Challenges for Junior Faculty: Mentoring and Family-Reply

In Reply. —Dr Williams raises several important issues. First, she highlights the difficulty of establishing academic careers, especially in research, in academic settings where there are few established senior faculty. We agree that isolation from mentoring, role models, and information can affect most junior faculty in such settings, regardless of sex. In the more established research environment in which our interventions were conducted, this isolation was frequently the experience of junior faculty women substantially more than men. It was countered, in part, by actively making career development information available. Isolation from senior women role models can be addressed in several ways: leadership that recognizes the problems, supports its women faculty's success, and decreases their isolation in other ways; bringing in women faculty from other institutions for lectures and consultation; and training male faculty to provide constructive and supportive mentoring for women. Dr Williams also addresses the conflict between the demands of establishing