Mentoring should not be left to chance.
Beyond the Campus: The Power of E-Mentoring in Modern Higher Education shows how colleges and universities can design mentoring as essential infrastructure for student success, belonging, and opportunity.
By Cristina Baciu & Blue Brazelton
Forthcoming from Emerald Publishing
Digital release: October 13, 2026
Print release: November 3, 2026
Who This Book Is For
Beyond the Campus is for higher education professionals who believe that student success depends not only on courses, credentials, and services but also on relationships. This book is especially useful for people working to make mentoring more intentional, accessible, equitable, and sustainable across today’s complex educational environments.
Higher Education Leaders
For deans, associate deans, department chairs, directors, and senior administrators thinking strategically about student success, retention, belonging, and career readiness.
This book helps leaders consider mentoring not as an isolated program, but as part of the larger infrastructure students need to navigate college successfully.
Student Affairs Professionals
For practitioners supporting students through advising, belonging initiatives, leadership development, identity-based programs, career pathways, and transition points.
The book offers language and strategies for designing mentoring experiences that meet students where they are — especially when students are navigating institutional complexity, uncertainty, or limited access to informal networks.
Faculty Mentors and Academic Advisors
For faculty, advisors, and academic staff who want to support students more intentionally without assuming mentoring has to happen only through traditional, in-person relationships.
This book helps mentors think about trust, expectations, communication, boundaries, and the kinds of guidance students may need but may not know how to ask for.
Online, Hybrid, and Digital Learning Leaders
For those designing programs for students who may never experience the campus as their primary site of connection.
The book is especially relevant for online programs, hybrid degree pathways, adult learners, working students, transfer students, and geographically dispersed learners who need meaningful support beyond physical proximity.
Mentoring Program Designers
For anyone building, managing, assessing, or redesigning formal mentoring programs.
This includes those responsible for mentor–mentee matching, training, communication plans, program evaluation, and long-term sustainability. The book helps move mentoring programs beyond the match and toward the conditions that make mentoring relationships actually work.
Graduate Program Directors and Faculty Supporting Graduate Students
For leaders supporting graduate students through academic, professional, and identity-based transitions.
Graduate students often need multiple forms of mentoring: scholarly guidance, career preparation, professional socialization, emotional support, and access to networks. This book offers a way to think more intentionally about those layers of support.
Centers, Institutes, and Professional Associations
For teaching centers, career centers, honors colleges, research centers, professional associations, and grant-funded initiatives that want to build mentoring into their programming.
The book can support conversations about how to scale meaningful relationships without making mentoring feel generic, transactional, or overly automated.
About the Authors
Cristina Baciu, Ed.D
Dr. Cristina Baciu is a mentoring researcher, educator, and higher education leader. Her work explores how relationships help people navigate complex systems, from universities to healthcare. She serves as Assistant Director of Research at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, where she works with faculty and institutional leaders to strengthen research development, collaboration, and mentoring initiatives across disciplines. Originally from Romania, Cristina’s work reflects both scholarly inquiry and lived experience navigating educational systems across cultures and institutions. She continues to mentor students and early-career professionals and believes deeply in mentoring as a powerful tool for expanding opportunity and helping people realize their potential. Learn more about her work by visiting her website here.
Blue Brazelton, Ph.D
Dr. Blue Brazelton is an Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Northern Arizona University, where he teaches and studies leadership and organizational behavior, often as it relates to the digital aspects of higher education. With over 20 years of experience in teaching and mentoring (delivering both through in-person, hybrid, and online modalities) and numerous publications on the intersection of education and technology, he encourages mentoring as an educational priority regardless of transactional distance. He has mentored, and continues to mentor, current and former graduate students, newer faculty, and, more recently, high-achieving neurodivergent professionals in various fields. Thanks to the realized power of e-mentoring, he often has his mentoring calls in the forest. Learn more about his work by visiting his website here.
