Mentoring Students
Teaching is not limited to the classroom. As the senior graduate student in one of my labs since my first semester of graduate school, I have supervised, mentored, and collaborated with over a dozen undergraduate and graduate students. In these roles, I tend to use many of the same strategies that I use in the classroom. For example, I first explain what questions we want to tackle and why we need a particular approach before I explain how to complete the task. In this manner, students do not just memorize a series of steps to reach a specific answer but rather understand why those steps are necessary.
My mentoring philosophy has been further shaped by my own experiences as a mentee. As an undergraduate, my honors thesis was supervised by Chantal Levesque who was a visiting professor at the University of Rochester. She invested considerable time helping me to think through the design of my study (which included three waves of data from undergraduate psychology students and their teaching assistants) and even more time teaching me how to analyze my data. I even remember spending an entire day in the computer lab with her as she tried to simultaneously learn and teach me how to use hierarchical linear modeling so I could properly account for the nesting in my data.
Both of my primary mentors in graduate school (Scott Gest and Eric Loken) follow the junior colleague model of mentoring, treating students as collaborators and contributors from the start. I expect to follow a similar approach as I mentor students. Following the example set by my mentors, I will provide students with opportunities to collaborate on papers and present work at conferences, encourage students to pursue their own research interests, and encourage students to set high expectations for themselves. Throughout, I will provide ample scaffolding so students can meet and exceed their expectations and revise their goals as needed. Most importantly, I will strive to offer the same level of commitment, encouragement, and support to my students that my advisors have provided to me.
My mentoring philosophy has been further shaped by my own experiences as a mentee. As an undergraduate, my honors thesis was supervised by Chantal Levesque who was a visiting professor at the University of Rochester. She invested considerable time helping me to think through the design of my study (which included three waves of data from undergraduate psychology students and their teaching assistants) and even more time teaching me how to analyze my data. I even remember spending an entire day in the computer lab with her as she tried to simultaneously learn and teach me how to use hierarchical linear modeling so I could properly account for the nesting in my data.
Both of my primary mentors in graduate school (Scott Gest and Eric Loken) follow the junior colleague model of mentoring, treating students as collaborators and contributors from the start. I expect to follow a similar approach as I mentor students. Following the example set by my mentors, I will provide students with opportunities to collaborate on papers and present work at conferences, encourage students to pursue their own research interests, and encourage students to set high expectations for themselves. Throughout, I will provide ample scaffolding so students can meet and exceed their expectations and revise their goals as needed. Most importantly, I will strive to offer the same level of commitment, encouragement, and support to my students that my advisors have provided to me.