Group items tagged

= Premium Content Log In | Create a Free Account | Subscribe Now Wednesday, November 25, 2009 Subscribe Today! Home News Opinion & Ideas Facts & Figures Topics Jobs Advice Forums $('#navbarbtnForums').attr("href", "/forums/"); Events Faculty Administration Technology Community Colleges International Special Reports People The Ticker Current Issue Faculty Home News Faculty function check() { if (document.getElementById("searchInput").value == '' ) { alert('Please enter search terms'); return false; } else return true; } $().ready(function() { $('#email-popup').jqm({trigger: 'a.show-email', modal: 'true'}); $('#share-popup').jqm({trigger: 'a.show-share', modal: 'true'}); }); E-mail function printPage() { window.print(); } $(document).ready(function(){ $('.print-btn').click(printPage); }); Print Share August 1, 2003 The Catalytic Mentor By PIPER FOGG An award-winning chemist at Rutgers U. takes students under her wingHere on the main campus of Rutgers University, Martha Greenblatt often passes buildings that were once part of Camp Kilmer, a military base that received European refugees in the 1950s. An internationally known chemist, the Rutgers professor remembers the camp from her days as a teenager from Hungary, alone and unsure of what lay ahead. Now her lab is filled with smart young graduate students from China, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Over the years, she has had 27 graduate students and 25 postdoctoral students in her lab. Because of her own personal and professional experiences, she understands what they are going through, and she goes out of her way to guide them. That means pushing them in their research, encouraging them to make outside contacts, even coaching some in English, all to develop in them the skills to become independent thinkers and successful scientists. In the spring, Ms. Greenblatt, 62, received the Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal, given annually in recognition of significant achievements by a female chemist in America. The American Chemical Society honored her as "a leading solid-state chemist and scholar, teacher, science advocate, and outstanding role model." The award is particularly satisfying to her because it celebrates her serving as a mentor to young scientists. In addition, the university has made her a Board of Governors professor, the highest rank a Rutgers faculty member can hold. In any field, a great mentor can make a big difference. But, in the sciences, such a figure can mean the difference between a lackluster dissertation and a mediocre job offer, on the one hand, and a publication that is a catalys

In any field, a great mentor can make a big difference. But, in the sciences, such a figure can mean the difference between a lackluster dissertation and a mediocre job offer, on the one hand, and a publication that is a catalyst for a promising career in academe or industry, on the other. An effective mentor acts as an advocate, a role model, and a guide to academic and professional development.

Universities increasingly offer mentoring programs that link new faculty with more experienced colleagues.

"She wasn't really familiar with my discipline, but she was able to give me perspectives about the institution from a different vantage point. I really grew to appreciate that."

an increasing number of colleges now rely on formal mentor programs, many of them campuswide, to give new faculty members guaranteed access to senior professors who can help them.

These days, actively seeking career guidance within the ivory tower doesn't hold the stigma for new professors that it once did

Take, for example, the concept of apprenticeship, to which the Carnegie researchers devote an entire chapter. The faculty-master and student-apprentice relationship as the signature pedagogical structure of doctoral education dates back to the university's medieval roots. But, the Carnegie authors say, it's time that model was updated.

The study recommends that doctoral programs adopt new structures that allow students to have several intellectual mentors and come to think of mentorship as less an accident of interpersonal chemistry and as more a set of techniques that can be learned, assessed, and rewarded.

Arizona State University that awards an annual $5,000 cash prize to an "outstanding doctoral mentor" or another at the mathematics department of the University of Southern California that places new graduate students in "mentoring triplets" with both a faculty mentor and a more experienced graduate student.

Ask for multiple mentors so you can get the benefit of experts in more than one topic. Many professors are overworked and overassigned, so getting a single, good mentor can be a pretty tall order. Instead, work with your chairman to determine four or five topics on which you would like to receive guidance from several mentors.

Some suggestions: Find out who the whizzes are at teaching the various kinds of courses in your department and ask to meet with them. Believe me, most good teachers will find time to talk about their own approaches to teaching; it's quite flattering. Ask to be linked with someone who can help you to understand how to balance scholarship and good teaching, or how to make the service expectations of the institution jibe with the teaching expectations. After you meet with your colleagues, talk about these things with your chairman.