Responsibilities of supervisors and PhD’s: good mentorship

A story about wise teachers and eager students

Dr Els MaeckelbergheInstitute for Medical Education

Telemachus and Mentor

handing down tradition, supporting talent, and securing future leadership

Mentor / Supervisor

• willing and able to share experience and expertise

• reflect on their successes and failures

• can explain what they have learned

• are interested in the professional development and career advancement of those they mentor

• officially assigned and a particular role in the academic setting

• responsible for ensuring that the student fulfills departmental and institutional requirements for an advanced degree

supervisors do not necessarily or reliably take on theresponsibilities of a mentor

Mentoring-supervising aimed at

• identifying

• understanding

• clarifying

professional standards and ethical values

UMCG Research Code3. Good mentorshipResearch is often done by junior researchers. This group comprises individuals with a wide range of functions, such as interns, students, analysts, PhD students (trainee research assistants, scholarship students, AIOS6/AGIKOs, medical PhD students) postdocs and university lecturers, all working under the supervision of a more experienced researcher (postgraduate or staff member) and ultimately under a professor. Supervising junior researchers properly is an important part of good scholarship, partly because they often depend on their supervisors. Within the UMCG, the relationship between supervisors and junior researchers is not only regulated in the graduate school, but also outside this environment, such as in the clinic, research centers, research facilities and laboratories. The tasks and responsibilities in these relationships are described below.http://www.rug.nl/umcg/research/general/research-code-pdf/researchcodeumcgnet10okt07engels.pdf

Responsibilities of the mentor

• Provide knowledge, wisdom, and developmental support

• Have confidence about the advice given• Develop an understanding of the unique needs of

the mentee• Make sure mentees' expectations are appropriate• Obligation to intervene and help out in instances

when the mentee has followed the mentor's advice but it has turned out poorly

Responsibilities of the mentor

• NO PATERNALISM• Confidentiality• Loyalty• Care

Mentors are to be partial to the student but impartial about the student’s work

Laws of HermanIrving P. Herman is a physics professor at Columbia University, who offeredadvice to graduate students through an article that appeared in Nature(Herman 2007).

1. Your vacation begins after you defend your thesis.

2. In research, what matters is what is right, not who is right.

3. In research and other matters, your adviser is always right, most of the time.

4. Act as if your adviser is always right, almost all the time.

5. If you think you are right and you are able to convince your adviser, your adviser will be very happy.

6. Your productivity varies as (effective productive time spent per day)1,000.

7. Your productivity also varies as 1/(your delay in analysing acquired data)1,000.

8. Take data today as if you know that your equipment will break tomorrow.

9. If you would be unhappy to lose your data, make a permanent back-up copy of them within five minutes of acquiring them.

10. Your adviser expects your productivity to be low initially and then to be above threshold after a year or so.

11. You must become a bigger expert in your thesis area than your adviser.

12. When you cooperate, your adviser’s blood pressure will go down a bit.

13. When you don’t cooperate, your adviser’s blood pressure either goes up a bit or it goes down to zero.

14. Usually, only when you can publish your results are they good enough to be part of your thesis.

15. The higher the quality, first, and quantity, second, of your publishablework, the better your thesis.

16. Remember, it’s your thesis. You (!) need to do it.

17. Your adviser wants you to become famous, so that he/she can finally become famous.

18. Your adviser wants to write the best letter of recommendation for you possible.

19. Whatever is best for you is best for your adviser.

20. Whatever is best for your adviser is best for you.

The Laws of Jasonmentorship from a postdoc’s perspective (Jason Abercrombie)

Top 10 characteristics of a good mentor

1. Understanding of individual strengths, weaknesses, and unique talents

2. Clarity

3. Good sense of humour

4. Approachability and a good listener

5. Capacity for correction

6. Diplomacy

7. Organisation

8. Leadership and vision

9. Forgiveness and patience

10. Communication

6. Diplomacy

7. Organisation

8. Leadership and vision

9. Forgiveness and patience

10. Communication

Intermezzo

The Laws of Jason

Top characteristics of a bad mentor

1. Anger

2. Greed

3. Apathy

4. Condescension

5. Arrogance

6. Complaining

7. Use of fear or intimidation to produce results

8. Absenteeism

9. Workaholism

JASON….

Responsibilities of the mentee

• Reciprocity• Duty of veracity to the mentor – It also binds the mentee to be truthful about any

observation they report about what is going on elsewhere in the organization

• Efficiency• Gratitude

Do not forget…

• a mentoring relationship is a personal as well as a professional relationship,

• mentees should realize that it will be governed by the style, attributes, and chemistry of the individuals involved

Reciprocity

Both mentors and mentees should expect that advice will be recognized for what it is: • a suggestion regarding a problem or set of circumstances that is

based on a unique perspective which is framed by the experiences, values and goals of the mentor.

• As a result, mentors and mentees should expect that advisees will not necessarily follow the advice they are given.

• It is essential that students evaluate the advice they receive in the context of their own values, goals, needs, resources and experience.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” ― Plutarch