Mentoring for Success in Criminal Justice and Criminology: Teaching Professional Socialization in Graduate Programs

This article examines six issues associated with the graduate student educational mentoring process, defined in this paper as the professional socialization matrix. The six-item matrix is designed to assist the mentoring process employed by educators, students, and new professionals in criminology and criminal justice in three specific ways. First, the matrix is used to focus instruction of new professionals in criminology and criminal justice on critical areas of importance to an academic career. Second, this matrix can assist professional educators in training a new cadre of criminal justice and criminology academics by establishment of mentoring standards and more systematic approaches to this critical aspect of the education experience. Third, the use of the matrix ensures that future generations of professional educators in criminal justice and criminology are better prepared for the rigors and challenges of an academic career experience.