Last week we started the 10th semester of a grad/undergrad #mentoring program I’ve been leading for the past 5 yrs. We pair students w a mentor/mentee and run events to support those relationships. It’s community building 2 ppl at the time. Our membership nears double digits /1
I talk about mentoring all the time and launching into my last semester with this group has me reflecting on why it has become so important to me /2
What I am realizing is that so many problems in academia that get roughly filed under ‘we need to improve culture’ could be addressed by talking about mentoring more and more intentionally /3
How can we make sure that URMs have encouraging role models? Give them mentors with similar lived experiences and backgrounds /4
How can we make sure that URMs and first gen students get filled in on the ‘hidden curriculum’? Give them mentors who know it already /5
How can we make young scientists less scared of failure? Give them someone to talk to who doesn’t appear to be able to punish them i.e. a mentor /6
Academic advising structure could benefit tremendously if faculty members were trained to be members instead of just having students thrown at them after they’re hired as researchers /7
Teachers, instructors and lecturers could be more effective if part of their training was about mentoring which is more like teaching people and not teaching a subject, and more like investing in students’ human potential and not their academic performance /8
The word mentor gets thrown around a lot but rarely does it feel like academics spend much time on critically thinking about what it means to be a mentor and how one can work on being that /9
And beyond formal mentoring relationships that are luckily becoming more of a staple, I am starting to realize that informal mentoring is crucial too /10
As I 've gotten older more and more of younger grad students have been reaching out to me, wanting to talk research or organizing over coffee. Even if we are friends, we are still building an informal professional mentoring network by having these conversations /11
It boosts everyone’s confidence and makes us feel more in community with each other. This is where culture change admins always talk about starts /12
In this sense you can lowkey mentor someone by just checking-in on them when you pass them in the hallway instead of only ever extending an awkward wave. Folks want to know they're being though off. Mentoring and community care are very much interwoven /13
As my defense is creeping up I'm also realizing I need to do this more. Someone I look up to suggested it & I was struck by how after yrs of talking abt mentoring I didn’t rly think abt trying to build my network, just bc the more formal channels have been suboptimal /14
The point is, with or without a title, everyone can be both a mentor and a mentee and we should think of ourselves in that way /15
As mentors we should be kind and empathetic to our peers and colleagues and should strive to be a role model as scientists and people /16
As mentees we should be brave enough to ask questions and humble enough to listen to other opinions and advice /17
I’m trying to work out what is next for me v hard and it's v scary to not have a fixed plan for the future but I want to take this mentality with me /18
Not every department or workspace is like my current situation where a mentoring program can just take off and be built entirely from scratch. But the ideas that let the leadership team I’ve been proud to be a part of are most certainly universally transferable /19
