Believe in the People that You are Mentoring Posted on March 1, 2006 Irwin Sandler (bio) talks about his experiences both as mentee and mentor.

I think you have to believe in the fellows, believe in the people that you're mentoring and that whatever they're going to be as researchers, as professionals, is already part of them, and all you're doing as a mentor is first of all, helping them to believe that and helping them to discover their own strengths because if it isn't there already... Same thing in my own career. If somebody had told me when I graduated that I was going to be primarily a researcher, I would have said they were wrong, but as I look back, it was part of me. My mentor, who really is very famous as being a great mentor, didn't tell me I was wrong. He basically told me that it was important to follow the direction I wanted to follow, and I think he had the wisdom to know that part of it is discovery. If in fact I were meant to be a researcher, I would figure it out.

What a mentor does, I think, is maybe help people have confidence in the directions and their ability to go where they want to go and help them figure out what their own strengths are. Those are the nonspecifics, which are probably the most important.

There are specifics also. As a mentor, you know things that your students don't know, and you share that with them. Some of those things are technical or research based, so you impart some information. Part are sort of life learning, and part is networking. A big part of this field that you can only appreciate in retrospect is networking. For most students, if I don't know what they are interested in, I know somebody who does. Often, I know someone who has been in the same situation as them. I think a mentor can do that. They can say, "Call Harry. Call this one. Call that one. Tell them I told you to call. I have no idea what you're talking about, but I know who does." Sometimes people ask, "Can I really call them? Will they really answer my call?" People in our field are actually pretty generous with their time, and they will answer the calls because they're flattered.

In academia, in part, you sometimes wonder, "I'm doing all this stuff, and is anybody really interested?" You have all these students out there that you talk to, and they're doing all sorts of things. They're not necessarily listening. If you're interested in what somebody is doing, they get very flattered, and very often, they'll give you lots of time.

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