November 7, 2008

Speakers:
Lian Jian, Brian Hiligoss, Beth St. Jean

Pae's Notes:

• Different people need different thing from the faculty member. You should know yourself and know what you need from the advisor, and talk to them about what you need from his/her mentorship.
• Rackham’s "How to Get the Mentoring You Want" book has many good mentoring topics you can follow.
• Professors are different in working style, research interest. You may change your advisors if your current one’s research interest and/or working style do not match yours. Issues that you should consider is that how active your advisor in applying for grant; whether he/she considers including you when applying for grant; and how well he/she is doing in mentoring you.
• If you are working with multiple advisors, you have to maintain relationships among your advisors which have different style. Let all of them know what’s going on with you. What projects you are on and let your advisor know when/where you will leave for the other advisor’s project.
• You advisor knows you as a person, not only as a student or his advisee. That relationship helps the mentor alive and he can advise better on you.

Ayse's Notes:

Each student's mentoring needs are different; some prefer to be assigned to a specific project or would like adviser recommendations on projects to work on, while others like to have opportunities for more independent decisions/projects. Work-style is important and must be taken into consideration in choosing a mentor along with overlapping research interests.

Although each student is assigned an adviser upon entering the program it is ok to change advisers later on. There may be several factors that influence this decision, but one of the most important is to find a mentor with research interests similar to yours.

How much do you owe your adviser - especially in the job-search process and afterwards? Your adviser may have plans for your future but it is important to keep in mind that it is ultimately your life and your decision to make, so it's not a great idea to choose one job over another just because your adviser wants you to take that job. It is always good to hear out why they think that job will be better for you; they are more experienced and may know things you don't know yet, however the final decision should be yours and you should choose a job that you feel will make you happy.

If you have more than one adviser it's always good to keep everyone in the loop about what you're doing, what you're working on, how things are going for you etc. Good communication with everyone involved is important. They are likely to appreciate this personally, and academically it is always good to let them know how you're allocating your time - especially if working on more than one project.

Different mentoring needs may be met by different advisers, so it is good to keep in mind that you can always talk with other people as well, apart from your adviser.

Your adviser is not only your academic mentor but also someone who knows you personally. Being able to talk with your mentor when you have difficulties or you're not feeling well because some other thing is worrying you is important. This will help them understand you better and help you better.

Xingxing's Notes:

In order to get the kind of mentor you want, it is important to know yourself first. What does your work style look like? How would you get motivated? What is your research interest? Would you work well with external deadlines or you'd rather have more freedom?

Although SI tries to match doctoral students' research interests with at least one faculty member's interests from the very beginning - admission process, there are still exceptions. Plus, people's interests change over time. Good news is it is possible to change advisor later, even if several students mentioned the changing process is tricky.

After you know what you want from mentoring relationship, it is worth mentioning that faculty members are also regular human beings. They have their own research interests, various duties, strengths and constraints. Thus a realistic way is to think carefully about what you can learn from a certain faculty member/your advisor.

A mentoring team is necessary to meet our different needs, especially when you can get different support from each member.

The idea of "managing your advisor/mentoring team" is an active way to think about the mentor-mentee relationship. Regular meetings (as needed) is good for communication.

It seems that we as mentee would like to be able to talk with our mentor/advisor on both academic and non-academic topics. I agree that good communication is always important. Yet I get a little bit confused as Professor Conway differentiated "mentor" and "friend" in one of our early seminar.