1. Your Mentors: What you need and how to get it?
David T. Felson MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
Boston University

2. Mentors The most important determinant of your success
Many kinds of “mentoring”
Peer mentoring
Dual mentoring (mentor for content, mentor for methods)
Mentoring you ‘absorb’ from the culture

3. Mentor’s Multiple Roles
Advisor
Supporter
Tutor
Sponsor
Model
An effective mentoring relationship is characterized by
mutual trust, understanding, and empathy.
Morris Zelditch

4. Mentor’s Multiple Roles
Tangible Examples:
Advisor-shares career experience and knowledge
Time management-ensures protected time
Develops research ideas
Suggests scholarly activities
Outlines trade-offs
Helps with job search

5. Mentor’s Multiple Roles
The Supporter:
Provides encouragement
Your papers will be rejected.
Your grants will be rejected.
Mentors provide the broader context that facilitates an objective evaluation of your “successes” and “failures”

6. Mentor’s Multiple Roles
The Tutor
Gives specific feedback on performance
Manuscripts
Grants
Abstracts
Oral presentations

7. Mentor’s Multiple Roles:
The Sponsor
Seeks opportunities
Funding sources
Networking
Job contacts
Circle of influence

8. Mentor’s Goal: to advance your educational and personal growth
Your mentor’s primary responsibility is to you
Your education
Your professional development
Your recognition
Your career
“In the end, they establish an environment in which
the student’s accomplishment is limited only by the extent
of his or her talent.”

9. Qualities of a Good Mentor
Listens
Is Accessible
Provides Constructive feedback
Encourages confidence and independent thinking
Serves as Role model
Builds network
Encourages multiple mentors
Avoids dictating choices or controlling behavior

10. Barriers to being a good mentor
TIME, TIME, TIME
Content area
Intellectual generosity

11. Recognize Negative Mentoring
Ambivalent, inattentive
Inaccessible
Insecure
Lack of mentoring skills
Lacks intellectual generosity-perhaps the most difficult……it is challenging to “let go”.
SEEK HELP ELSEWHERE

12. Being proactive with your mentor
Be explicit early on about your expectations and goals
Do not be passive when it comes to YOUR career
Do your homework…….Be prepared…….

13. What you want out of Mentor Meetings
A prioritization of your goals.
Decisions about projects and the questions of focus
Deadlines for abstracts/papers/grants
Advice on whom to turn to for help

14. Meetings With Mentors Come prepared with a list of questions
Present your research findings
Ask mentor what you’re missing
At end, let them guide you further

15. Mentor/Mentee Meetings
Scheduled either weekly or every 2 weeks
You (mentee) bring the agenda and the questions
Ask for feedback about:
Direction/goals
Prioritization
Which projects worth pursuing/which NOT worth pursuing

16. A Single mentor may not be so important…
More than one mentor may provide complementary help.
Team mentoring may be more effective than one mentor: alternate meetings.
There are many places to get mentoring:
Peers
Professors from distant institutions
Me and Larry Raisz, Larry Riggs, Conrad Johnston. Alvan and academic toilet training

17. *From Jagsi group; Acad Med 2013
Mentor Networks: Moving Beyond a Dyadic Conception of Mentoring for Junior Faculty Researchers*
100 former K award recipients
Purposive sampling (women, URM)
Qualitative interviews
Aim: to gain understanding of mentoring issues from clinician-researchers
*From Jagsi group; Acad Med 2013

18. Themes that Emerged
(1) the numerous roles and behaviors associated with mentoring (2) improbability that a single person can fulfill the diverse mentoring needs of another individual (3) the importance and composition of mentor networks.

19. Exerpts from Interviews
[T]here's no way that a mentor can be all things to all people and some mentors are
good for just one thing. [S]ome mentors, very few of them, have the whole package: that nice person, professional relationship, [who] does funding and manuscripts and ... can help you negotiate your system. There are very few of
those. (Female, K awardee)

20. Excerpts from Interviews
I have some mentors who are very strong in science who really understand the subject matter of the area that I'm working in ... I have mentors who I call politicians. They sort of know how to network ... I no longer rely on a single person for a mentor. (Female, K awardee)

21. Summaries of interviews
Some participants used the term “portfolio” to describe the practice of collecting different mentors.
Others used terms such as “community,” “multiple perspectives,” or “team” to further indicate that rather than a single individual, a group of mentors, can benefit the protégé.

22. Other Mentors Suggested by Interviewees
Peers
Women Mentors for Women mentees
Those at other institutions

23. The Next Stage: Mentors help with Moving toward INDEPENDENCE

24. National Academy Press, 1997
National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Engineering
Institute of Medicine
National Academy Press, 1997

25. Carol B. Muller, Ph.D., Founder, MentorNet
Ex: Chemical engineer at Dow Chemical Company
mentor for engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University
Carol B. Muller, Ph.D., Founder, MentorNet