What Mentors Often Miss

Although it’s rarely discussed, a personal relationship is what makes mentoring meaningful for both parties

By Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts

André da Loba for The Chronicle

She was a seemingly quiet, introspective student. On the surface, her introversion didn’t bode well for her success in my public-speaking course at the Community College of Philadelphia. While other students were often loud and more gregarious, she said very little in class. Nevertheless, I could always tell she was engaged. From the way her eyes held mine when I explained how to effectively incorporate research into a presentation, and from the way she methodically outlined and delivered her speeches, I knew this student was paying attention.

At the close of the semester, I pulled the young woman aside and asked about her plans. What did she want to do with her life? How did she plan to execute those plans? She explained that she wanted to continue her studies, hopefully obtain her bachelor’s degree at Temple University, and possibly even pursue a master’s degree. Her ambition impressed me, and since, at the time, I was launching a small indie press, I asked her if she would like an opportunity to intern with the company. She said yes, and our relationship was born.

It would be several months, however, before our connection developed into a mentor-mentee relationship. In that time, I not only learned about her career aspirations but also discussed with her at length her romantic relationship with her longtime boyfriend and even her spiritual wrestlings. Those personal aspects of our experience together would shift the way I viewed mentoring.

Two major ingredients in mentoring are often left out of academic and professional-development dialogues on the subject. One is a simple yet novel approach: Care. Professors should deeply care for those they mentor. Become a friend.

Certainly not the most scholarly of perspectives, authentically caring for a mentee matters more than anything else because it allows both parties to sustain a relationship beyond what’s mutually beneficial. And I don’t mean caring in the very distant, arm’s-length (and dare I say, disingenuous?) way all professors “care” for our students. The kind of caring necessary for a successful mentoring relationship requires an emotional investment not just in the academic journey of the student but also in the personal one. We must go beyond the role of teacher while not abdicating that role, either.

The other missing ingredient in mentoring is one that is seemingly obvious but often neglected: Professor-mentors must listen more than we talk. This is a critical point—so much so that I decided to reach out to a few of my colleagues to ask about their own classroom experiences. Shonell Bacon, an instructor at McNeese State University, in Lake Charles, La., told me, “The goal for me, when I mentor, is not to simply give students my ‘word’ as gospel but to understand who they are, what they want … and then figure out my role in the equation.” So the most effective mentoring relationships are not about a “sage” delivering wisdom to some young impressionable mind, but about a professor listening to a student in order to determine what he or she needs.

Granted, advice and guidance are certainly a significant part of the relationship, but these should not be the primary agendas of either person involved. The film director Steven Spielberg said it brilliantly: “The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.” Being open to simply listening to our mentees, even when conversations veer into the personal realm, helps us understand how they think and teaches them to articulate their needs clearly. It wasn’t until I got to know the quiet young woman in my speech class personally that I really understood what she needed.

These practices are especially needed in the community-college setting, where many students are older and have more outside responsibilities, or are struggling academically. Community-college professors encounter students with very different needs—for example, a mature student looking for professional development or career training, a teen who did not perform well in high school, a single mother looking to expand her career options, or a formerly incarcerated person trying to re-enter society. That diversity of experience means that professors will most likely have to deal with a student’s personal issues at some point.

Unfortunately, too many of us are not willing—or logistically able. Again, I wondered if my assumptions were right, so I reached out to another colleague, who is a part-time adjunct instructor. He told me that because of his low pay ($700 a credit hour, over 14 weeks), he simply could not afford to spend time mentoring students. His college also did not take into account that for every hour he spent in the classroom, he needed to spend three or four hours of preparation time outside the classroom.

Community-college professors who do manage to serve as mentors, who listen intently and find ways to extend themselves, reap impressive returns. When my quiet speech student went on to Temple, she told me she wasn’t intimidated or afraid to reach out to professors, because she had learned that they were there to help, not just to grade papers.

The “soft” skills of caring and listening do not interfere with the usefulness of some of the more standard aspects of traditional mentoring relationships. While I’m proposing a more intimate approach to the mentoring relationship, there still needs to be some structure governing how mentee and mentor engage each other (in meetings, by email, etc.). But that structure will be heavily dependent on their personal relationship. In “Maximizing Mentoring: A Guide for Building Strong Relationships” (William T. Grant Foundation, 2011), Colleen Ammerman and Vivian Tseng write, “Some mentoring pairs find that the structure and deadlines imposed by meetings scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis promote fruitful exchanges. Others find that their most productive conversations happen on an ad-hoc basis.”

There will always be some students with whom our associations will never extend beyond our campus offices or vague email conversations. Yet I submit that the relationships with the greatest potential for longevity and long-term impact are the ones that are close relational experiences for both parties.

That quiet speech student? Our relationship grew by leaps and bounds as she earned her bachelor’s degree from Temple and her master’s degree from the University of Phoenix, started her career at R.J. Reynolds, and married that longtime boyfriend we’d chatted about so often.