Mentoring

Mentoring A mentoring relationship is a close individualized relationship that develops over time between a graduate student and a faculty member that includes both caring and guidance. Regardless of their fields, faculty need to balance the many demands that are made of them. A partial list of their responsibilities includes: teaching undergraduate and graduate courses; advising undergraduate and graduate students; serving on disserta-tion committees; researching or working on creative projects; writing grants; writing books and articles; reviewing the work of their students and colleagues; serving on departmental and university committees; and fulfilling duties for professional organi-zations. The pace of these demands does not let up over time. Junior faculty face the pres-sure of preparing for their tenure review, which means they have to be engaged in an active research agenda. As faculty become more senior, and their national and international prominence increases, there is a concomitant rise in the requests for their time and energies (Tierney & Rhoads, 1994). Rather than trying to find one mentor, think of your task as building a mentoring team. Although we use the mentoring, faculty, team, work, students, mentors, graduate, writing, university, undergraduate, time, serving, serve, professional, part, one, needs, members, increases, departmental, demands, creative, committees, although, about, working, word, won’t, whom, way, urge, universities, trying, tierney, three, think