Compiled by the Graduate School Mentoring Committee: Tarek Fadel (Ph.D. candidate, Engineering), Stephen Gosden (Ph.D. candidate, Music), Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (Professor of Psychology), Peter Parker (Professor of Physics), Florian Ploeckl (Ph.D. candidate, Economics), Julia Prest (Associate Professor of French), Mark Schlesinger (Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health), Brian Scholl (Associate Professor of Psychology), Bobbi Sutherland (Ph.D. candidate, Medieval Studies), Laura Thomas (Ph.D. candidate, Chemistry).

June, 2008

Mentoring is difficult to define, although everyone has some sense of what it is. We have all been part of mentoring relationships, yet however formative these personal experiences - whether good or bad - it is essential to recognize that they may, in themselves, insufficient to ensure robust mentoring relationships at Yale. Too many of us have never experienced good mentoring and too many who have may still fail to recognize that what worked well for us might be ineffective for others. Too many graduate students at Yale have gone too long without reliable mentorship; we cannot simply assume that individual experiences will necessarily translate into institutional norms and practices in the absence of more thoughtful consideration and concerted attention.

Mentoring is often described as an individualized relationship between graduate students and faculty members that involves both caring and guidance. As such (and as recognized by the Council of Graduate Schools) mentoring involves a variety of roles: being a sponsor, a confidant, a tutor, a patron, a guide, a role-model and in some sense a parent. For each of these roles, there are complex and often ill-defined norms of connectedness. In shaping our conceptions of appropriate mentoring, we often fall back on our understandings of these more familiar roles - as parents, as older siblings, as frontier scouts, as masters of a craft. These roles and accompanying norms evoke powerful archetypes, laden with expectations and emotional overtones.

There is no single best way to balance these varied expectations. Mentoring needs can differ from division to division and department to department; every mentor has his or her own personal style, and there is more than one way to be a good mentor. Mentoring is a dynamic process. It can take many forms and involve a variety of different people. It will also change over time and in different circumstances. Dissertation advisors will likely be important mentors for graduate students, but not the only ones - older students and post-docs, other committee members, faculty members from other departments or even other institutions, the DGS, and teaching supervisors might all play a role in mentoring a student. Nor is the mentoring process fully dependent on the mentor: the mentee also impacts the nature and success of a mentoring relationship.

For these reasons, a commitment to effective mentoring depends upon a willingness to see mentoring as a dynamic process, oriented to developing a set of shared expectations - a process that requires an ongoing conversation about mentoring, within advisee-advisor relationships, between grad students and other faculty, among the grad students themselves and within each department as a whole. In this document, we explore some parameters of what these conversations might cover.

The Multiplicity of Mentoring

As has been amply demonstrated for parenting (an apt metaphor for mentoring), although mentoring can be a dyadic relationship, it is often richer and more resilient if the responsibility is shared across two or more individuals, including in this case intellectual “siblings.” The advantages of collective mentoring accrue not simply to the mentored, but also to the mentors. It is also important to remember that students, as human beings, have a wide variety of needs: intellectual, emotional, social, and so on. A good mentor must be aware of these various needs, but no one person can be a perfect guide in all of these areas. Finally, spreading the responsibility across many people provides a variety of needed perspectives and creates a built-in safety net in case something goes wrong.

• Students need mentors in different areas, aspects of research, career paths, lifestyles.
• A student's dissertation advisor may not be his or her teaching mentor.
• If a student chooses not to enter the academy, his or her advisor may not be the best role model for a future career.
• A student may seek a mentor who shares his or her upbringing, gender, socio-economic background, ethnicity or religion. A student who is a parent may seek guidance from a faculty member who has children.
• A student may find one mentor better at giving constructive criticism, another better at providing encouragement.
• Having mentors in different positions and stages of their careers offers a wide and valuable variety of perspectives. Department chairs, DGSs, senior faculty, junior faculty, post-docs and older graduate students can provide very different views on a range of intellectual and personal matters.
• One important aspect of mentoring is to teach, or be a role-model for how to be an effective mentor. When "older siblings" (advanced grad students, post-docs) take part in the mentoring role, they practice these skills in a mentored setting.
• If a student's advisor should leave the university for some reason, he or she will find support and possibly a new advisor from among his or her established network of mentors.
• If problems arise with the primary academic advisor, the student will have someone else to approach for intervention or to serve as a new advisor.
• Mentoring relationships will evolve over time as a student's needs change with age, with experience, with place in the graduate school process, and even over the course of a specific project.

Awareness

For the mentor:

• Mentors should be aware that every student will have different needs and goals. Some students will be more independent than others, and some will need more attention. Some students will be looking for guidance primarily with regard to their professional development others with regard to their personal development as well. Some students will have only one mentor, and others will have several, each playing a different role. It is important to know what each individual student expects to get out of the mentoring relationship.
• Mentors should also be aware that students' needs and goals will depend a great deal on where they are in their graduate-school career. In a long-term mentoring relationship, it is necessary to recognize how these needs and goals are changing over time and to adjust one's mentoring style accordingly.
• Mentors should be aware of how students perceive their mentoring of others. It is important that no one feel either neglected or singled out.

For the student:

• Students should be aware that every mentor will have a different mentoring style. Some will want to involve themselves more directly in their students' work, and others will take a more hands-off approach. Some will prefer a more formal relationship, and others a more casual one. This will depend a great deal on the individual personality of the mentor. (After all, mentors are people too.)
• Students should be aware that their mentor may adapt his/her mentoring style as the relationship progresses. For example, don't be surprised if your mentor wants you to cultivate a greater sense of independence as you approach graduation.
• Students should be aware that if their mentors are mentoring multiple students, the mentor may tailor his/her mentoring style to the perceived needs of each individual. Giving extra attention to certain students at a particular time or for a particular reason does not necessarily signal favoritism or neglect.

Self-Awareness

For the mentor:

There are a variety of valid approaches to mentoring. No one way is necessarily better than all the others, but it is important to think about what approach works best for you as an individual. Every faculty member is a mentor, and although mentoring is greatly rewarding, it is also a complex and challenging relationship. It is important that you are prepared to handle this situation. Some things to consider:

• What have your previous mentoring experiences been like, both as a mentor and as a mentee? What worked well for you; what would you have done differently?
• What kind of mentoring style works best for you? Are you more hands-on or hands-off? Do you prefer a more formal or informal relationship with your students? Do you see yourself as quite strict? Do you see yourself as nurturing?
• How flexible are you? How easily can you adapt your mentoring style to the individual needs of different students?
• Do you think of yourself specifically as an academic mentor or as a mentor in a broader sense? In other words, how comfortable are you with being involved in your students' personal lives?
• What are your priorities? What do you expect the student to get out of the mentoring relationship, and what do you expect to get out of the mentoring relationship for yourself?
• Are there certain things that you will require of your students in order for the relationship to work? Are these expectations reasonable?
• What are your limits? How much time and energy are you willing to commit to being a mentor?

For the student:

Every student will have different reasons for entering into a mentoring relationship. Here are some questions to ask yourself beforehand:

• What kind of mentor do you need? Do you need someone who will give you deadlines and lots of advice, or do you need someone who will wait for you to take the initiative?
• How involved do you want your mentor to be in your life? Would you be more comfortable with someone who limits guidance to academic matters, or would you prefer someone who takes an interest in your personal life?
• What kind of personality would you be most compatible with? Do you want a mentor who is just like you, or do you want someone who is a bit different? Are there any kinds of personalities that you simply wouldn't be able to get along with? Is it important to you that your mentor is someone that you could be friends with, or is sufficient simply to get along professionally?
• In what areas do you need mentoring? Are you looking for a research mentor, a teaching mentor, or something else?
• What are your goals, both short-term and long-term? Bear in mind that if you don't know what they are, then your mentor probably won't either. Additionally, it is important to find a mentor who will be supportive whatever your goals are.

Communication

Communication is key in all relationships and the mentoring relationship is no exception. The mentor and mentee must both make their expectations, needs, and limitations known. Sometimes conversations are awkward, but that is still preferable to the problems that arise through lack of communication.

For the mentor:

• Ideally, the mentor should initiate communication with the student, since the power differential may make a student hesitant to approach a faculty member.
• You should make you mentoring style and goals clear from the beginning. You should tell the student if you are hands-off or hands-on, communicate your personal boundaries, let the student know whether or not you are willing to discuss personal issues. Be honest. Describe what sort of mentor you are not what sort of mentor you think you're supposed to be.
• Never fear that you are insulting the intelligence of the mentee or assume that something "goes without saying." No one has ever complained that something was too clear.
• Make absolutely certain that all academic requirements and expectations are very clearly stated from the beginning. The department can be a great help in this matter by making sure that this information is available (preferably in written form) to both students and faculty and ensuring that written versions and online versions say the same thing and are updated regularly.
• In the mentor/mentee relationship confidentiality and trust are of extreme importance. A student should be able to express concerns to a mentor without fear of these statements being repeated to other members of the faculty.
• Nonetheless, it is often advisable for mentors to communicate discreetly about a shared mentee. If the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, serious conflicts can arise that cause unnecessary stress for the student. Don't just assume that everyone is in agreement. It's all right for mentors to disagree, and when they do, they should not pretend to agree for the sake of appearances.
• Give honest, concrete constructive criticism in a timely fashion. It is far better for a student to hear that there are problems when there is still time to fix them.
• Make sure criticism is concrete so that the mentee knows how to address the problem.
• Give encouragement and positive feedback. Graduate students crave praise as much as anyone else. When students do something well: please tell them! Never give false praise, but give praise when it is merited. If you genuinely cannot praise a student for anything, then that might be an indication of a very serious problem. Also, encouragement, eg. “I know you can do it” is also more helpful than many mentors realize.

For the student:

• Students should not be afraid to approach a potential mentor. It often works well to initiate the conversation over a specific question or set of questions.
• The mentee should also be honest about his or her needs. The student should explain whether or not he or she prefers a hands-on or hands-off approach; how often he or she hopes to meet; whether or not he or she needs regular positive reinforcement. On both sides, the expectations should be clear and explicit.
• Acknowledge feedback you receive, especially when it is sent over e-mail or left in hard copy someplace.

Role-Modeling

While explicit communication is extremely important, a fundamental aspect of how students learn is through observation. Mentors, you should remember that students don't simply do as you say; often they do as you do. In certain ways, all faculty members are role models. Taking a moment to reflect on what it means to be a role-model is a step toward good mentoring.

• You are mentoring future mentors. Your mentees develop their own mentoring styles in part by emulating you.
• Your mentors were your role-models. How has that affected you as a mentor? How are you similar? How are you different? You are part of the cycle. Continue it, if it's a good one; break it, if it's a bad one.You do not have to be just like your own mentors, but the first step toward being different is stopping to assess how they have influenced you.
• Try to avoid holding your students to standards that you yourself do not keep, unless you explicitly explain that you are doing this and why. For example, if you are notorious for taking a long time to get things done and are always submitting articles late, do not make stringent deadlines for your students. But if missing deadlines has caused serious problems to your career, then say so and explain why.
• If you speak critically of your colleagues, don't be surprised when your mentees do the same thing.
• Show students how to make the best us of their time. How do you use your time each day? On a particular project? In life? In your career? If the student only sees the finished product, he or she will have no idea how to get there.
• Graduate school is like being in a dark room full of furniture. Many people have already gone through it and know where things are. The mentor's job is to tell the mentee where things are, or better still, to turn on the light.
• In this way, a mentor is like a scout. He or she has experience and can see what sorts of problems a student is likely to encounter in a project and show the way.

Conclusion

The variety of roles in mentoring make this a rich and complex relationship. For that relationship to be rewarding, it is important that its parameters be discussed with care, and reconsidered periodically over the course of each graduate student's time in his or her program. We have itemized here four broad domains of conversation, distinguishing between the expectations and obligations entailed for both parties in this relationship. Although implicit here, it's equally important to recognize that these expectations for mentors extrapolate to a need for a collective conversation among faculty members, post-docs and older graduate students. So too, the expectations for mentees should be seen to entail a collective norm in which graduate students discuss mentoring with their peers, learning from experiences both within their own department and in others, about what might be reasonably expected for their mentoring experiences.