The Science of Mentorship

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine want to help you do mentorship better. So on Thursday, March 25th, starting at 1:00 PM Eastern, you can join a live Q&A about the science of mentorship and the research behind the podcast. Experts will be live on Twitter to take your questions and provide answers. This is a great opportunity to engage with like-minded people who are interested in learning and developing more effective mentoring skills. If you have questions you want answered, tweet them with the hashtag science of mentorship to @thenasem on Twitter, that's at T-H-E- N-A-S-E M. Answers will be provided during the live event on Twitter, so don't miss it. We look forward to engaging with you. Now, enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Welcome to The Science of Mentorship. Medical school was always challenging, but it can be even more daunting when no one around you provides support or encouragement to help you overcome the challenges. If there are people actively discouraging you, well, it can feel impossible.
Dr. Vivian Pinn navigated experiences like these as he completed medical school in the mid 1960s at the University of Virginia. She was often the only woman and the only African-American in her classes, and there was certainly push back to her presence in a world dominated by white men. But she found outstanding leaders around her, people who inspired her to be curious, and who would encourage her to take on new challenges in medicine.
These experiences led Dr. Pinn to a career as a highly distinguished pathologist, researcher and administrator. She taught at Harvard and Tufts before becoming professor and chair of the Department of Pathology at Howard University in 1982. In 1991, Dr. Pinn became the founding director of the National Institute of Health's Office of Research on Women's Health, where she led the implementation of clinical research inclusion policies for women and minorities. She held the position until her retirement 20 years later. Dr. Pinn received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, including election into the National Academy of Medicine in 1995.
From a young age, Vivian Pinn had people in her life who recognized her dreams and pointed her in the right direction to turn those dreams into realities.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (02:39):
I've had lots of mentors over my life and through my career. And I'm not sure years ago, we actually called them mentors, but looking back, I know that's what they were doing. They were mentoring me. They were helping me. They were guiding me on my career.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Vivian's dream started early in life, drawn from leaders she saw around her.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (03:01):
I grew up saying I wanted to be a pediatrician. I guess that's what I saw, because the only doctor I had was the general practitioner who came to our house and then the pediatrician I had, that I think I went to until I was 17, when I went off to college.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
In the 1950s, however, dreams like that seemed like fantasy for most African-American girls in the segregated South. The right encouragement mattered for Vivian Pinn.
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Dr. Vivian Pinn (03:26):
I have to say, my parents were the best because they never told me that as a Black girl growing up in the segregated South, where at a time when there were not many Black doctors at all and even fewer Black women doctors, if at all, that wanting to be a doctor was something that I shouldn't think of.
And so, they just said, "If you want to be a doctor, you've got to study and you've got to work hard." I think it was a good way of controlling me, but that was how they did it. So I really only got encouragement from my friends and my family.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Support from friends and family helped Vivian succeed in college, but medical school was an entirely different environment. Fortunately, she found a setting that opened up new ideas for her.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (04:14):
When I took a job after college and was given a job, fortunately, by the transplant team at Mass General, to serve as a research assistant. And I really was hired by the surgeon, Dr. Benjamin Barnes, but working with him was Dr. Martin Flax, who was a pathologist there. And eventually, as I continued to work with them over the next several years, between my years in medical school, Dr. Flax welcomed me into his lab and funded me in a project of my own. And that's where I really learned a lot about research and what was needed to be a good researcher, the patience, the diligence, the record-keeping.
And under Dr. Flax's mentoring, I learned so much, and I think it really was because of his support that I ended up getting a research fellowship, an NIH research fellowship at Mass General in pathology. And from there, because I didn't grow up wanting to be a pathologist, but that exposure and what I learned from him really got me interested in, I got so fascinated with the research, as well as the clinical aspects of the pathology. And so, when he eventually left Harvard to go to Tufts as the new chair of a department there, and he wanted me to come as chief resident. And I said, "No, I'd only come as faculty, thinking I'd never get a faculty appointment. Then next thing I know, he told me I had a faculty appointment, and I went to Tufts.
And that started the rest of my career. So seeing me as a college student, working with me, investing in my efforts and guiding me through medical school as I worked with him during the summers, and then taking me to Tufts with him as one of his faculty to start a new department, he served as my mentor. And I must admit that even years later, when I finally left Tufts and went to Howard as a department chair, Dr. Flax was my mentor there too.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Dr. Flax not only helped her build confidence while at Mass General, but he also acknowledged her significant science contributions.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (06:29):
Everybody says they want to do research. And knowing that I had been in the same position, where we say we want to do research, but we don't really know what research is about unless we get that exposure. And so, learning about research, what it meant, what it took, the patience that was required, the excitement when you make a breakthrough, was really something that experience gave me.
I would never have thought about going into pathology, which is why I think it's extremely important for young women and men considering careers in science or medicine, or anywhere in the STEM, to get exposed to the real practice. Not just what you think it is because of something you've read
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or just your exposure in classrooms, but to really get the experience of seeing someone who's really involved in everyday life, because it is very different when you're really involved in your STEM field, I think.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Vivian was focusing on the medical track she was most passionate about, but unfortunately, this didn't stop situations that threatened to invalidate her along the way.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (07:38):
My first year of medical school, and as I stated, I was the only woman and the only person of color. And in our anatomy lab, within the first few weeks of medical school, one of my classmates came up to me and said to me that I had no business being in medical school, because he had read in his anatomy book, and this really happened, he had read in his anatomy book that women have smaller brains than men. So I would never finished medical school and I was just taking up a place that some man could have. And so, I should be ashamed for taking up this place and depriving some man because of my smaller brain.
And I don't know, he may have had thoughts also about the fact that I was a woman of color, but he didn't state that at the time. It was just my smaller brain as a woman. But I often will talk about that and then I show our graduation class picture. And of course, I graduated with my smaller brain, but he flunked out along the way. So I learned very early that it's not the size of your brain that determines your proficiency in the STEM fields, or science, math and medicine.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Unfortunately for Vivian, there was no one like Dr. Flax to mentor her at school.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (09:03):
I think one of the reasons I have invested so much energy and time into mentoring, especially for those who are in graduate school or medical school, is because I felt a real lack of mentoring myself when I was in medical school. This was at the University of Virginia in the sixties. There were no faculty of color there, and I was the only woman and the only person of color in my class. There was only one other person of color as a student at the medical school at that time, because remember at that time, Charlottesville was still just beginning to de-segregate and UVA was basically a men's university. There were no women undergrads.
And so, as a medical student, at times things would come up and I would really want to talk to someone about them, and maybe somebody who would understand my particular concerns as a woman and as a woman of color, being a surrounded by all of my, some very gracious and lovely white classmates, but still different. There was only one woman full professor on the faculty and she was absolutely nasty and condescending to me and to the nurses that I worked with. We were the women around. The nurses and me, we were the women on the boards. And yet, she seemed so lovely to my male classmates. And I never understood that. I thought maybe she felt because she was a woman in a man's world that she had to not seem, not give extra recognition to the fact that she was a woman. But it meant that I really didn't have someone that I would consider a mentor.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Her lack of mentors at medical school made Dr. Pinn feel she had an obligation to others, which she carried throughout her career.
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Dr. Vivian Pinn (10:57):
So I think thinking of that, when I finished med school and then into my residency and my first junior faculty position, when students would come to talk to me, I had all my cases to do and I had other work to do as a faculty member in preparing my lectures, but when students would ask if they could come talk to me, I didn't see how I could say no. And so, I really got involved just, my door was open. So I found at first, it was the students of color, and then it was students not of color, and then women and then men. And I think it got to be known that my door was open.
And I think I just felt I had a responsibility to provide what I had not gotten, because I knew what it was like. It can make a difference to have someone just to discuss that issue with. And so, that was as I started my career as a faculty member, and I was spending so much time with students that the then Dean of the medical school finally said to me that I was spending so much time counseling students, you might as well give me the title of Dean. So I became assistant Dean for student affairs.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
As Dr. Pinn integrated her support for students into her career, she found that it paid unexpected dividends by expanding her knowledge and opportunities.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (12:21):
Bernadine Healy, she really served as a role model for me and I learned much from her. It was Dr. Healy who I had known when she was a medical student, had reviewed some biopsies on some of her patients when I was a resident. And then all of a sudden, years later, she is the director of NIH, in fact, the only woman to serve as the NIH director. And I was at a meeting when she was describing this brand new office on women's health research. And I raised my hand to ask some questions about it. And she, eventually, not long after that, invited me out to NIH and offered me this position, this new position to head up this office. Then someone I had been seen as a mentor for became my mentor, because she was the director of NIH. I worked under her and just watching as a woman in government at a time when there were not many women in leadership positions, watching and just observing how she carried herself, how she could exert authority at a time when many men still were resisting thinking of women in leadership positions.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Dr. Healy gave her the independence she needed and set an example that influenced Dr. Pinn's approach to mentorship from then on.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (13:42):
I must say that she was a mentor who set the pace for me, who really set the example. She gave me the freedom to develop programs without dictating, which I had to learn how to do when I became a leader. That as a mentor, you provide the guidance and you're there if they need you, but you don't tell them what to do. You give others the chance to develop on their own.
And she set a lot of those examples for me. And I think I've been a mentor to many, many people. And I think as a good mentor, you do what is expected of what's described now as a sponsor. But just as an example, just the last two days, I've done a recommendation for a student that I had back in the seventies, as I've followed his career, as he's gone forward and now is looking for another position. And I've just done his letter of recommendation and talked to him about what he's doing. I just heard last night from another student who was my student in the late seventies, early eighties.
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So I still from so many of my former students. And three days ago, just connected a high school student with some of my contacts because she's interested in maternal mortality, as well as applying to college. So I've been trying to guide her. And I guess I consider all my former students as my former current kids.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
If her former students succeeded thanks to effective mentorship, then more students could benefit from similar experiences. Dr. Pinn understood that value and worked to improve mentorship whenever she could.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (15:27):
Mentoring has been so important to me that while I was at NIH and directed the Office of Research on Women's Health, as we designed career development programs, every opportunity we could, we built mentoring into the programs. There's one in particular, building interdisciplinary careers on women's health research, which we designed specifically to provide for mentors, and that there must be mentors across departments for anyone. And this program was designed to advance post-ops into independent investigators, but with an interdisciplinary model, meaning from more than one field of medicine science or bringing in that interdisciplinary concept.
And I was so fascinated with the idea that we could build mentoring into our programs that we designed this such that they had to identify at least two to three mentors for each scholar in the program. And then each year, it was designed so that all the scholars would come to NIH. And while the principal investigators were in another room reporting on what they were doing, I would meet with all of the scholars together and hear from them about their mentoring experience. So I would know if they were truly getting good mentoring and it allowed other scholars to hear how mentoring is being done at other institutions, taking good ideas back.
And to me, that's just one example of how important mentoring was to me and that it was wonderful being in a position where we could really incorporate mentoring into a grant program and see it prolonged. And I still hear from some of the scholars back, I think that program started in the year 2000, and how they're now serving as mentors to others.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Dr. Pinn's negative mentoring experience wasn't the end of her academic career. It motivated her to find better support and become a mentor to others.
Dr. Vivian Pinn (17:27):
Mentoring is, as I envision it, is so important for careers, for anyone going into science, because things don't always fall as you want them to. And then when you come to a fork in the road, do you go this way or that way? Or where does your research go, or where do you go personally? And having someone that can advise you both on your career, as well as on your science is so important. And I'm proudest of the programs we designed at NIH that really incorporated mentoring and good mentoring into their concept.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
For mentorship to be effective, mentors and mentees must work together. Effective working alliances mean that all participants know they have something to contribute and they take the steps to do so.
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Obstacles are inevitable, whether it's a problem in research or a negative relationship issue in the field. Students shouldn't have to face challenges alone. Dr. Pinn is making sure they won't have to.
To learn more about the research of effective mentorship and for a guide to implementing best practices in your environment, visit our website at nas.edu/mentoring.
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