20 Mentoring in Higher Education Laura Gail Lunsford, Gloria Crisp, Erin L. Dolan and Brad Wuetherick INTRODUCTION Mentoring relationships are embedded in the educational process in higher education. This chapter reviews scholarly work on mentoring in higher education for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members. We consider the purposes, types, and outcomes of mentoring in each context. The informal focus on mentoring has given way to a prolif- eration of formal mentoring programs at universities around the world (González, 2001). Thus, we explore mentoring in edu- cational contexts in the United States (USA), Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (UK). Our approach is to synthesize findings from the past ten years about mentoring that provide evidence as to what works for special populations/program types. The databases searched were: Academic Search Complete, Ebscohost, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, SOCI Index, Education Full-Text (Wilson Web) full-text and peer-reviewed journals (excluding non-US and non-British work). UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION Purpose of mentoring undergraduate students The term mentoring describes a range of faculty–student, staff–student or student– student relationships (Crisp and Cruz, 2009; Gershenfeld, 2014; Jacobi, 1991). In descrip- tive reports and empirical studies of under- graduate mentoring these relationships are often defined at a programmatic or adminis- trative level rather than from the perspective of the undergraduate, his or her mentor, or their relationship. Despite this focus, mentor- ing continues to be widely accepted as an effective mechanism for positively influenc- ing undergraduate students (Eby and Dolan, 2015), including improving their academic BK-SAGE-CLUTTERBUCK-160405-Chp20.indd 316 16/01/17 7:57 PM