Advising and Mentoring

Students in Research

Felix M. Mercado,PhD
DCAV Research and KM Institute
Enverga University
 Exercise
 Who helped you to have an Aha! Experience
that gives insight into yourself or a
circumstance…?

 Who said something or gave you a quote that

continues to influence your thinking or
behavior?

 Who helped you to uncover a part of yourself

that had lain dormant and unrecognized?
This person likely was a mentor to you!
 What is a Mentor?
 From Homer’s Odyssey
 Trusted friend of Odysseus
 Was really disguised goddess
Athena
 Helped run Odysseus’ household
 Advised son Telemachus when
Odysseus was wandering around
on the Odyssey…
 Definitions
 Mentor: a wise and trusted advisor; our
counselor – encourages human growth
 Mentoring: the transfer and transmission of
experience, viewpoints and expertise from one
person to another
 Generally touches personal and professional
life
 Helps the person to solve their problems or
attain their goals
 Can be one-time contact, or LT relationship,
formal or informal
 Who Can Be A Mentor?

 Someone who has successfully

been there, done that...
 Advising and Mentoring
• Advising is about helping students to
set and accomplish their own research
goals, drawing on your experience and
knowledge of the system.

• Mentoring is about helping students

and junior colleagues achieve success
in your research, drawing on yourself
as a model.
 Advisers vs Mentors
 An Adviser:
 Helps the student to acquire and develop the skills
needed by independent researchers in their scientific
field.
 Guides the student's research project by:
 Communicating effectively with the student
 Reviewing and providing regular feedback on the student's
progress
 Mentor is often interchanged with Adviser
 An Adviser is not always a mentor
 May not be personally involved.
 A “mentor” adviser is not necessarily the main mentor…
 A fundamental difference between
a mentor and an adviser is that
mentoring is more than advising;
mentoring is a personal as well as a
professional relationship. An adviser
might or might not be a mentor,
depending on the quality of the
relationship. . . Everyone benefits
from having multiple mentors of
diverse talents, ages, and
personalities.
 Teaching and Mentoring
 An important part of a professor’s life
 Teach undergraduate courses
 Mentor undergraduates
 Teach graduate courses
 Mentor graduates
 The best of times, the worst of times
Best of Times
 Play a part in improving someone’s life
 See them gain confidence
 See them grow intellectually and personally
 See them develop skills
 To do research
 Write papers
 Give presentations
 To have a successful career
 Worthwhile and rewarding endeavor
 Lifelong learning experience for you
 Worst of Times

 Advising/Mentoring is time consuming

 Assigning grades takes a lot of time
 Very important to the student
 Try to be fair and objective
 Unpleasant
 Dealing with students who are not serious about
research
 Dealing with students who just want to pass
 Dealing with cheating - plagiarism
 Dealing with excuses
 …
Mentoring Research Students
 Need a well-defined, limited research project
with easy to track milestones
 Should not be on the critical path
 Can pair ungrad(s) with a grad student
 Include ugrads in lab activities
 Meet regularly and lay out well defined goals
 Need to match project with student’s skills
 Often need to adjust on the fly
Mentoring Research Students
 Meet regularly
 Review accomplishments since the last meeting
 Encourage students to bring work products, to keep
an (electronic) notebook
 Provide feedback
 strengths and weaknesses
 Agree on what the student is expected to
accomplish next
 Let the student propose next steps
 Revise accordingly
 e.g., too ambitious, too limited, should pursue some

intermediate steps or totally new direction

 Discuss short term goals (e.g. next meeting)
 Review longer term, broader goals
 Reveal your thought processes
How to get students started
in doing research
 Push them off a cliff and see if they land
on their feet
 Teach them how to rappel first
 Start out with a “relatively” well defined task
 Discuss the problems that arise and encourage
them to think of solutions
 Help direct their search for solutions
 Revisit the task and view it from a larger
perspective, widen the problem and repeat
 Reveal your thought processes
 Discuss alternatives
 Explain choices
 Lead, collaborate, follow
Many topics to cover
 How to do research
 Different paradigms/designs
 How to review and evaluate the literature
 How to communicate with colleagues
 3 minute elevator talk, 10 minute version
 How to give a presentation
 Outline first
 Review slides
 Practice talk(s)
 How to write-up results for a paper
 Outline, outline, outline
And more topics
 What to publish and where
 How to obtain grants
 How to behave professionally
 How to extend research to the
community
 …
Not all under/graduate students are
diamonds in the rough

 Discuss the problem

 Consider different approaches
 Consider different research areas
 Put the student on a measured mile, with
clear objectives
 May help make it clear to you and to the student
that it is not working
 Or may energize the student to do better
 Perhaps the student is not a good match with
 your personality
 your research style or area
 or maybe the student should not do that research
Are You Ready to Mentor?
 Ready, willing and able to help another?
 Have appropriate background
 Credibility
 Solid, established background
 Required technical skills
 Respected for standards
 Emotionally/psychologically ready for
responsibility?
 Communicate high expectations/positive
 Is a good listener
 Is empathetic
 Time, freedom to commit?
 Important Characteristics in a
Mentor

 Active listening
 Coaching skills

 Effective confrontation techniques

 Conflict resolution
 How could my mentoring
improve?
 Choice of research topics/approaches: do you feel that I am too
directive? Not enough?
 Face-to-face interaction with students – right now I leave it to
the initiative of the student’s email request for appt, but make
sure to respond promptly and be available – I’m not that busy,
just trying to be efficient!
 Result is that I don’t see some students for months

 Are students intimidated? Easier to avoid contact with

adviser?
 Is interaction through email (including through powerpoints)
an adequate substitute for face-to-face meetings?
 Should I force a (bi)weekly meeting?

 Meetings tend to be directed toward tasks at hand – are we

missing opportunity to discuss bigger picture?
 I try not to be nosy in students’ personal lives – but does it
then come across that I don’t care?
 How could my mentoring
improve?
 Interacting through drafts
 Efficient for me – I have a record of what you’ve
done, I have time to think about it in the
context of the final product that I want to see
 Efficient for you it would seem (to me!) – you
have a record of my comments, are forced into
the writing process…but do you think
differently?
 I do micro-manage and cover the drafts in red.
That’s because I do my thinking on your work
through the writing/editing process.
 Can lead to a lot of frustration for students –
what do you think?
 How could my mentoring
improve?
 Coaching students in their approaches to
research, presentations, contact with exterior…
 Should we do more presentation dry runs?

 Do you feel empowered in your research?

 Do you feel need for more contact with

exterior? Scientific conferences?
 Group dynamics – do we need to improve them?
 More/less formal meetings, social events?

 More formal mentoring postdocs -> students,

senior students -> junior students?
 Sharing Research Credit
There’s a general perception in a paper that the mentor/advisor provided
the ideas and the student did the work; this may have some truth but
doesn’t recognize that the ideas often spring from the work.
 Ownership of ideas is a very messy business, esp. between

advisor/advisee. It’s best to consider them ‘shared’, even if you think

they’re yours.
 Student needs to be first author on papers to earn some credit for

the ideas. Mentor will get enough credit anyway.

 Student should get exposure by contributing papers to conferences.

Prof. will get invited to give talks anyway, and should take any
opportunity to give visibility to the student.
 ‘Your advisor looks good, you look good’. Bite your tongue and relax

when you hear your work referred to as ‘your advisor’s research’. It’s
no big deal, it’s just easier for people to identify work with a shop
rather than with individuals. Avoid one-upmanship with your adviser.
A good adviser will make sure you get all the credit you deserve.
 References
 Mentoring- How to develop successful mentor
behaviors. Gorden F. Shea Crisp Publications,
Inc. 2002. http://Crisplearning.com
 The Art of Mentoring: Lead, follow and get out
of the way. Shirley Peddy. Bullion Books, 2001.
 National Academy of Sciences: Adviser,
Teacher, Role Model, Friend: On Being a Mentor
to Students in Science and Engineering
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/mentor