October 29, 2009, 01:37 PM ET

Any Mentor Manifestoes Out There?

What are "best practices" when it comes to student mentoring? How can we distinguish good models from bad ones?

I've been thinking about this quite a lot lately, and not just because of my post as associate dean of undergraduate studies in the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. Before coming to Penn, I taught at Duke University for four years and spent three of them living in a dormitory with first-year undergraduate students. The students inspired me far more often than their periodic displays of youthful recklessness made me frustrated and disheartened, and most of the Duke students I keep in contact with now were people I first met in Giles Dorm.

I haven't been teaching nearly long enough to have a Mr. Holland's Opus-type moment yet: the realization that one might impact a student in seemingly small and imperceptible ways that (by their own attribution) decidedly help to catapult them to success after they leave school. But I do keep up with quite a few of my former Duke students. Many of them are working in rewarding jobs all around the world, making tons of money, devoting their time to relatively resource-poor NGO's, and/or just continuing to find their way. Some are in law, medical, or graduate school already, others are just starting to apply. I try to keep writing reference letters (and just checking in with them) as much as I can.

Of course, after three-plus years at Penn, I have been touched by some equally memorable students here, and I have been trying to ask myself how I can be most helpful to them, especially in the context of an academic lifestyle that can already feel so overburdened and hectic.

I try to remind myself that students need individualized attention -- and that that isn't "extra" or outside of an academic's job description. Even in the throes of research, we have a responsibility to engage students where they are and to help them get where we think they need to be. And we do this on top of our own research, which is obviously important to many us. But might things have to be more either/or?

When I wrote my second book, I got up (in that Duke dorm) every morning at 5 a.m. (sometimes 4 a.m.) just to make sure that I was able to get three or four good hours of writing in before the rest of my day got started. I didn't check e-mail. I didn't deal with administrative duties. I didn't prep for class. All the rest came after 9 a.m.

I decided on that schedule (which was hell for someone who had previously considered himself a bit of a night owl) because I started to realize that without logging some hours on my book before the day got going, I spent much of my mornings and afternoons anxious about how much time would slip away before I could get to my writing.

I also started to resent my students. They were taking me away from my work. They were too needy. Too draining. Too much of a distraction. I felt guilty about approaching the teacher-student exchange with such annoyance and exasperation, but I couldn't help it. I had to get my book done.

Once I changed my schedule and started writing before the day began, I could exhale and just enjoy the unexpected demands of the day, knowing that no matter what else happened, I'd already moved my project a bit forward in the wee hours of that morning. If I got more time to write later on, great! That was gravy. But I made sure to take care of my "work" early.

That was a bit of a sacrifice, but it was worth it. I was able to engage my students much more substantively (without rushing them out of my office so that I could get back to my computer). I wanted to be a productive mentor, which meant listening to students without too many unspoken distractions.

But what strategies do other folks use to juggle the needs of their students with all the other demands on a faculty member's time? As someone in the throes of starting to craft book No. 4, some good advice might be in order. 4 a.m. seems much more daunting these days.

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Comments

1. suomynona - October 29, 2009 at 10:36 pm

Prof. Jackson,

As a grad. student I really admire the generous mentors (they all know who they are) who aren't too important in their own heads to make spending time on students a central part of their job rather than an activity that's done in between other demands. I already find myself cutting into my own research time (in grad. school) to read PhD application materials for friends and MA students, to find current and relevant articles for my undergraduate students, and to answer questions for new doctoral students in my department. I know there are other grad. students out there, my competition, who are dedicating this kind of time to their own research and sticking to the narrative of the wholly pre-professionalized junior academic. Maybe the great irony will be that these people end up with one more publication and will get hired before me; but consider me naive: I want to be as generous with my time in all stages of my career as people have been with me. I understand enough of how the job market works; but think that tight competition, egos and insecurity, and a number of seemingly insurmountable institutional pressures have caused many of us to lose sight of the point of such a thing as a university. As I wrote in response to your last post, I already know that most people won't care about or read my researh, even if it's published at an elite UP and draped in awards. The first step toward good mentoring, in my view, is an understanding of academic institutions as places of teaching and learning, and not just research or degree mills.

2. goxewu - October 31, 2009 at 08:56 am

Wait a minute. There's an "associate dean" for just "undergraduate studies" in just one school (and the middleweight one of "communications," at that) at Penn? Prof. Jackson is hereby enjoined from ever, ever complaining in the slightest about the problem of administrative top-heaviness in higher education.

3. vfichera - October 31, 2009 at 10:30 am

Not to jump on "goxewu"'s bandwagon but these are a few of the sentences which cause students' parents to tear their hair out:

"I also started to resent my students. They were taking me away from my work. They were too needy. Too draining. Too much of a distraction. I felt guilty about approaching the teacher-student exchange with such annoyance and exasperation, but I couldn't help it. I had to get my book done."

This is indeed an all-too-frequent mindset among the tenured professoriate. Never mind that the institution would not have the fair use exemptions, the non-profit status, the grants, etc. to support such research if it were not teaching students. Indeed, copyright law has permitted the prosecution of researchers in industry for photocopying articles, etc. whereas faculty access through their status as faculty engaged in face-to-face instruction(i.e., first and foremost teachers) relieves them of those costs and prosecutions. Etc., etc., and so forth.

"I have been touched by some equally memorable students here, and I have been trying to ask myself how I can be most helpful to them, especially in the context of an academic lifestyle that can already feel so overburdened and hectic."

A little bit of "Prairie Home Companion" would be useful here or a touch of Jaime Escalante ("Stand and Deliver") -- all of the students are potentially memorable. Mentoring is not about just helping the "memorable" to achieve greater heights of success but of unfolding the talents of all of the students, of touching those who feel out-of-touch, of being a true advisor instead of having "professional advisors" for students to "relieve the faculty of that burden."

The corporatization of the university has indeed been achieved by proliferating administrations which have, with the consent of the tenured faculty, eroded the traditional roles of faculty into bits and pieces which are "adjuncted-out" to the point where undergraduates are even paying tuition to teach and advise themselves, as "undergraduate TAs" and "peer-mentors" -- often for academic credit.

Mentoring starts with faculty's acceptance and faithfulness to the full panoply of teaching and governance responsibilities, not just research. As the tenured faculty participate in the unraveling of their own duties and responsibilities onto more "manageable" personnel, they are "enabling" nothing less than the transformative unraveling of the idea of the university itself.

4. selenology - November 02, 2009 at 11:14 am

When I was an undergrad, about twelve years ago, I had very ineffective advisors. Of course I sought out other faculty who I felt more drawn to; but they weren't assigned to advisory duties (or at least, not to me), so their time was limited. It was an unfortunate situation for me. I was a first-generation college student, so I had no family members to advise me when the college failed to step up. As a result, I unnecessarily took classes (outside my major) that I hated, floundered in emotional/intellectual morasses such as deconstructionist theory, and worst of all, didn't realize until years later that I should have sacrificed all to get one of those unpaid summer internships that would have led to a JOB.

Good advisors are not just a pleasant extra on the university experience. They are often crucial to the success (or otherwise) of students, especially students whose demographic data falls outside the upper-middle-class, white norm.