The Science of Mentorship

Bethany Brookshire (00:11):
There's a circle of life and there's a circle of mentoring relationships too. In fact, there are four stages to a mentoring relationship. We've been focusing for most of this podcast on the first two phases where mentors and mentees figure out if they will suit each other, establish what they want to accomplish and get down to mentoring. But eventually, if the mentoring is successful, the roles of the mentor and mentee will change and the mentoring relationship will change too. The mentor and mentee might pull apart and the mentee may start the cycle over again, this time acting as a mentor themselves.
In our episode about the importance of mentoring programs, I spoke with Luis Dominguez, Jr. Luis told me about a program he joined in undergrad called The Scholars Academy. This program was one of the first places where Luis found community in STEMM, but it was also a place where, as time went on, his role in a mentoring relationship shifted. When Luis joined The Scholars Academy, he was newer to his academic environment and young in his STEMM career. He looked at the students who were further along in their careers and something about them really stood out.
Luis Dominguez, Jr. (01:13):
There were some students that you couldn't help but have admiration for them. They had several research, perhaps, papers published already. They had several internships under their belt. They had an offer already waiting for them. I couldn't help but think of raising my standards or raising my work ethic. I often think back to them as often necessary within the community. They're like torch bearers, if you will, of what's possible, and that really struck me.
Bethany Brookshire (01:47):
These students were Luis's role models. He wanted to work hard like they did, and find similar opportunities. Time went on and eventually, these torch bearers graduated and moved on. That's when Luis's role began to change.
Luis Dominguez, Jr. (02:00):
I recall a freshman, a very enthusiastic freshman asking me questions about, "Oh, you did this research project, you did that," and it reminded me of how I felt when I first encountered the torch bearers, if you will, that I had so much admiration for. It really gave me that distinct feeling of leadership of someone in the community leading, showing the path to others that don't know of the path. I found that to be quite powerful.
Bethany Brookshire (02:36):
When Luis told me about becoming the role model younger students looked up to, I realized it was a really important moment, an exciting shift where roles change and suddenly, the mentee gets the opportunity to be a mentor. This is The Science of Mentorship, a podcast from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that explores the mentoring skills that can and should be learned to unleash everyone's potential in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. I'm your host, Bethany Brookshire.
Like Luis, a lot of students told me about these special moments where their roles changed and they were suddenly the ones supporting others. But throughout these stories, I noticed a theme. As special as it was to start mentoring relationships from these new perspectives, a lot of these students found it was just as intimidating as it was exciting. I thought of Carey Schaffer. In Carey's time as a science policy fellow, she had three different mentors. Then summer started, new programs began and Carey found herself taking on two new interns, and it was her responsibility to effectively mentor them.
Carey Schaffer (03:44):
I guess the biggest thing is that it's just harder than I expected.
Bethany Brookshire (03:50):
Carey quickly realized that she wasn't sure how to approach this kind of formal mentoring relationship from the mentor side.
Carey Schaffer (03:57):
We have our two summer interns right now. They both start at the same time, they're around the same age and everything. I think for me, I was very hesitant to treat them differently in any way first coming in. So it was like, they're doing the same program. They start the same time. I need everything they do needs to be exactly the same. But then I was like I realized in wanting to treat them the same. It was actually to their detriment because they need that individualized treatment to make sure that they're going to be able to succeed. Then, you start to realize that they're different people. They have different learning styles. The way that they're going to be accomplishing tasks is differently, so they need to be mentored in different ways.
Bethany Brookshire (04:49):
Carey learned that to be an effective mentor, she still needed support from her own mentors.
Carey Schaffer (04:55):
I realized that what I needed from my group of mentors was some more set recommendations on how to handle these mentorship relationships that I was cultivating and the ways to navigate certain conversations and how to balance having two interns and everything.
Bethany Brookshire (05:16):
Carey sat down with her mentors. She explained the aspects of mentoring she was struggling with and in return, her mentors offered her insights.
Carey Schaffer (05:24):
I think one of the best pieces of advice that my mentor, Todd, gave me was he was like, "If you are taking on two interns, what you need to do is get a list of the things that you're working on and the projects they're working on and approach your supervisor," who would be Renee in this case, "and say, 'Because I'm taking on these two new projects, I need to take X off my plate.'" He said, "That's the best thing that you can do for your supervisor. Be very explicit about what you won't be able to spend time on because you're now taking on these two new people in your life."
Bethany Brookshire (05:59):
As Carey looked to her own mentors for support, she realized that she also needed to spend time reflecting on her past mentoring experiences.
Carey Schaffer (06:07):
I think one thing that has become really apparent to me is that it's really important to reflect on your mentoring experiences, what you found positive and negative in the past, and then what you want to be bringing forward as a mentor, because I think a lot of people go into a situation where they're going to be a mentor and they say, "Oh, well, I've been mentored in the past, so I'll know what to do." But I think without explicit reflection, you aren't going to know what to do because being able to have difficult conversations or even just being able to move projects forward, setting timelines for people, but I've realized that it takes a lot more hard work and it takes a lot more reflection to understand what do I want to be bringing into this mentoring relationship? How am I going to balance my own workload with their workload to make sure that I'm moving their projects forward and staying on top of the things that I need to do?
Bethany Brookshire (07:11):
The support from her mentors and self-reflection helped prepare Carey to become an effective mentor, but Carey never stopped being a mentee, because mentorship required a whole new skillset and she needed the support to learn it. Throughout all the conversations with the students in this series, something's been made really clear to me: mentoring is a set of skills that have to be learned, practiced and improved upon. Most people aren't born as natural mentors, but when mentoring skills are developed, it can actually help both mentees and mentors progress even further in STEMM. Trayvon Giles saw this firsthand, when he hit an unexpected obstacle in his academic career. Trayvon had started his research career, the only student in his lab. He thought this was an advantage for him until he joined a summer program researching in a lab where one of his mentors pointed out that it could be a disadvantage too.
Trayvon Giles (08:06):
He told me it was a disadvantage and he was one of the first people to say to me, "It's a disadvantage." He just said, "How do you know you really know this stuff if you can't teach someone else it, or have someone else to continue along?" At the time I thought, "Well, I don't have enough experience or enough context to be able to teach another student." He just said, "If you don't know it now, how are you ever going to gain that unless you start trying to build context and start trying to build experience?" So when I came back, I recruited two students to join the lab and I just started trying to teach them everything that I knew. I realized that there was a lot of things that I didn't truly know that the way I thought I knew, but then there were other things that I knew really well.
Bethany Brookshire (08:54):
When Trayvon started guiding the new students in the lab, he became a more effective mentor and he became a better scientist in the process. As he resumed meeting with his mentors, he realized he could be a better mentee too.
Trayvon Giles (09:06):
I think that opened up a whole new relationship between Dr. Hattel and I, because it took a lot of work off of her, but then I also realized how I could be a better mentee to her, which is something I never truly thought about. I always just thought about maximizing my time with her. I realized I could be more efficient in my communication, but also more aware of her time and the context around the things that she needs. I realized that I could mold how she chooses to mentor other students by giving her feedback about the things that worked and didn't work with us.
Bethany Brookshire (09:53):
Trayvon learned to be a better mentee by mentoring other are students. This opened a new chapter between him and his mentor.
Trayvon Giles (10:00):
I think before I was mentoring other students, I just thought, "I need to learn everything from her every moment I get, and that's it." There was never really a two-way street. It was always her feeding me and me just trying to make it up to her by doing things correctly. I think that second year, it really turned into a two-way street where I was giving her ideas. I was giving her critiques. I was giving her resources, everything. Some of them, she would bounce back at me and say, "Hey, this isn't a good idea," or, "This isn't a good idea," but it became a communication. So that opened up that window of communication and since then, I've tried to mentor someone every year, wherever I've been at.
Bethany Brookshire (10:46):
When Trayvon stepped up to become a leader and mentor his peers, he grew his skills in ways he couldn't have imagined, and he even helped his mentor to grow as well. At the beginning of the episode, I mentioned that there's this cycle of a mentoring relationship where maybe at first, the mentee and mentor are getting to know one another. They build trust and the mentor learns how to best support their mentee. As the relationship continues, it becomes more of a two-way street like Trayvon mentioned, where the mentor is now empowering the mentee to guide others and in turn, the mentee gets to also guide and support their mentor. Then, when the time comes, the relationship may end. Trayvon reflected on all the mentors he's had over the course of his career. He could see that even though the relationships were over, they each served a unique purpose.
Trayvon Giles (11:38):
I just view mentors or all of my mentors as chapters in a journey of being the scientist or person that I want to be. So there are definitely times a chapter closes, but just because that chapter is closed, doesn't mean that I can't go back and re-read it to learn some of the things that I've learned.
Bethany Brookshire (11:59):
A mentoring relationship can end for a lot of reasons. Every student's experience may be different.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
I'm moving on to the next phase in life. I did like my undergraduate lab professor. She was very helpful and was nice enough to let me be her work study for a little bit, and then asked me to join her lab, which was really cool. But that mentorship ended just because I finished my undergraduate career and I've moved on to different things.
Carey Schaffer (12:25):
So I've never ended a mentoring relationship. I think some of them have naturally dropped off, just because we're no longer in the same area or things like that. So I think just making sure to check in with people, and I don't feel like it has to be all the time, but I know whenever I check in with the people who have been my mentors, they always really appreciate hearing what I'm up to and getting that check-in. So it doesn't have to be this overwhelming stressful thing, it's just every now and then.
Bethany Brookshire (12:56):
After our relationship ends, a lot of students keep in touch with their mentor. They'll see each other at conferences, in meetings, and may keep up through email and social media. But sometimes, mentoring relationships don't end well and the parties involved don't stay connected. In an earlier episode, Dr. Jeremy Waisome told us about experience with a negative mentoring relationship. At one point, she and her mentor had a difficult conversation where they laid out the problems they were having and attempted to work through them.
Dr. Jeremy Waisome (13:23):
I think after I had that conversation with him where I laid out how I felt about my relationship and the work that I was doing really put us on a different footing.
Bethany Brookshire (13:34):
Soon after this conversation, Dr. Waisome graduated and the relationship ended. It wasn't exactly a happy ending.
Dr. Jeremy Waisome (13:43):
He didn't hood me. He wasn't the person who was at my graduation.
Bethany Brookshire (13:48):
Even though this mentoring relationship didn't end well, Dr. Waisome decided to turn to another one of her mentors to help her make sense that everything that happened.
Dr. Jeremy Waisome (13:57):
Another one of my mentors helped me come to that realization because she basically said, "You learn something in every situation. There is good in every situation, so find that and hold onto it. Hold onto the light in the darkness." You need people like that who will point you to the light in the dark situations, and so I was at peace. She was the person who, ultimately, walked with me in graduation.
Bethany Brookshire (14:35):
Dr. Waisome realized that even though one of her mentoring relationships didn't end in the way she hoped it might, she had other mentors to turn to who would continue to support and guide her after she graduated.
Dr. Jeremy Waisome (14:46):
That pretty much was the end of things. You're not meant to be close with everyone that you encounter and that's a lesson, I think, for people. You don't have to have the world's best advisor to get a PhD. You just have to have someone who's willing to work with you, and you can find the support that you need elsewhere.
Bethany Brookshire (15:07):
Mentoring relationships end sometimes because the student graduates, the faculty moves on to a different position, or because the mentee and mentor couldn't work effectively together. Sometimes they evolve into a new relationship, a friendship, colleagues, or even a new iteration of mentorship. Often, these transitions reveal what it means to be an effective mentor, and when mentors and mentees learn and develop effective of mentoring skills from each other, or from resources like The Science of Mentorship or Mentorship Education, they open more opportunities to thrive in STEMM. Together, mentees and mentors can support and guide one another to progress their fields and progress the growth in each other.
Speaker 7 (15:46):
I feel like I'm part of this new generation to where the people who came before us who struggled and fought, now they're our mentors and we're being benefactors from their struggle. Now, we're able to continue and spread this beautiful of, "You look like me. I know your struggle. I have your experience. Let's do this together."
Bethany Brookshire (16:12):
This the final episode of season two of The Science of Mentorship. I wanted to thank all of the students who shared their stories with me. I hope you enjoyed hearing from them as much as I did. May we all learn from them and be inspired to become more effective mentors. If you or your institution is interested in how to implement effective mentoring practices, visit the report, The Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM at nas.edu/mentoring. If you enjoyed The Science of Mentorship, please tell your friends, colleagues, students, teachers, and, of course, your mentors and mentees about our podcast and help others discover it by giving us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Thanks for listening.

SOM-Mentor2Mentee-Final Transcript

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