The Science of Mentorship

Narrator (00:10):
Welcome to The Science of Mentorship. It can be daunting to enter the academic world, especially for students who have identities that are not well-represented. Without proper encouragement, the obstacles they face can seem insurmountable. Dr. Jim Gates experienced this throughout his long distinguished career, a career in which he was often the only African-American among his peers, but more than once he was guided by the right person at the right time telling him that yes, he could do this. Professor Gates is known for his groundbreaking work on supersymmetry, super gravity and superstring theory. He received his PhD from MIT in 1977. Whereas doctoral thesis was the first to ever explore supersymmetry. In 2013, Dr. Gates was elected into the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama.
Narrator (01:06):
Jim's father never graduated from high school, but that didn't matter. It was important to him that his children understood how valuable education was.
Dr. Jim Gates (01:25):
You see, my first mentor was my father because he just did the right thing for his son. I mean, my father did for me things that are the foundation of my work as a theorist, when I was beginning school, I would ask my father all kinds of questions and to my recollection, he could answer them all. My father never finished high school. When I was in my forties, mid forties, I began to wonder, was my memory faulty or had he actually answered the question? One day on a visit with my father, I said, "dad, do you remember me having questions when I was in first, second, third grade, lots of questions?" He said, "yes." I said, "do you remember answering all of them?" He said, "yes." I said, "how did you do that?" He said, "what you don't remember is that if I couldn't answer a question, I would say, hold off. What you don't know is that hold off, gave me time over the next day or so to go and find the answers to your question. We would resume the conversation I would give you the answers." The thing that I took away from the experiences that my questions always have answers.
Dr. Jim Gates (02:47):
That's a driving force to becoming a physicist. That's what I mean by my father was my first mentor, because he did all of these things. The first mentor is if a child is, will be parents, either a father or mother or uncle or a grandfather, somewhat some family member will be that first mentor.
Narrator (03:07):
Jim's Love of science began early, an early passion his father would remember and nature.
Dr. Jim Gates (03:13):
My father was in the U.S army for 27 years. As a consequence, when I was four years old, I was living on an army base in Canada, St. John's Newfoundland. I was the oldest of three children when we got there. Four, by the time we left and my mother took her children to see a movie one day, it was the first movie I have any recollection of seeing. I think it might've been the first movie I ever saw, but in the movie I
saw astronauts. I saw space launches. I saw countdowns. For whatever reason at age four, I figured out that this thing called science that they kept talking about it the movie was a gateway to adventures and fun. What four year old boy wouldn't want to live a life having adventure and fun?
Dr. Jim Gates (04:07):

Four years later however, I was living in Texas, Fort Bliss, essentially in El Paso, Texas. I was in school learning to read and write and do arithmetic. The arithmetic part was actually very easy as far as I could tell, it was very straightforward. We never had any problem with that, but the reading part was a real challenge. My father always being highly involved in all of his children's education, with my mother. They talked my teacher and the teacher said, "if you bring him some books home on something that he is interested in, I bet he'll learn to read." Well, my father remembered that his four year old son was interested in rockets and space travel. He brought home these books on rockets and space travel. Very shortly thereafter, I was a very proficient reader.
Narrator (04:58):
Years later, as a teenager, Jim was fascinated by space, rockets and the science behind them. Just like his love for science, his academic future was also inspired by what he saw on screen.
Dr. Jim Gates (05:11):
When I was 14, I like most teenagers watched a fair amount of television. There was a television program called Make Room for Daddy. In one episode, the family of the main character had a cousin that came to visit him and the cousin was supposed to be a kid genius. I heard from that program that there's this college where at least in my interpretation, they only make you study math and science. That's what I call it, the good stuff. I had an answer to a question that my father had been asking us ever since we were six years old, which is what college do you want to go to? For me, it was MIT because that was the place.
Narrator (05:53):
Jim Gates lived in the segregated South and attended a segregated high school. But he still found unique opportunities that helped refine his passion for science.
Dr. Jim Gates (06:11):
Segregation had this really strange effect that highly qualified African-Americans couldn't get jobs elsewhere, except sometimes in the school. As a consequence, my physics teacher actually had an undergraduate degree in physics. He actually knew physics. This is something that is extraordinarily rare in our country today, where it's not restricted by race, but if you meet any kids in high school, ask them, "does your physics teacher actually have a degree in physics?" The vast majority will say no. But I had this fantastic teacher, Mr. Freeman Koni, within two weeks entering his course, I knew it was not all of science that I wanted to do, but physics that I wanted to do.
Narrator (06:51):
High school focuses attention on physics, but it also made him aware of the barriers faced by African Americans, who wanted to pursue higher education. He began to think his dreams were unreachable yet once again, his father's attention and encouragement played a crucial role in his direction.
Dr. Jim Gates (07:09):
I applied to MIT, but my father had to force me to do it. Even though age 14, I was dreaming about going to MIT by the time I was 18 or so, I knew what the barriers were against African-Americans going to places like MIT. He literally had to force me to put the application in. Since he had been in the army, we didn't have the [inaudible 00:07:31] kind of household where you debate it with dad, what was going to happen. In the fall of 1969, I wound up as a freshman at MIT. It was a dream come true.
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Narrator (07:51):
Jim discovered right away that the MIT coursework wasn't easy, but he was encouraged to persevere, thanks to two instructors who like him were underrepresented in the field.
Dr. Jim Gates (08:02):
The summer before I went to MIT I met Dr. Shirley Jackson. She's an African-American who is currently the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She was my physics teacher that summer. It was the hardest physics class I had ever taken. At the halfway point there was a 'midterm' she called me into her office to see her because she did all the students. I walked into her office and she was there with my tests, looking at it. She said, "Mr. Gates, you really didn't do well on this test. Did you?" I said, "I guess not," but I said, "I want to be a physicist." She looked at me and she said, "Oh really?" That was the best encouragement I got ar MIT. My freshman year, Dr. Vira Kista Koski, she was my physics recitation instructor. Halfway through semester, I wasn't doing well. It was kind of same story with Dr. Jackson, but she was encouraging. At the end of the semester, when I walked in to get my final exam grade, she was smiling beaming at me. She said, "Mr. Gates, you did it." That was just one of the greatest things that ever happened to me to have this teacher who was rather stern looking with a smile on her face because I had gotten an A on the final exam. There were people at MIT who were encouraging.
Narrator (09:33):
Faculty kept encouraging Jim. In 1977, he was the only African-American to receive a PhD in physics at MIT.
Dr. Jim Gates (09:43):
I'm the first member of my family ever to go to college. What I got my [inaudible 00:09:48] doing, no one in the faculty knew anything about it. In fact, as I had defended my thesis, professor Ernie Monies, was on my thesis defense committee. Even though he and the rest of the faculty members didn't know what I did, it was clear that I knew what I was doing. He said at the end of it, something that talk about encouragement, he said it was the best thesis defense he had ever seen. Again, as the only African American graduate in all the people getting a PhD in physics, to hear that kind of praise from a professor is so valuable. I mean, I can't express the value of that.
Narrator (10:28):
This last bit of encouragement was more than just a simple compliment. It encouraged Dr. Gates to apply to a challenging postdoc fellowship where he found others to collaborate with.
Dr. Jim Gates (10:39):
I went off to Harvard, continuing to do stuff that no faculty member did, but I did meet another postdoc who knew something about what I was doing. We formed a two-party collaborations, started doing research. We attracted a graduate student at Harvard. The postdoc was a guy named Warren Siegel, the graduate student's [inaudible 00:10:57]. We also got a professor at Brandeis interested in what we were doing. His name is Mark [inaudible 00:11:03]. At the time when I was at Harvard, we were the only people there working on this subject called supersymmetry. Well, it turns out supersymmetry is actually the foundation of string theory. We had gotten a jump on the field just because we were picking the right things. Warren and I did some work extending Einstein's theory of gravitation and Murray Gell Mann, who was a professor at Caltech and John Schwartz, who would ultimately invent superstring theory, became aware of our work. After the postdoc at Harvard ended, the two of us, Warren and
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myself were invited to come to Caltech. While I was at Harvard, I found out last year, I was the first African-American scientist that had ever been a junior fellow. When I found out this past year that I was the first African-American postdoc that the division of math and physical sciences and astronomy ever hired at Caltech.
Narrator (12:00):
Those collaborations led to Dr. Gates next opportunity, taking him to a place with some of the most famous physicists in the world, guided him.
Dr. Jim Gates (12:08):
At Caltech, I met Richard Feynman. I had some interesting interactions with Richard Feynman who was a fantastic physicist and a good mentor to a crazy African-American kid named Jim Gates. The first time I met him, I had this huge Afro. There were pictures of me from that period. I had this huge circular circle Afro. The first thing that Feynman ever said to me, was when I was your age, I [inaudible 00:12:36] to wear my hair just like that. I die laughing because when he said it, I had this picture of Feynman with an Afro. All along the way, even though there was nobody who looked like me around me, there were always one or two people and people that I had extraordinarily high opinions of who said, "kid, you can actually do this." They didn't literally say it, but they did it like Feynman and making the joke about the Afro or [inaudible 00:13:11] actually smiling about my homework, I was very fortunate.
Narrator (13:21):
Dr. Gates role models and mentors gave him the support needed for him to develop his own identity as a scientist. They helped him thrive in the scientific environments. He learned how valuable that support could be.
Dr. Jim Gates (13:33):
I often tell young People of Color that mentoring is something you have to be open to receiving because you may not find anyone who looks like you. It's a little hard to get by if no one supports you, it's like learning to breathe in out of space. Well, you can actually learn to breathe in out of space if you get a little bit of help. That's what I learned in that period.
Narrator (14:00):
Today, Professor Gates offers critical support to many students and professionals. He acknowledges their unique backgrounds and identities and caters to the need of each individual.
Dr. Jim Gates (14:11):
I do have a reputation of being a better than just average mentor. I take great pride in that. You sort of pick up the back of A, trying to figure out what a young person needs at a particular point in their life. Trying to map that perhaps onto what you needed at a similar point. Then trying to tell a story about what you did that got you to the next phase.
Narrator (14:35):
Times have changed. The support that Dr. Gates received has in his eyes become a key part of science academia.
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Dr. Jim Gates (14:43):
As I think about my colleagues and mentoring, what I see is that my younger colleagues are much more commited to being great mentors than most of my colleagues in my cohort. We can see that there's an improvement. There's a consciousness among the younger in physics, a consciousness of younger faculty that the teaching part of our profession is something that needs to be as diligently sought in terms of levels of excellence as the excellence that we commit in doing our research. That is so inspiring to see.
Narrator (15:21):
A lot of faculty today are more intentional about supporting their students emotionally and professionally. Professor Gates knows however, he could have been better at engaging in mentorship.
Dr. Jim Gates (15:33):
If I were to have a time machine and be able to travel back to young Jim Gates as he was in his first and second year of university training. There were a couple of things I would tell that kid, one of them is to actually be open to being mentored. This is something that is extraordinarily important to have a mindset that in order to reach my goals, I'm going to need help. There are good people in the world, independent of differences of ethnicity, gender, whatever way we humans decide to divide our identities. But you have to believe that there are good people on all sides. If you are a young person who needs that help, you have to actually be actively looking for those people who don't look like you, who might come from a different country, might be a different gender, different ethnicity, but you've got to actively be looking for them. When they show up, you have to be able to recognize it. This is someone who's going to help me. That was one of the most important things that I bumped into as a young person. But I would tell that to the young Jim Gates, because he was afraid quite frankly, that there wouldn't be good people on all sides. That there would be people that were the kind that thought slavery was okay. Thought Jim Crow was okay, and that they could inhabit places like MIT. He had that fear.
Narrator (17:06):
Students now come to professor Gates with their goals and dreams. He refuses to push them on paths they're not passionate about.
Dr. Jim Gates (17:13):
Well, young people ask me, "well, how do you decide what to major in?" I say, "that's the wrong question? The question you should ask is what lies closest to my heart's desire in terms of what I am working on. Because if you can identify that subject, if you are as passionately involved in that as I have been, what happens is kind of straightforward because you love it. You'll work really hard at it. If you're even modest intellectual ability, it means you're going to get really, really good at that thing. But if you get really, really good at thing, other people will notice. That's the secret to success is actually to find that passion that will drive your intellectual involvement."
Narrator (17:59):
When passives of students are fully recognized and supported, students are more likely to succeed and continue exploring these passions in STEM. Throughout his career, many people provided Dr. Jim Gates the support and encouragement he needed to overcome obstacles and achieve his dreams. Each of them provided unique support. Now as a mentor, he tries to do the same for his students. His goal, to
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help them discover their passions and go further in science. Students from diverse backgrounds, shouldn't enter academia feeling as if they don't belong. With the right encouragement, the kind that Dr. Gates mentors gave to him, students can exceed their own expectations and achieve their dreams in STEM.
Narrator (18:48):
To learn more about the science of effective mentorship and for a guy to implementing best practices in your STEM environments, visit nas.edu/mentoring.
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