If you are a professor working at a liberal arts college or university, or hoping to be hired by an institution of higher learning in this capacity, you are expected to conduct research and have it published in respectable, preferably peer-reviewed outlets.
By the same token, you may also care deeply about your neighborhood, city or society including the wellbeing of the people and most creatures that live and work there. Thus when you believe that these entities are threatened you may participate politically by signing a petition, donating money to an important cause, joining a group advocating or fighting for social or policy change, marching in a demonstrations, giving speeches, etc.. Most of the time the choice of how to best assist the cause/s you believe in is not clear, especially how much and what types of resources (especially how much time) you should devote to them.
Naturally, the perennial challenges that many instructors and professors who are in this situation face, are balancing the competing demands among your numerous obligations, including the ones that you experience in your role as a researcher or activist.
You may see these two interests or roles as competing. In other words, the more you spend on one activity, the less you can spend on the other. Or you may flirt with, embrace, or master one of the two roles (i.e., activist versus scholar or vice versa).
How might this happen? You may identify more with one role over the other depending on the degree to which you agree with the activists and scholars you encounter, the messages they advance, how much fun or aggravation you experience with each respective crowd, and the time you spend working together in pursuit of the same shared goal. Thus, you may be subject to a push-pull dynamic where you deepen your commitment to one network of individuals over the other.
Much harder, however, is trying to combine both roles (activist and scholar) as part of the things you do and as part of your identity. Many instructors and professors have a healthy relationship between their scholarship and activism. Although some people may question whether writing the occasional op-ed is activism, many professors frequently say that one type of activity feeds off of the other, including that both their scholarship and their teaching is activism. For example, by working for or with a group that attempts to deal with food insecurity may generate research ideas for a new paper that a professor might start. Or fighting for racial justice may expose an instructor to legal cases that they never considered before and are worth writing about in an academic context. For some professors, they may even be able to get their scholarly research into the hands of policy makers or leaders of organizations that can effect legislative change.
But there is also the dilemma of spending too much time on traditional kinds of activism and this ultimately takes away from your scholarship. Where might your activism negatively affect you? Engaging in activism has derailed many an instructor and professor, not just in the liberal arts, but those who in programs in medicine, law, or tech. Yes they may get approval from fellow activists, students they teach, and even professors and administrators in their program or universities. But they still have to deal with the numerous deadlines bearing down on them (e.g., papers and exams to grade, papers to write, etc.). If you are an adjunct instructor vying for a position in an academic department (that values scholarly research) if you have not done a sufficient amount/type of research, no amount of activism will help you be hired. Finally, if you are a tenure track professor, when it’s time for the decision for tenure and promotion to come around, no matter how much your colleagues agree with your activism, they will typically not cut you slack and give you a pass because you failed to meet some organizational mandated standard of research productivity.
Granted, as you career progresses, as you move up through the ranks (including securing tenure), you may believe that you have more time and freedom to engage in activism, but there may also be new things that you have to consider. These may include different and additional pressures on your time (e.g., building a family, etc.), mentoring students, supervising graduate students, university service requirements, etc. If your activism negatively affects your ability to do your job, and results in possible job loss, or even incarceration this can have very real negative effects. Thus activism may end up taking a back seat. In short, and moving forward it’s important to do a good job estimating the costs and benefits (both pecuniary and emotional), and carefully engage where you believe that your efforts can make the most amount of difference.
Photo Credit
Photographer: Hernán Piñera
Title: Protest march
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/16274551675_bb1d8bb9cf_o-scaled.jpg14402560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-11-04 15:19:002022-12-15 12:19:40Balancing scholarship with activism for professors working at liberal arts colleges and universities
On the other hand, for one reason or another, after entering a graduate program, and getting the lay of the land, you discover much to your chagrin, that it’s incredibly difficult to find and retain an appropriate mentor.
This could be the result of a number of factors. These include, but are not limited to:
• No one in the department is really interested in the subject that you are passionate about;
• Over time your interests change and the question that you want to answer is not covered by anyone in your department;
• You have difficulties working with the person who is the recognized expert in your program;
• Or you are or may be perceived to be a pain in the ass, and all the professors seem to want to limit their interactions with you.
Alternatively, you may find yourself in a situation where your mentor:
• Goes on sabbatical and becomes incommunicado potentially because of the nature of their research (i.e., studying remote villagers in the Kalahari Desert).
• They have health issues that force them to cut back on graduate student supervision responsibilities;
• They go off the deep end (i.e., suffer a mental breakdown);
• They move to a different university, and are unwilling or unable to properly supervise you;
• Or in the worst case situation, they die.
Keep in mind that your situation is not uncommon, and each of these scenarios presents different challenges and have alternative implications for graduate students.
But sooner or later you are going to probably start asking yourself a bunch of questions:
• Should I switch topics or take a semester off?
• Do I remain in this department?
• Can I switch to a different department at the same University?
• Can I quit my current department and go somewhere else to pursue my graduate studies?
• Do I abandon my graduate studies?
These questions are not easily answered. Some of them questions and the decision/s you ultimately make will be bounded by how advanced you in your program. But here are some quick thoughts to consider. Before you talk to your departmental director of graduate studies, here are some options to consider.
1. Consider a marriage of convenience
If you have not completely burned your bridges in your department, then maybe by switching topics, or with some minimal tweaks to your original idea, you might be able to work with one or more of the professors in your program. Maybe what they specialize in is also interesting so it’s not so difficult a switch for you. After all its important as a scholar to have a handful of interests and not be a one trick pony.
2. Stay at the same university but switching departments
Sometimes graduate students may be lucky enough to identify a potential mentor in a different department at the same university in which they are enrolled, and both the mentor and the department or program in which study is willing to accept this arrangement. In this scenario you will not lose any or many of the credit hours that you have already completed in order to graduate. Then again, there is no guarantee that some of the more challenging mentor-mentee issues won’t occur again with you.
3. Use proxies
Sometimes you can find an appropriate graduate school mentor in a different department at your university or another one, they can effectively supervise your studies, and serve as an external on your dissertation. In this unusual situation the chair of your dissertation serves as a kind of figure head but the substantive heavy lifting is done by the outside person. This option depends on the willingness of the new mentor and your current department, past practices, norms and policies in existence. Searching for the best external mentor will require you to use many of the same basic strategies regarding securing an appropriate mentor before entering your existing university. Just like dating, professors in other departments or at other universities may either empathize with you or see you as damaged goods, and may be appropriately reluctant to mentor or supervise students from another department or university. They want to know how come you can’t find somebody appropriate in your own department or university to provide adequate supervision. And you better be able to explain why you need to jump ship. This situation is not ideal, but it is workable.
4. Engaging in deeper self-reflection
If you honestly believe that the bottom dropped out of your accent to the highest pinnacles of academia, ask yourself if there was something that you said or did to alienate the mentor in your program. If so, then you need to do a lot of self-reflection and ask yourself exactly what you did, and make a pact with yourself not to do it again
CONCLUSION
Depending on the unique situation in which you find yourself, some professors and administrators in your current department may interpret your situation as a wakeup call to hire one of more people that share your interests. Alternatively, it may force the leadership to develop more concrete policies and practices if they encounter similar situations with graduate students.. It may also motivate the admissions people to do a better job screening graduate school applicants and only offer candidates’ positions if there is a great match between the graduate school candidate and potential mentor.
Keep in mind that potential mentors are not under any obligation to take you on as a student and thus you have to do a good job convincing them that you are the perfect student to devote time and energy into training. And that mentees, as much as mentors, need to share the responsibility of maintaining the relationship so that it is beneficial to both parties.
Photo Credit
Aki Mykkänen
Pondering
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/48923162696_da58b763c1_o-scaled.jpg11002560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-10-28 16:43:272021-11-12 15:51:45“Should I stay or should I go?” What happens if you can’t find or retain an appropriate graduate school mentor in your department?
If you are or were a graduate student, you may know or learned that your studies and career in academia would be best supported by an appropriate mentor. Ideally, this individual is a professor in the department and university in which you have enrolled to pursue your graduate school studies, and this particular scenario will form the basis of the balance of this discussion.
Before considering the kinds of assistance mentors can provide, let’s start with the things they are not supposed be or do. To begin with, mentors are not intended to be to your dog sitter, drinking partner, friend, landlord, romantic or sexual partner, or therapist. Conflating these roles with that of mentor-mentee can lead to unnecessary confusion, exploitation, and abuse, all situations which are best to be avoided. Also, simply writing letters of recommendation, agreeing to chair or be on masters or doctoral dissertation, etc. is not in and of itself mentoring.
How can a graduate school mentor assist graduate student?
These individuals can assist their students in a number of critical areas including:
• Getting into the graduate program where they work
• Co-authoring papers with them
• Co-presenting papers at scholarly conferences
• Guiding them through the publishing process
• Helping them to clarify both term paper and dissertation questions and topics.
• Assisting graduate students in choosing non required classes.
• Assisting students choose suitable people to be on their dissertation committee and negotiate the informal dynamics of committee processes
• Assisting them in securing funding (including identifying appropriate funding sources and assisting with the application
process)
• Helping them find gainful employment in the field and sometimes outside of the field
In short, graduate mentors need to take an active role in your education, training and career, and do this in a professional manner. The fact that grad school mentors don’t know all the intricate organizational policies and practices is not the standard to evaluate them. Follow through, sound advice, good communication skills, and the identification or creation of opportunities, are the criteria with which to best judge them.
Searching for the ideal graduate mentor
Often the search for an appropriate mentor starts, and is easier before students enter a graduate program. Sometimes this is a relatively easy process, but most of the time it is a labor intensive and frustrating experience.
Some academics find prospective and actual students, regardless of the stage of their academic careers, to be an unnecessary nuisance that just waste their time. Thus, a handful of professors do not answer e-mails or phone calls from prospective or actual graduate students.
If you manage to make contact with a professor that works in a subject area that appeals to you, and who is interested in considering you as their mentee, the next step is to attempt to build a relationship. It is a complex dance, where adept parties pay close attention to subtle cues concerning authenticity, depth of commitment, interest, etc. In order to demonstrate interest it is important to read almost everything they have written, in particular the more recent things, attend talks they give, ask for feedback on papers or paper talks, ask to work with them in some capacity on their research. One of the difficult choices for graduate students is should you pursue a mentor who is well respected in their field, but relatively unhelpful, or a scholar who you have a good bond with who may be more junior or not that knowledgeable about your specific field?
Alternatively, graduate programs may automatically assign students an advisor, with the hope that this relationship may evolve into a mentor-mentee relationship. Many times these arrangements are very fruitful. The advisor knows all (or most) of the department, graduate school, and university policies and all or most of the important players and helps you to navigate the complex rules, regulations, and norms of the organization and the profession.
On the other hand, many of the advisor-grad student relationships are like marriages of convenience. They may last one or two semesters, but it’s clear that there was a mismatch between them, and both parties go their separate ways. Plus over time, the graduate student is no longer a rookie, and they may have a better idea about their preferred subject area of focus, ideal methodology, and maybe even a specific subject for their thesis or dissertation. Thus an internal shopping trip begins with the student looking for an appropriate in house professor in their department.
Some departments have well thought out and implemented graduate student mentoring programs. The professors meet with the students on a regular basis (e.g., once a week) and socialize them into the norms of a graduate career and the academic profession. In principle, mentoring graduate students is a part of the professor’s job. So students shouldn’t feel intimidated or nervous. I always feel so awkward because they’re so experienced and I don’t want to fuck up in something I say. But I think if you say- that they know you’re starting out and you can be candid about the state of your project or any insecurities you have with the direction you are going. This is a good thing.
The Challenge & Solutions
In a best case scenario prospective graduate students should start searching for a mentor before they apply to a particular department. Some times this can be an intimidating and frustrating experience.
In order to maximize your chances of finding a suitable academic mentor avoid showing up (or dropping in) at the prospective faculty member’s office unannounced, knowing very little about the scholarship that they do, and proclaim that you are looking for a mentor, or even blabber out “will you be my mentor?”
Instead, in your search for a perfect match do your due diligence. This includes:
• Speaking with current and former graduate students and asking them if they can recommend particular faculty members and
which ones to avoid. (And just like Yelp reviews, don’t take other students word as gospel about the reputation of a
professor).
• Reading as much as possible the scholarship produced by the prospective mentor, especially what they have done in recent years.
• Attending one or more academic conferences and observe your potential mentor in action.
• Determining if your potential graduate school mentor has other students.
If everything checks out, then it’s time to get in touch via e-mail, phone and/or if it makes sense arrange a face-to-face meeting.
In the context of the conversation determine:
• The types of research projects the professor is currently doing and hope to do over the next five years.
• What kinds of mentorship they have done with their previous graduate students including finding out where they are now. (Are they still in the program? Did they enter academia? Or are they in the private sector? And what institutions or organizations do they work at?)
• Would they mind if you reached out and spoke with them?
Conclusion
If you are lucky enough to find a good graduate school mentor there is a strong possibility that this relationship will extend past this stage of your career and they may become part of your academic network. This relationship can help both parties achieve their mutual goals in the profession. On the other hand, sometimes it is not possible to find a suitable mentor in your own department or university. This complicates things, but it is also a situation that with some skill can be navigated. Many of the strategies that were outlined above can also be applied to this slightly different challenge.
Photo credit: New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2021-10-21-at-12.36.18-AM.png143494Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-10-21 15:13:032022-10-02 12:30:16Won’t you be my mentor? Understanding the challenges of finding an appropriate graduate school mentor
Balancing scholarship with activism for professors working at liberal arts colleges and universities
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIf you are a professor working at a liberal arts college or university, or hoping to be hired by an institution of higher learning in this capacity, you are expected to conduct research and have it published in respectable, preferably peer-reviewed outlets.
Although some colleges and universities have higher expectations about the type and amount of scholarship you produce, and where it is published, research is necessary and often spelled out in your employment contract or your institutions’ guidelines for tenure and promotion.
By the same token, you may also care deeply about your neighborhood, city or society including the wellbeing of the people and most creatures that live and work there. Thus when you believe that these entities are threatened you may participate politically by signing a petition, donating money to an important cause, joining a group advocating or fighting for social or policy change, marching in a demonstrations, giving speeches, etc.. Most of the time the choice of how to best assist the cause/s you believe in is not clear, especially how much and what types of resources (especially how much time) you should devote to them.
Naturally, the perennial challenges that many instructors and professors who are in this situation face, are balancing the competing demands among your numerous obligations, including the ones that you experience in your role as a researcher or activist.
You may see these two interests or roles as competing. In other words, the more you spend on one activity, the less you can spend on the other. Or you may flirt with, embrace, or master one of the two roles (i.e., activist versus scholar or vice versa).
How might this happen? You may identify more with one role over the other depending on the degree to which you agree with the activists and scholars you encounter, the messages they advance, how much fun or aggravation you experience with each respective crowd, and the time you spend working together in pursuit of the same shared goal. Thus, you may be subject to a push-pull dynamic where you deepen your commitment to one network of individuals over the other.
Much harder, however, is trying to combine both roles (activist and scholar) as part of the things you do and as part of your identity. Many instructors and professors have a healthy relationship between their scholarship and activism. Although some people may question whether writing the occasional op-ed is activism, many professors frequently say that one type of activity feeds off of the other, including that both their scholarship and their teaching is activism. For example, by working for or with a group that attempts to deal with food insecurity may generate research ideas for a new paper that a professor might start. Or fighting for racial justice may expose an instructor to legal cases that they never considered before and are worth writing about in an academic context. For some professors, they may even be able to get their scholarly research into the hands of policy makers or leaders of organizations that can effect legislative change.
But there is also the dilemma of spending too much time on traditional kinds of activism and this ultimately takes away from your scholarship. Where might your activism negatively affect you? Engaging in activism has derailed many an instructor and professor, not just in the liberal arts, but those who in programs in medicine, law, or tech. Yes they may get approval from fellow activists, students they teach, and even professors and administrators in their program or universities. But they still have to deal with the numerous deadlines bearing down on them (e.g., papers and exams to grade, papers to write, etc.). If you are an adjunct instructor vying for a position in an academic department (that values scholarly research) if you have not done a sufficient amount/type of research, no amount of activism will help you be hired. Finally, if you are a tenure track professor, when it’s time for the decision for tenure and promotion to come around, no matter how much your colleagues agree with your activism, they will typically not cut you slack and give you a pass because you failed to meet some organizational mandated standard of research productivity.
Granted, as you career progresses, as you move up through the ranks (including securing tenure), you may believe that you have more time and freedom to engage in activism, but there may also be new things that you have to consider. These may include different and additional pressures on your time (e.g., building a family, etc.), mentoring students, supervising graduate students, university service requirements, etc. If your activism negatively affects your ability to do your job, and results in possible job loss, or even incarceration this can have very real negative effects. Thus activism may end up taking a back seat. In short, and moving forward it’s important to do a good job estimating the costs and benefits (both pecuniary and emotional), and carefully engage where you believe that your efforts can make the most amount of difference.
Photo Credit
Photographer: Hernán Piñera
Title: Protest march
“Should I stay or should I go?” What happens if you can’t find or retain an appropriate graduate school mentor in your department?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIn a perfect world you’ve done your due diligence, located an appropriate graduate mentor, (been accepted into a respectable program where they teach), and for the time being, your graduate school experience exceeds your expectations.
On the other hand, for one reason or another, after entering a graduate program, and getting the lay of the land, you discover much to your chagrin, that it’s incredibly difficult to find and retain an appropriate mentor.
This could be the result of a number of factors. These include, but are not limited to:
• No one in the department is really interested in the subject that you are passionate about;
• Over time your interests change and the question that you want to answer is not covered by anyone in your department;
• You have difficulties working with the person who is the recognized expert in your program;
• Or you are or may be perceived to be a pain in the ass, and all the professors seem to want to limit their interactions with you.
Alternatively, you may find yourself in a situation where your mentor:
• Goes on sabbatical and becomes incommunicado potentially because of the nature of their research (i.e., studying remote villagers in the Kalahari Desert).
• They have health issues that force them to cut back on graduate student supervision responsibilities;
• They go off the deep end (i.e., suffer a mental breakdown);
• They move to a different university, and are unwilling or unable to properly supervise you;
• Or in the worst case situation, they die.
Keep in mind that your situation is not uncommon, and each of these scenarios presents different challenges and have alternative implications for graduate students.
But sooner or later you are going to probably start asking yourself a bunch of questions:
• Should I switch topics or take a semester off?
• Do I remain in this department?
• Can I switch to a different department at the same University?
• Can I quit my current department and go somewhere else to pursue my graduate studies?
• Do I abandon my graduate studies?
These questions are not easily answered. Some of them questions and the decision/s you ultimately make will be bounded by how advanced you in your program. But here are some quick thoughts to consider. Before you talk to your departmental director of graduate studies, here are some options to consider.
1. Consider a marriage of convenience
If you have not completely burned your bridges in your department, then maybe by switching topics, or with some minimal tweaks to your original idea, you might be able to work with one or more of the professors in your program. Maybe what they specialize in is also interesting so it’s not so difficult a switch for you. After all its important as a scholar to have a handful of interests and not be a one trick pony.
2. Stay at the same university but switching departments
Sometimes graduate students may be lucky enough to identify a potential mentor in a different department at the same university in which they are enrolled, and both the mentor and the department or program in which study is willing to accept this arrangement. In this scenario you will not lose any or many of the credit hours that you have already completed in order to graduate. Then again, there is no guarantee that some of the more challenging mentor-mentee issues won’t occur again with you.
3. Use proxies
Sometimes you can find an appropriate graduate school mentor in a different department at your university or another one, they can effectively supervise your studies, and serve as an external on your dissertation. In this unusual situation the chair of your dissertation serves as a kind of figure head but the substantive heavy lifting is done by the outside person. This option depends on the willingness of the new mentor and your current department, past practices, norms and policies in existence. Searching for the best external mentor will require you to use many of the same basic strategies regarding securing an appropriate mentor before entering your existing university. Just like dating, professors in other departments or at other universities may either empathize with you or see you as damaged goods, and may be appropriately reluctant to mentor or supervise students from another department or university. They want to know how come you can’t find somebody appropriate in your own department or university to provide adequate supervision. And you better be able to explain why you need to jump ship. This situation is not ideal, but it is workable.
4. Engaging in deeper self-reflection
If you honestly believe that the bottom dropped out of your accent to the highest pinnacles of academia, ask yourself if there was something that you said or did to alienate the mentor in your program. If so, then you need to do a lot of self-reflection and ask yourself exactly what you did, and make a pact with yourself not to do it again
CONCLUSION
Depending on the unique situation in which you find yourself, some professors and administrators in your current department may interpret your situation as a wakeup call to hire one of more people that share your interests. Alternatively, it may force the leadership to develop more concrete policies and practices if they encounter similar situations with graduate students.. It may also motivate the admissions people to do a better job screening graduate school applicants and only offer candidates’ positions if there is a great match between the graduate school candidate and potential mentor.
Keep in mind that potential mentors are not under any obligation to take you on as a student and thus you have to do a good job convincing them that you are the perfect student to devote time and energy into training. And that mentees, as much as mentors, need to share the responsibility of maintaining the relationship so that it is beneficial to both parties.
Photo Credit
Aki Mykkänen
Pondering
Won’t you be my mentor? Understanding the challenges of finding an appropriate graduate school mentor
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIf you are or were a graduate student, you may know or learned that your studies and career in academia would be best supported by an appropriate mentor. Ideally, this individual is a professor in the department and university in which you have enrolled to pursue your graduate school studies, and this particular scenario will form the basis of the balance of this discussion.
Before considering the kinds of assistance mentors can provide, let’s start with the things they are not supposed be or do. To begin with, mentors are not intended to be to your dog sitter, drinking partner, friend, landlord, romantic or sexual partner, or therapist. Conflating these roles with that of mentor-mentee can lead to unnecessary confusion, exploitation, and abuse, all situations which are best to be avoided. Also, simply writing letters of recommendation, agreeing to chair or be on masters or doctoral dissertation, etc. is not in and of itself mentoring.
How can a graduate school mentor assist graduate student?
These individuals can assist their students in a number of critical areas including:
• Getting into the graduate program where they work
• Co-authoring papers with them
• Co-presenting papers at scholarly conferences
• Guiding them through the publishing process
• Helping them to clarify both term paper and dissertation questions and topics.
• Assisting graduate students in choosing non required classes.
• Assisting students choose suitable people to be on their dissertation committee and negotiate the informal dynamics of committee processes
• Assisting them in securing funding (including identifying appropriate funding sources and assisting with the application
process)
• Helping them find gainful employment in the field and sometimes outside of the field
In short, graduate mentors need to take an active role in your education, training and career, and do this in a professional manner. The fact that grad school mentors don’t know all the intricate organizational policies and practices is not the standard to evaluate them. Follow through, sound advice, good communication skills, and the identification or creation of opportunities, are the criteria with which to best judge them.
Searching for the ideal graduate mentor
Often the search for an appropriate mentor starts, and is easier before students enter a graduate program. Sometimes this is a relatively easy process, but most of the time it is a labor intensive and frustrating experience.
Some academics find prospective and actual students, regardless of the stage of their academic careers, to be an unnecessary nuisance that just waste their time. Thus, a handful of professors do not answer e-mails or phone calls from prospective or actual graduate students.
If you manage to make contact with a professor that works in a subject area that appeals to you, and who is interested in considering you as their mentee, the next step is to attempt to build a relationship. It is a complex dance, where adept parties pay close attention to subtle cues concerning authenticity, depth of commitment, interest, etc. In order to demonstrate interest it is important to read almost everything they have written, in particular the more recent things, attend talks they give, ask for feedback on papers or paper talks, ask to work with them in some capacity on their research. One of the difficult choices for graduate students is should you pursue a mentor who is well respected in their field, but relatively unhelpful, or a scholar who you have a good bond with who may be more junior or not that knowledgeable about your specific field?
Alternatively, graduate programs may automatically assign students an advisor, with the hope that this relationship may evolve into a mentor-mentee relationship. Many times these arrangements are very fruitful. The advisor knows all (or most) of the department, graduate school, and university policies and all or most of the important players and helps you to navigate the complex rules, regulations, and norms of the organization and the profession.
On the other hand, many of the advisor-grad student relationships are like marriages of convenience. They may last one or two semesters, but it’s clear that there was a mismatch between them, and both parties go their separate ways. Plus over time, the graduate student is no longer a rookie, and they may have a better idea about their preferred subject area of focus, ideal methodology, and maybe even a specific subject for their thesis or dissertation. Thus an internal shopping trip begins with the student looking for an appropriate in house professor in their department.
Here the size of department, in terms of number of faculty members, is an important factor. In principle, the bigger the academic department, the greater the diversity of specialization, the smaller the department the lower the chance a graduate student is going to find somebody who has the exact specific interests. And just because you find someone who has the same interests does not mean that there will be the necessary chemistry for you to succeed.
Some departments have well thought out and implemented graduate student mentoring programs. The professors meet with the students on a regular basis (e.g., once a week) and socialize them into the norms of a graduate career and the academic profession. In principle, mentoring graduate students is a part of the professor’s job. So students shouldn’t feel intimidated or nervous. I always feel so awkward because they’re so experienced and I don’t want to fuck up in something I say. But I think if you say- that they know you’re starting out and you can be candid about the state of your project or any insecurities you have with the direction you are going. This is a good thing.
The Challenge & Solutions
In a best case scenario prospective graduate students should start searching for a mentor before they apply to a particular department. Some times this can be an intimidating and frustrating experience.
In order to maximize your chances of finding a suitable academic mentor avoid showing up (or dropping in) at the prospective faculty member’s office unannounced, knowing very little about the scholarship that they do, and proclaim that you are looking for a mentor, or even blabber out “will you be my mentor?”
Instead, in your search for a perfect match do your due diligence. This includes:
• Speaking with current and former graduate students and asking them if they can recommend particular faculty members and
which ones to avoid. (And just like Yelp reviews, don’t take other students word as gospel about the reputation of a
professor).
• Reading as much as possible the scholarship produced by the prospective mentor, especially what they have done in recent years.
• Attending one or more academic conferences and observe your potential mentor in action.
• Determining if your potential graduate school mentor has other students.
If everything checks out, then it’s time to get in touch via e-mail, phone and/or if it makes sense arrange a face-to-face meeting.
In the context of the conversation determine:
• The types of research projects the professor is currently doing and hope to do over the next five years.
• What kinds of mentorship they have done with their previous graduate students including finding out where they are now. (Are they still in the program? Did they enter academia? Or are they in the private sector? And what institutions or organizations do they work at?)
• Would they mind if you reached out and spoke with them?
Conclusion
If you are lucky enough to find a good graduate school mentor there is a strong possibility that this relationship will extend past this stage of your career and they may become part of your academic network. This relationship can help both parties achieve their mutual goals in the profession. On the other hand, sometimes it is not possible to find a suitable mentor in your own department or university. This complicates things, but it is also a situation that with some skill can be navigated. Many of the strategies that were outlined above can also be applied to this slightly different challenge.
Photo credit: New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists