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Someone who is respected within the field and has contacts who can help you with publications and jobs. Someone who is knowledgeable about the university and its politics and policies. Someone who takes the time to help with your studies and your career. Someone who does not exploit you. Someone who is not a disinterested observer of your career but cares about you as a person and is supportive -- like a coach cheering you on.

the profile is similar to how junior faculty members would describe their ideal career mentor, too.

The mentor relationship is alive and well in the sciences, where there is a strong tradition of senior researchers bringing postdocs and new assistant professors into their laboratories and grant projects. But in the social sciences and humanities, probably because of the difficult job market, relations between established scholars and newcomers to the profession seem strained.

In every assistant professor there seems to lurk a Karate Kid seeking a Mr. Miyagi who will train his acolyte to be a skilled warrior in the art of research, teaching, and service and impart pithy life lessons along the way. Such singular folks exist, and you may find one. But it's far more likely that you will find several mentors who, while not well-versed in all aspects of academic life, will offer good advice in one or another area.

Someone who got tenure 30 years ago may not appreciate what it takes to get tenure today. The young tenure tracker may not know, or catch on quickly enough, that the same mentor who is a wizard of statistical methodology is offering awful advice about handling disruptions in the classroom. Or perhaps the issue is transference: A scholar may excel at conceptualizing new theory, for example, but may not be good at teaching others to do likewise.

In the words of Ronald Reagan, one should "trust but verify."

It is much better to have faculty volunteers, like yourself, officially assigned to mentees -- for when mentoring is formal and institutional, it's not seen as a quirk of personality or misread as some kind of stalking.

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.

At the height of Plumb's career through the 1960s and early 1970s, the word "mentor" was used only occasionally in academe or the corporate world.

The era of the mentor began in earnest only in the mid-1970s. The Yale psychologist Daniel J. Levinson, best known for his studies of middle age, had a precise definition quoted in The Christian Science Monitor on February 14, 1977: a person 8 to 15 years older than the "mentee," a "peer or older brother" rather than a "distant father." Levinson continued: "He takes the younger man under his wing, ... imparts his wisdom, cares, sponsors, criticizes, and bestows his blessing."

Corporate mentoring took center stage in 1978 and 1979 with two articles in the Harvard Business Review. The title of the first, an interview with a group of senior executives from the Jewel Companies, echoes to this day: "Everyone Who Makes It Has a Mentor."

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.

The solution, then, is clear: Everyone needs to start talking. Before a single beaker gets rinsed, the question of authorship has to be laid on the table,

junior researchers should keep detailed notes of their research.

Mentor in a Manual: Climbing the Academic Ladder to Tenure

Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia

Ms. Mentor on its online Career Network

Law schools should be sure that female and minority professors have mentors and other support to improve their chances of winning tenure,

female and minority professors were less likely to win tenure than their white, male colleagues