For Mentorships to Work, Colleges Have to Commit

At Dickinson College, Jackie Joyce shared an interest in economic divides with her first-year seminar leader, Brenda Bretz. The professor’s informal academic and life coaching over the next several years instilled in Joyce the dream of becoming a higher-education leader focused on access. Jordan VerPlank’s experience working in John Pollock’s lab at Duquesne University set VerPlank, now a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, on course for a career in science.

Such faculty-undergraduate mentorships can transform lives, and colleges are increasingly emphasizing them, sometimes through formal mentor assignments or as part of student research opportunities. But while mentoring can have a huge impact, those who practice and study it say that, beyond its intellectual and emotional rewards, it is difficult, time consuming, and expensive, and that it requires a sustained institutional commitment.

Susquehanna University, in Selinsgrove, Pa., is among colleges with a formal mentoring program for first-year students. Run by the provost’s office, it pairs students with faculty mentors — about a third of the faculty — who teach first-year seminars called Perspectives courses. In addition, the first-year students have peer mentors, upperclassmen who are paid to attend the Perspectives course and meet one on one or in small groups with the freshmen. Faculty mentors meet with their mentees at least three times in the fall and twice in the spring. From those meetings, mentors file electronic notes that are available to career and academic support offices. The university says preliminary results from the program’s first year, 2017-18, show increased student engagement.

The best mentorships, educators say, are those that happen naturally. But formal mentorships are “a good place to start,” says Suzanne L. Weekes, a professor of mathematical sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Massachusetts, and winner of the 2018 mentoring award from the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Stacy Blake-Beard, a professor of women and leadership at Simmons University, in Boston, and an expert on mentoring, says that many organizations, including colleges, have a tendency to lose excitement over mentoring programs after the first year. Planning and starting formal programs requires considerable human and financial resources. But then these programs, which are offered with the best of intentions, are often eclipsed by crises or other projects that draw attention away from them.

To work, a mentoring program needs support from all leadership strata — from the president, who makes it a clear priority, to the faculty, who offer their experience and wisdom. The effort that faculty members invest needs to be recognized and a reward structure put in place, Blake-Beard says. “You’ve got to take care of people to get it done.”

Formal mentoring, she says, at least sends a clear signal to students that mentoring is valued on their campus. In order to benefit from these programs, students are going to have to interact with the faculty. These relationships are partnerships — both parties need to participate.

‘Hungry for It’

When students do take the initiative to approach a professor, the resulting partnerships can yield impressive results.

Kaitlyn Hipple, a senior at Lycoming College, in Williamsport, Pa., had Professor Sandra Kingery for Spanish 221. Hipple wrote a faculty profile about Kingery for the student paper and became interested in her work. Kingery asked if Hipple wanted to help translate one of 22 short stories by the writer Xánath Caraza for a book project.

Hipple brought in her story translation the very next day. “I was just hungry for it,” Hipple says, “and I really liked it, so I think that set the tone for our work together.”

They “spent the greater part of two summers together in a classroom,” Kingery recalls, “with translated sentences scrawled across the blackboards that surrounded us.”

Another Lycoming student, Jacob Quasius, worked for two years with Sarah Silkey, an associate professor of history, on a digital-humanities research project involving the papers of an Alabama plantation family. The collection, dating from 1812 to 1944, was a book topic for Silkey but also became the subject of Quasius’s senior paper under Silkey’s supervision. His experience managing the large archival database led to internships, Quasius says, and helped him get into law school at George Mason University.

Carol A. Parish, a professor of chemistry at the University of Richmond, has mentored about 100 students in her lab over the last 20 years. In courses, they learn the fundamentals, she says. “It isn’t until they go into the lab and see those fundamentals come to life that it becomes much more interesting and compelling.”

They learn not just research skills but how to collaborate in “teams of people working together and bouncing ideas off each other.” Parish is a computational chemist, and in her lab the physics and math students and the biology and chemistry students get a feel for one another’s outlooks.

Applications of the lab’s work range from quantum mechanics of energy sources like oil sand and oil shale to the molecular dynamics of proteins in Alzheimer’s disease or the design of drugs to block HIV enzymes. Parish has 13 students in her lab at the moment, and they are in charge of their own projects “so that they take intellectual control and ownership.”

Demonstrating Commitment

John A. Pollock, a professor of biological sciences at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, says he values students’ hard work and intellects, but before he takes them on as part of a research team they have to prove their reliability and commitment. Scores of them have.

In June, Pollock won a Presidential Award from the White House and the National Science Foundation for mentoring, over 36 years, more than 150 students, about a quarter of whom have been from racial or ethnic groups underrepresented in STEM fields.

Pollock studies the biology of the nervous system in response to pain, and he also creates digital STEM-education media for museums, schools, and broadcast.

He generally doesn’t take on first-semester freshmen because they are acclimating to the strenuous academic and other demands of college life. Even after that first semester, “for me, the coin of the realm is grades,” he says. “For med school, grad school, or a job, it won’t matter if they are a coauthor if they have a pile of C’s.”

If they excel academically, he says, he still creates some barriers so that students can prove their seriousness. When they send him an email, he asks that they meet face to face. If he thinks they’ll work well with him and his team, he’ll ask them to meet with his grad students.

The first few months in the lab, the undergraduate will be asked to do routine, menial tasks as a volunteer — washing equipment, picking up papers at the library, making photocopies. “That’s me challenging them to show me that they’re willing to put the time in,” he says. If they’re reliable and conscientious, they might get restless and bored. Good! Then, he hopes, they will step forward and tell him that they’re ready to assume more responsibility, which he will gladly give them.

Once they pass that little gantlet, the experience they get is valuable, he says, but not always in a Hollywood epiphany sort of way. Among the most important lessons are frustration and humility. In introductory science courses, students are used to performing experiments that have been repeated for decades if not centuries. If they do them right, the experiments succeed.

In a research laboratory, students learn what it feels like to be part of a team that makes predictions, sometimes wrong ones, and fails. “That’s the real world,” Pollock says. “They have to figure out … what was wrong with the hypothesis, the method.” That helps them develop a new level of maturity and professionalism.

“You could easily draw the outline of my life differently had I not done research in the lab of John Pollock, absorbing his approach to science and education,” says Jordan VerPlank, a postdoctoral research fellow in cell biology at Harvard Medical School.

When VerPlank approached Pollock about working in his pain-receptor lab a decade ago, Pollock let him explore and find his way. VerPlank thought he was doing great work but realizes, in retrospect, how laughably ineffective he was.

Still, the experience led to a summer research fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh medical school that informed VerPlank’s senior honors thesis. VerPlank’s current work involves the disposal of cell waste products that, left unchecked, can contribute to degenerative diseases. He credits Pollock with “not only helping me succeed in college but also pushing me in directions that I probably wouldn’t have sought out at the age of 19 or 20.”

For mentorship programs to work — whether formal or informal — senior leadership needs to understand that it is “fabulously expensive” in materials and faculty time, Pollock says. Undergrads break things. They pour $1,000 of a chemical reagent down the sink by mistake, and “you can’t get mad, you have to roll with that.” They gobble up professors’ weekends trying to get good pictures from microscopes. Hours spent with that one student — unlike the classes of 16 or lectures of 200, don’t sit well with some budget-minded administrators. The time must be understood as an investment in the student and the college’s teaching reputation.

Colleges need to seek out faculty members who are good at and enthusiastic about mentoring, Pollock says, and figure out how to accommodate and reward that work.

Blake-Beard, the Simmons University mentorship expert, says that professors in underrepresented groups, because they are specifically sought out, may be overburdened in their mentoring roles. Lack of necessary support, combined with an expectation of service that is not recognized or rewarded, may have a negative impact on these faculty members.

#MeToo Highlights Risks

The #MeToo era highlights some inherent risks of mentorships, although, Blake-Beard says, those harassment perils are age-old. The gender and power dynamics, she says, represent what those in the field call “the developmental dilemma” — “how to get close enough but not too close.”

Allison McWilliams, an assistant vice president at Wake Forest University who directs its Mentoring Resource Center, says that “mentoring relationships are, and will always be, power relationships.”

“Should we avoid them for fear of the damage that might be inflicted? Of course not,” she says. “But it does mean that we should not enter into these relationships lightly.”

Pollock says that when high-school students work in his labs at Duquesne, the researchers they interact with are required to undergo background checks. “It’s unfortunate,” he says, “but it’s necessary.”

He trusts, though, that his frequent close supervision and an atmosphere of transparency will encourage students of all ages, or others in his lab, to quickly report any inappropriate behavior. In three and a half decades, only once was there a problem — a disrespectful misogynist.

“When I was around, he was an angel,” recalls Pollock. “When I wasn’t around, he was a jerk.” Pollock gave him a few weeks to change his behavior. When that didn’t happen, they parted ways.

McWilliams says that “women may feel reluctant or uncomfortable about initiating a mentoring relationship with a male professor. But shying away from men limits opportunities.”

She advises students to sound out others about potential mentors, whether male or female; to have multiple mentors in a network so that no one relationship starts to make them feel needy or dependent; and to know when to end the mentorship.

“Trust your instincts,” she advises. “If a situation or a person is making you feel uncomfortable, there is probably a reason for it. Not every mentoring relationship works.”

‘Under Her Wing’

Despite the trouble, the expense, and the risks, mentorships are by far the most memorable and important part of college for many students.

Being mentored at Dickinson by Brenda Bretz helped Jackie Joyce define her personal and professional goals.

Bretz is the college’s vice president for institutional effectiveness and inclusivity, but she started at Dickinson in 1982 as a secretary with no college degree. Working full time and raising a family, she got her bachelor’s in American studies and became registrar. She earned her master’s, also in American studies, in night school, then became associate dean and associate provost while getting her doctorate in sociology, administration, and leadership through a program for working adults. When Margee Ensign became Dickinson’s president last year, she wanted to focus on intercultural competency and inclusivity and promoted Bretz to her current VP position.

While Bretz’s socioeconomic status rose, Joyce says, hers fell.

Joyce grew up very comfortably on the Main Line in suburban Philadelphia, attending a private school for girls. But when the Great Recession hit, her dad, who was in the mortgage business, got walloped. The family moved to central Pennsylvania to lower living costs, and Joyce went first to a local Catholic school and then to public school. In Philadelphia, she had taken it for granted that she would attend college. “I had the privilege of not having to think about my class position,” she says. That changed, and she “learned that complacency is a luxury.”

On her first day of classes at Dickinson, in 2015, Joyce met Bretz, who was teaching a freshman seminar on “Class in the Classroom,” a topic of deep experiential interest to them both. Bretz “took me under her wing,” says Joyce. She encouraged Joyce to go to a local borough council meeting to help get a feel for Carlisle, Pa., government and town-gown relations. Based in part on Joyce’s work in that freshman seminar, Dickinson appointed her to be its representative on the council, where she advocated for an LGBTQ-rights bill.

Joyce played basketball for Dickinson, and Bretz went to every one of her freshman games. But she also asked Joyce if the heavy athletic commitment was a good use of her time and energy given her ambitious academic goals. It wasn’t, Joyce decided, and she left the team after that year.

The two women “talk about life” and Joyce’s interests, says Bretz. “I challenge her.” Academically and personally, she says, “I feel like I was able to really push her to see her true potential.”

Inspired by her seminar with Bretz, Joyce became a sociology and Spanish double major. She has traveled in a Dickinson program to Argentina and Ecuador, and has applied for a Fulbright to return to Argentina to teach English. Her current classes include “Policies Shaping American Education,” part of her grounding for what she hopes will be a career in academe focused on access and inclusion.

She is also a mentor to 16 freshmen.