cite
Walube , T. K., Makoboza, P., & Rutanga, M. (2024). Academic Staff Mentorship at Makerere University: A Qualitative Study. Pan-African Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 5(2), 91–105. https://doi.org/10.56893/pajes2024v05i02.07
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