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Handling Tricky Mentoring Situations
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Rique Campa
Associate Dean of the Graduate School, Professor of Wildlife
Ecology
Michigan State University
Welcome to the Effective and Inclusive Research Mentoring CIRTLCast Series
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen
Orrin H. Ingram Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Neurological Surgery,
Director of Vanderbilt Biophotonics Center (VBC), Director of VU-CIRTL, Director of
Undergraduate Studies BME
Vanderbilt University
Handling Tricky Mentoring Situations:
Effective Mentoring of Graduate Students
Henry (Rique) Campa, III, Ph.D., C.W.B.®
Associate Dean, The Graduate School and Professor of Wildlife Ecology
Michigan State University
YOU are the “mentor”, “boss”-remember:
*Graduate education is a dynamic process, full of stochastic events
*As a faculty member, mentor, leader-you have responsibilities and
obligations to meet
*“One-size does not fit all” – one mentoring model does not work well for
all – this includes whatever works well for you.
*What is the “interest-based approach” to resolving issues?
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do? YOU have
to make decisions-immediately and others in the near-future
You are at a regional, disciplinary conference it is 10p.m., you receive a call at
your hotel room from one of your Ph.D. students to tell you that another one
of your students does not plan to show up tomorrow morning to give his
conference presentation because he is “too stressed out”. He is on his way
to his parent’s home and doesn’t know when he’ll be back/if at all. He doesn’t
intend to call you. Members from the funding agency supporting this work will be
attending the conference session and are looking forward to a project update.
Additionally, fieldwork (i.e., data collection period-January-August) needs to start in
three weeks, however, the Christmas holiday is just two weeks away. Missing a field
season is not an option due to availability of funding and contractual obligations.
YOU are the mentor:
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next 24 hours?
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next week?
Responses on the Whiteboard
(no responses on the whiteboard indicate “no decisions” thus you are avoiding the issue(s) )
Decisions/actions within the next 24 hours? Decisions/actions within the next week?
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do? YOU have
to make decisions-immediately and others in the near-future
One of your Ph.D. students is approximately 1 month from completing her dissertation
and then after you review it one more time, will distribute it to her committee. She
is nearly done and has done a fabulous job—you both are very excited about her
success! She receives a call from her dad-her mom has suddenly been hospitalized,
she needs to go home immediately and is uncertain when she’ll return.
She is gone 10 days, her mom passes away. After many hours of talks over coffee, she
resumes work on her dissertation. After 1 month, no progress has been made, all
she wants to do is re-analyze data (not needed), funding is quickly running out, and
the deadline for a final project report is quickly approaching.
YOU are the mentor:
What decisions and actions need to happen this week?
Other scenarios to think about…
-An M.S. student has successfully defended her thesis. At the defense,
you discover she did not pass a statistics class and, therefore, does
not have enough credits to graduate. She is returning to India in 2 days.
-You discover that a research technician has fabricated data on a project
for approximately 1 week. How will you confront him and what will
you do? This person has been a reliable worker for the last year.
-You are on a Ph.D. student’s committee. The night before you find out
one of the chapters in his dissertation is not included (i.e., the last one,
it is listed in the Table of Contents, and it is your area of specialization).
His seminar and defense start tomorrow at 8:30a.m.
*Graduate education is a dynamic process, full of stochastic events
*As a faculty member, mentor, leader-you have responsibilities and
obligations to meet
*“One-size does not fit all” – one mentoring model does not work well for
all – this includes whatever works well for you.
*Use the “interest-based approach” for resolving issues.
*Expect the unexpected!
The art and flexibility of mentoring
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, PhDOrrin H. Ingram Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Neurological SurgeryDirector – Vanderbilt Biophotonics Center
Director – VU-CIRTL
Being a mentor
You can be “friends” with your grad students but remember You are the “boss”
You will be a counselor, a mentor, an advisor Not just for research You will be called upon to
Settle disputes Build confidence Be a sounding board
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do?
You will be mentoring students from very different walks of life. Your mentoring style will have to be flexible and specific to a particular student and will
depend on many things. As a female advisor in Engineering, many of my students are male.
So you have a male student who you realize over the first year of your mentorship has trouble receiving criticism from you. You get push back for every
suggestion you make. You also notice that similar feedback from a male co-investigator gets action. You have managed to navigate this personality
conflict to the near conclusion of the student’s PhD. The student has 1 more paper left to get data for and write, when the student informs you that he
has received a fellowship to go to MIT but it starts within 2 months so he has to defend asap.
YOU are the mentor:
How do you respond at the time of the meeting?
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next?
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do?
You get a call from the Dean of students – He/she has been informed that one of your PhD students has threatened to commit
suicide.
YOU are the mentor:
How do you respond within the next 24 hours?
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next week/month?
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do?
You have 2 PhD students working on a federally funded grant with a co-investigator in an area that is not your field. During the
subsequent two years, the co-investigator has identified a staff member in his/her lab to work with your students. Your students send
their resp. data to the staff member (who is partially supported through your grant) who analyzes the data and sends the results to
your students.
Two years later as the students are working on their papers and close to defending, you realize something is off. You follow up with
your students, meet with your collaborator and essentially find out that the results provided by the staff member is wrong. For this
discussion, lets ignore your handling of this situation with the collaborator.
YOU are the mentor:
What decision and actions do you need to make within the next 24 hours?
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next week/month?
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do?
One of your 2nd-3rd year graduate student is taken sick and goes home for care. The student is diagnosed with cancer and
expected survival is low.
YOU are the mentor:
How do you respond (a) to the sick student (b) to the rest of the members of your lab?
Subsequently and in a very short time frame, the student passes away. You are upset but….
YOU are the mentor:
How do you respond within the next 24 hours?
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next week/month?
Scenarios (“real-life”): What would YOU do?
During weekly meetings with your students, one of them comes to your office and pretty soon into the conversation, she/he gets
emotional (starts crying) and essentially says she/he feels unappreciated, that you are ignoring her/him (mostly because you
had to cancel your last two meetings with the student) and she/he is not sure how she/he feels about working in your lab.
YOU are the mentor:
How do you respond to this during the meeting?
What decisions and actions do you need to make in the next week/month?
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Setting Clear Expectations and Creating
Mentoring Partnership Agreements
September 23, 1PM ET/12PM CT/11AM MT/10AM PT
Presenter:
Bennett Goldberg, Professor of Physics and Science Education and
Director of STEM Education Initiatives, Boston University
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