Transcript Being a Mentor for Students and Colleagues

Being a Mentor for Students
and Colleagues
HBCU-UP LDI
August 12, 2009
Mentor
• Ancient Relationship
• “Wise and Trusted Counselor” by
Homer
• Mentor = Faculty Advisor
What is a Mentor?
Mentor
- Advisers, people with career experience willing to share
their knowledge;
- Supporters, people who give emotional and moral
encouragement;
- Tutors, people who give specific feedback on one’s
performance;
- Masters, in the sense of employers to whom one is
apprenticed;
- Sponsors, sources of information about and aid in
obtaining opportunities;
- Models, of identity,of the kind of person one should be to
be an academic.
- Morris Zelditch
Why Be a Good Mentor?
Why Be a Good Mentor?
Primary motivation was well understood by Homer: the
natural human desire to share knowledge/experience.
Some other reasons:
• Achieve satisfaction- For some mentors, having a student
succeed and eventually become a friend and colleague is
their greatest joy.
• Attract good students - The best mentors are most likely
to be able to recruit and keep students of high caliber who
can help produce better research, papers, and grant
proposals.
•Stay on top of your field - There is no better way to keep
sharp professionally than to coach junior colleagues.
•Develop your professional network - In making contacts
for students, you strengthen your own contacts and make
new ones.
•Extend your contribution -The results of good mentoring
live after you, as former students continue to contribute
even after you have retired.
Case Study: Projects
I was mentoring an undergraduate student as part of a summer research
experience. I explained the project to him and taught him how to make
media and grow bacteria. Because he did not have sufficient genetics
background for a molecular project, he was given a microbiology
project. He was very quiet for the first ten days of the project and then
he complained to the faculty member who recommended him about the
project. He said he wanted a project like Sharon’s. Sharon was a
student with a strong genetics background and her project was to clone
and sequence a gene. The faculty member insisted that my mentee keep
the project I had designed for him, but the student became sulky. As
the summer went on and he didn’t get any of his experiments to work, I
began to wonder if he understood what we were doing or even cared
about it.
Undergraduate Student Perceptions
If you were the undergraduate
student, how would you feel?
Undergraduate Student Perceptions
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Project choice showed favoritism
Some projects are “cool,” others are not
Some projects are not important to the lab’s larger
goals
Some projects are slower than others
Sharon’s mentor may be better, so the project seems
more appealing
Other projects may be more collaborative, so they
seem more appealing
Overall, the student feels insulted and not respected
Faculty Perspective
What would you do?
- What if the student doesn’t like
their project?
- What if the student develops a
new project idea?
Possible Interventions
• Be flexible
• Build a molecular element into the project
• Let the student “grow into” the challenge
i.e., if you get “x” to work, you can do “y”
• Let them try other techniques
• Improve communication with the student
• Deal with sulkiness early on
Guidelines
• Establish clear expectations early
What do you expect from your
mentees?
What do they expect from you?
• Review expectations often
• Establish a relationship
• Define goals of the research project
Zachary, L.J. (2000). The Mentorﾕs Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning
Relationships. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers.
Student Projects
• Projects should have a reasonable scope
• Projects should be feasible
• Projects should generate data that the student can
present
• Projects should not simply include cookbook
experiments
• Projects should have built-in difficulties that will be
faced after the student has developed some
confidence
• Projects should be multifaceted
Concepts, Techniques, and Skills List*
1. Remind them that it is better to ask questions than to make a
mistake that could have easily been avoided.
2. General lab safety procedures including:
- Appropriate clothing
- Food and drink in the lab
- Lab coat/gloves/glasses
3. How to find and use helpful reference manuals such as Current
Protocols
4. Chemical and biological safety issues including:
- How to dispose of wastes
- How to handle chemicals safely
- How to clean up a spill
- How to handle and dispose of biological materials
5. Making chemical solutions; provide guide
sheets for: a. Solution preparation
b. Calculations c. Dilutions
6. Literature research skills
7. Basic guidelines for generating graphs and
tables
*Molecular biology and microbiology labs
Professor Clueless
A foreign-born engineering student is
reluctant to question his adviser. As a
result, the adviser thinks the student
lacks a grasp of engineering. The
adviser tries to draw out the student
through persistent questioning, which
the student finds humiliating. Only the
student’s determination to succeed
prevents him from quitting the program.
Poor Mentoring: Cultural Bias
The student grew up in a country where he learned not
to question or disagree with a person in authority.
Had the adviser suspected that a cultural difference
was at the root of the problem, he might have learned
quickly why the student was reluctant to question
him.
When communication is poor, try to share yourself,
listen patiently, and ask the students themselves for
help.
Developing/Maintaining Effective
Mentoring
• Write your own mentoring philosophy
• Review your mentoring philosophy
periodically to assess implementation
• Share practices/experiences with
colleagues (support group)
• Learn from your Mentor
• Use Resources/Materials/Tools
• Elicit Student Feedback/Assessment
Source
Handelsman, J., Fund, C., Lauffer, S., &
Pribbenow, C. (2005). Entering mentoring.
The Wisconsin Program for Scientific
Teaching.
For PDF version of this book, go to
www.hhmi.org/grants/pdf/labmanagement/entering_mentoring.pdf