Purpose
Women remain underrepresented in the higher ranks of academic medicine. The 2023 AAMC faculty roster reports that while nearly 50% of faculty at the rank of assistant professor are women, this declines to 29% at the rank of professor and 24% of permanent department chairs. Formal faculty mentorship programs are a practical and effective pathway to enhance faculty satisfaction and mitigate attrition. We conducted a needs assessment survey to identify the unique challenges faced by female faculty and to develop a structured mentorship program to support their career ambition.

Methods
All regular track faculty members at the Nova Southeastern University College of Allopathic Medicine (NSU MD) were asked by e-mail to complete the anonymous 9-item survey. Survey questions captured professional goals, barriers to advancement, and resources required for career development. Academic track, rank, department, and gender were also collected to enable the evaluation of associations between these variables and career barriers for women using a mixed methods approach.

Results
Survey requests were sent to 71 core faculty members. There was a 29.5% response rate, of which 13.5% were women. Respondents identified teaching load, merit/promotion requirements, and other workload to be most significant barriers to advancing their careers. Respondents indicated mentoring, financial support, and other/none as the top 3 most needed resources to assist advancement. The top 3 notable aspirations of faculty were rank promotion, opportunities to innovate, and FTE for scholarship/research. More nuanced data from the survey is currently being used by the Office of Faculty Affairs to design a targeted mentorship plan for female faculty.

Conclusion
Survey results provided a clearer understanding of the challenges and needs of faculty at our institution. The findings support the need for establishing formal mentoring programs for all faculty in addition to targeted approaches to engage women faculty in their career advancement.