Later this week, ProfHacker begins a series of posts on the topic of mentoring. Mentoring is one of those vague and slippery terms: sometimes you know (good) mentoring when you see or experience it; sometimes you only figure it out in retrospect. Sometimes it becomes a buzzword or the focus of administrative structures; sometimes it represents authentic attempts to nurture and develop potential talent.
This series of posts grew out of some conversations among the ProfHacker contributing writers, who include people at many different levels of academe, and who as individuals have very different experiences with mentoring and being mentored. We hope to create a conversation here on the site that will not only recognize the significance of personal experience, but will also help create strategies, tools, and techniques for mentoring that will help enhance productivity and growth for all involved.
Some key questions we hope to address include:
- how might social media be used to create or improve mentoring relationships?
- what strategies and tools could enhance peer mentoring (among grad students or faculty)?
- what challenges and obstacles exist for formal mentoring programs for junior faculty?
- what strategies and tools could help faculty in mentoring grad or undergraduate students?
- how might technology be used to form mentoring communities for dissertation writing?
Please let us know in the comments if you have particular questions or topics you’d like to see addressed in this upcoming series.
(image by flickr user TeoJPG/CC licensed)
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7 Responses to The ProfHacker Series on Mentoring
Julie Platt - September 28, 2009 at 6:21 pm
What, exactly, does it mean to “be mentored” or to be a mentor?
The reason I ask is that I believe that I’ve been more or less “mentorless” for the larger potion of my graduate career, which has spanned three different programs at three different universities. All of the faculty whom I believed were supposed to mentor me ended up eventually cutting ties with me, with the university, or with the academy in general for various reasons before doing any meaningful work with me. I don’t say this to elicit sympathy from anyone; I say it because my experiences with mentoring have been so strange that I honestly don’t know what a mentor is supposed to do.
Knowing that I, myself, will one day likely be a faculty member called upon to “mentor” someone, I feel an urgent need to know what exactly mentoring is and what the expectations for mentoring are in the environments graduate students and faculty inhabit.
You know?
Leslie M-B - September 28, 2009 at 6:26 pm
My question: In a bad academic job market like this one, what responsibilities do graduate programs have in mentoring their students for jobs outside the classroom?
I’m thinking especially of humanities students, and particularly (as is my case) graduate students in, and graduates of, interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs. In competition for a tenure-track position in a traditional department, the interdisciplinary degree holder rarely wins out over a someone who has a Ph.D. in the discipline. What responsibilities do these interdisciplinary programs (and more traditional programs as well) have in preparing grad students for “alternative” careers?
George H. Williams - September 28, 2009 at 6:30 pm
What would it take for academic departments to encourage, recognize, and reward active mentoring instead of just assuming that it happens automatically?
Robin Miller - September 28, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I’m a graduate student in library and information science and my focus is on academic librarianship. Many librarians are actively engaged in social networking, and I think that social media could enhance mentorship relationships in my field. However, I’m ambivalent about the boundaries. Should mentors and mentees be friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader? In other words, should I get to know my mentor by incorporating him/her into my regular social media applications? Or, would it be more appropriate and productive for us to communicate in a single dedicated forum? What are the advantages to one scenario over the other? And which social media applications are promising forums for fostering strong mentorship relationships?
Laurie EC - September 29, 2009 at 9:08 am
I’m so glad this topic has been raised. I’ve just been appointed a “mentor” to a junior faculty member and would like some tips how to be a good resource for her. Also, even though I’m newly tenured, I still feel like I could use mentoring myself! It’s a new career stage, after all.
TeoJPG - September 29, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Glad to see that you used my photo here. If you do in the future, let me know, and I’ll link to it.
Jeff Lang - September 30, 2009 at 10:54 am
This is exactly what GradShare – http://www.gradshare.com – is about (Note, I’m the community manager at GradShare).
General social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter are great for keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, but they raise issues like whether to friend/follow your teachers, advisor, students. The signal to noise ratio can be high, plus you only have access to the people in your pre-formed groups.
GradShare lets grad students ask questions to peers from across the country. It’s also a great place for university faculty and staff because you can be a mentor and pick which questions you’re best equipped to answer.