Mentoring

In reponse to student feedback (and with funding from the Department Chair), I've set up an informal peer mentoring program. First and second year students have been matched up with post-generals students. They'll be reimbursed for a lunch meeting twice a year. I hope that this will provide new students with an additional resource to help them navigate the Joint Program, life in Cambridge and/or Woods Hole, etc. Special thanks to Colleen Petrik for making the matches and to the students who have volunteered to be mentors!

This made me think a little about the role of the Ph.D. advisor as a mentor. It seems to me that some of the most important information advisors convey to their students has nothing to do with the facts, theories and methods of their scientific disciplines.  Rather, it is the example we set as role models.  I know I still ask myself from time to time, "What would my adviser do?"

The handbook, Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend: On Being a Mentor to Students in Science and Engineering (National Academies Press, 1997), puts it this way:

The sum of all those activities-of all your actions as a mentor-is what students take with them after graduation. The image of you as a person will last longer than your words or professional achievements. The power and value of the image will depend on the efforts you have made in building honesty, trust, and good communication throughout your mentoring relationship.

The handbook is a worthwhile read for both advisors and students.