Leaving the Nest Posted on October 9, 2006 Helena Kraemer (bio) talks about when it's time to move on to a different mentor.

I think eventually advancement, promotion, everything in the academic world depends on independence, and so you often have mentors who are very reluctant to let their mentees, is that the proper word, to sort of leave the nest. But it really behooves both the mentor and the mentee to make that division and it is part of the mentorship responsibility to, if needed, push the individual out of the nest. But it’s not something you think about. I think the teenagers can’t understand why their parents are sort of holding them back and I think it’s often hard for both the mentor and the mentee to understand that this separation really does have to take place. And it has to take place amicably. It’s important to the person who is being mentored to have the support of their mentor in the furtherance of their career.

I think changing mentorship is a slightly different issue, and that is, frequently it's because one of two things happens. One of them is you develop interests which are outside of the interests of your mentor. Then it becomes easy, because all you really have to say is I would really like to work with so and so who is working in this field that you are not. And in this way, I think David said earlier today, part of the glory of the mentorship relationship is when you can learn from the person you are mentoring, it works this way too. So I’m going to move over into the genetics area and this person’s never worked in genetics, might have his own research enriched by having a genetic aspect to it.

Where it’s a little more difficult is when there is a certain dissatisfaction in the relationship, that either the mentor has expectations that are not being met by the mentee or the mentee has expectations the mentor cannot realize and I think the easiest thing to do is basically just sort of bring in a few mentors on the side. You don’t have to have only one mentor and basically move very slowly out of the aegis of the first mentor.

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