Being a Mentor for Students and Colleagues

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Being a Mentor for Students and Colleagues

• HBCU-UP LDI
• August 12, 2009

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Mentor

• Ancient Relationship
• Wise and Trusted Counselor by Homer
• Mentor Faculty Advisor
• What is a Mentor?

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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
  ones 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

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• Why Be a Good Mentor?

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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.

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• 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.

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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 Sharons. 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 didnt get any of his experiments to work, I
  began to wonder if he understood what we were
  doing or even cared about it.

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Undergraduate Student Perceptions

• If you were the undergraduate
• student, how would you feel?

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Undergraduate Student Perceptions

• Project choice showed favoritism
• Some projects are cool, others are not
• Some projects are not important to the labs
  larger goals
• Some projects are slower than others
• Sharons 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

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Faculty Perspective

• What would you do?
• What if the student doesnt like their project?
• What if the student develops a new project idea?

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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

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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?s Guide
  Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships.
  San Francisco, CA Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers.
  

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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

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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

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• 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

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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 students determination to
  succeed prevents him from quitting the program.

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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.

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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

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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_men
  toring.pdf