What could a future dancer and a future physicist possibly have in common? Or an actor and a chemist? A painter and an engineer? Their upbringing, their fields of study, their workplace, and their life goals all seem as distant from each other as could possibly be.  However, the needs of undergraduate students seeking academic mentorship are almost identical, no matter their major. Despite their disparate content matter, art and STEM fields endorse the same methodologies for professional accomplishment and require almost identical support for young learners.  Regular study habits, advanced memorization techniques, active practice, and free experimentation are all key elements of development into successful and healthy artists and scientists.  When we as mentors talk about strategies for success for all students, we often touch on motivation, accountability, practice, and joy.  By opening up the conversation between art and science, both fields can learn more about how best to serve their students, ultimately increasing the impact of developmental relationships.  This presentation from a dance scholar and a STEM mentor will highlight key mentoring techniques in each field that reinforce and mirror each other for effective mentoring relationships.

Keywords: undergraduate STEM, mentorship, dance

The concept that mentoring and counseling are related has been widely discussed in the literature. Having a counseling approach to college mentoring and advising seems to be even more important when trying to meet the needs of racially and culturally diverse students. College students’ departure poses a significant problem to college and universities. The National Center for Education Statistics has consistently reported that the percentage of graduates from racial and cultural diverse backgrounds is significantly lower than that of White students. This paper discusses the usefulness, within the mentoring/advising process, of two main pillars of cognitive therapy (CT), that is, Problem Solving and Cognitive Restructuring. It is argued that they can be important tools to assist college mentors and advisors in helping culturally and racially diverse students to overcome cognitive distortions and beliefs that may be roadblocks to their academic success. The concepts of Problem Solving and Cognitive Restructuring are discussed as well as common cognitive distortions of culturally and racially diverse students that negatively impact their ability to remain in college and be academically successful.   

Self-mentoring™ is a practice of leadership development that applies mentoring strategies; it is not a replacement for mentoring practice but can compliment such approaches (Carr, 2012). Self-mentoring™, by formal definition, refers to an individual, referred to as an achiever, willing to initiate and accept responsibility for self-development by devoting time to navigate within the culture of the environment in order to make the most of opportunity to strength competencies needed to enhance job performance and career progression through four stages: self-awareness, self- development, self-reflection, and self-monitoring.  (Carr, 2011; Carr, 2012). Informally, self-mentoring™ is a sustainable practice of building leaders that is different for each individual through the identification and development of individual skills using collaborations, observations, one-one-one interactions, discussion groups, networking activities, community clusters, and other identified measures through self-mentoring™. Self-mentoring™ can be applied to any field and within any profession. It is not age, gender, race, or socio-economic status bias. Anyone that wants to become a self-mentor™ can take control of the present and begin self-mentoring™. An exploratory study was conducted in a public K-12 North Carolina school involving teachers that were admittedly struggling with goals and meeting school expectations. The yearlong study provided seminars and guidance throughout the school year. Using mixed methodology approach, the participants responded to questionnaires, surveys, and interviews. Results of the study suggest that self-mentoring™ is a means for participants to build 1) confidence, 2) self-efficacy, 3) willingness to support others, and the 4) ability to assume leadership roles, which increases sustainability. 

Caring about others in the context of community is an anchor in the development of effective relationships. In the absence of intentional caring, it is very difficult to pursue successful developmental interaction experiences. Unfortunately, principles and practices associated with caring communities are usually not addressed in existing mentoring programs. Yet these very principles and practices can be used to develop effective relationships, construct a shared vision, reduce violence, improve communication, address issues of culture, and foster respect. To accomplish this, it is important to understand how social factors and the structural elements of education (i.e., programs, policies, and practices) can facilitate or inhibit individual participation in caring communities that are building successful developmental relationships. To better understand how principles and practices of caring communities can be used to promote relationship development, it is helpful to analyze their interplay in a variety of contexts. This paper reports on the findings and methodological procedures for a project that identified and systematically integrated principles and practices of caring communities into three different cultures: (a) a college of education in an urban, regional, comprehensive teaching university; (b) an identified student population from the urban, regional, comprehensive teaching university; and (c) teachers from a K-12 urban public school department in the Orne Department of Education Living Language Work Group, Alençon, France. Readers will have a greater understanding of the principles and practices of caring communities, offering them an opportunity to rethink and refine their practices in developing effective relationships.  

To build research capacity for early-career socio-behavioral faculty conducting HIV/STI research in underserved communities and to enhance diversity in the scientific workforce, we conduct a training program for visiting professors (VPs), started in 1996.  In this intensive research education and mentoring program, VPs are in residence at the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) for six weeks for three consecutive summers.  Crucial features of the program include funding to conduct pilot studies and joint commitment of mentors and VPs to immerse themselves in formal seminars, one-on-one mentoring meetings, and protected writing time. Guided by Entrepreneurial Developmental Network Structures (EDNS) and Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), we developed a team mentoring approach that goes beyond the classical dyadic mentor-mentee pairing while retaining the advantages of a single “go to” mentor to help synthesize feedback from multiple mentors and fellow VPs.  The diversity of mentors and VPs enhance problem-solving capacities and options by increasing the breadth of knowledge, skills, and available contacts. Mentors and VPs collaborate to identify career goals and implement the steps by which broad theoretically-driven research ideas are refined into feasible projects. Data are analyzed for conference presentations, publications, and preliminary data for grant proposals. VPs are guided through the process with rigorous yet self-affirming feedback designed to simultaneously teach grant-writing and research skills.  These efforts have resulted in 55 VPs securing over $160 million to conduct significant studies, publishing over 640 articles, launching innovative programs of HIV/STI prevention research, and establishing themselves as independent investigators.

Inspired by their attendance at the 2012 Mentoring Institute, three faculty from different health and human service disciplines are working together to create a formalized mentoring program for their university.  Funding is being provided by the Provost and the College to develop a pilot program across seven academic departments in one College during the 2013-2014 academic year. Best practices identified during a literature review and visits to other universities with established mentoring programs will provide the framework for the pilot program. Newly hired tenure track faculty and their assigned mentors will be provided with resources and have regularly scheduled meetings to assist new faculty in adjusting to the university and assist the mentors in providing effective guidance. Using a mixed methods design, data will be collected throughout the year to assess program effectiveness. Both graduate and undergraduate students will be included to assist with literature review, tool development, data collection, and data analysis. This presentation will discuss the inspiration for the program, its structure, methodology, funding, and resources. Baseline data, collected from 2012-2013 new hires not involved in a formal mentoring program, will be discussed as well as preliminary data collected from the newly hired faculty and their mentors.

This discussion is based on a religious mentor’s methods of holistic mentoring, “Those things which you have learned, received, heard and seen in me do…” (The Holy Bible, 1982).  Effective mentoring of any kind for maximum impact is through — teaching for learning, giving for receiving, saying for hearing and showing for seeing by a resourceful and committed mentor to a serious-minded mentee. Professional-know-how is however most vital in any mentoring programme. The quoted mentor tasked his mentees to do (essence of mentoring) i.e. to put into use all they have learned, received, heard and seen in him. The paper practically and in strong terms discusses the best ways (to make) mentees can maximally learn, receive, hear and see. Essentially, a mentor should always have what to teach, give, say and show: How to bring these about is resourcefully discussed, since it is for these reasons someone is made a mentor, or one makes self a mentor. Bringing his experience to bear, the author practically and professionally discusses what each entails, pointing out what to teach — how to, whom to and when to; what to give — how to, whom to, and when to; what to say — how to, to whom, and when to; what to show — how to, whom to and when to.  How to make the most of the training relationship by both parties is resourcefully discussed. 

Keywords: Mentoring, Learning, Hearing, Seeing, Receiving, Teaching, Mentee.

Aspects of the school reform movement call for and include parent engagement; a widely defined and loosely implemented term encompassing academic and non-academic interaction between school and families. Research underscores the importance and efficacy of parent engagement but few tools exist to assess the specific but multiple resources a school community contains and then align them with the specific academic and non-academic needs of the school. Emergent web and “smart” technologies are allowing social infrastructures to reform the methodology of their missions as software applications are built around specific needs. A pilot program within an underperforming high school in the northeastern United States demonstrated the use of a database web application in garnering six dimensions (assets, skills, professions, interests, relationships, and physical environment) of school community interaction to use in supporting family and community interaction with the curriculum as well as ancillary non-curricular programs within the school. The use of the web application in less traditional and broader resource to consumer contexts is explored in this presentation.

Mentoring, as a model for supporting professional growth and development and career advancement, has had varying degrees of success in a wide array of organizational and private contexts. However, its critics might argue that it is one-sided, with the mentor squarely placed in the role of expert who guides the mentee as learner from the mentor’s platform of expertise and personal experience. While the benefits of such a model are well documented, there is reason to believe that neither the mentor nor mentee is positioned to derive the full benefits of the relationship as it has been traditionally defined. Further, there is something quite remarkable that remains untapped in the traditional mentoring model. In this paper the traditional notion of mentoring is challenged, and a new model that showcases the mentoring relationship as a dynamic inter-developmental process that fosters the co-creation of knowledge is presented. Moving beyond the role of mentor as helper and guide and mentee as learner, the authors describe a powerful case study that illustrates the role of humility in re-defining the boundaries of mentoring to foster the co-creation of powerful transformative impact. Recent research in leadership humility and transformative learning is referenced, providing an evidence basis for the model that is presented. A checklist for action that can inform the design of more impactful mentoring relationships is offered. 

Since 1966, Lee College has been a dynamic force in correctional education. The mission of the Lee College Huntsville Center is to provide quality educational opportunities in a unique and challenging environment whereby TDCJ offenders may consider enrollment in a variety of academic and technical programs which attempt to promote enhanced learning leadership based on active and collaborative learning outcomes. During the past two years, the Huntsville Center has developed a mentoring program in conjunction with a new Instructional Technology Lab for the purpose of providing supplemental and specialized instruction in support of its academic and technical programs. The goal of the mentoring program is to train qualified peer tutors who provide instructional assistance to developmental students who must satisfy TSI testing criteria. Instructional Peer Tutors (IPTs) are former and current students who have a personal desire to assist other student offenders meet their educational goals. They provide a wide range of educational assistance in an effort to maximize college resources. While some colleges may define a small percentage of their student body as “at risk” students, the Huntsville Center serves a large number of student offenders who have been drop-outs, and delinquent youths, and have encountered a life of hard knocks including multiple arrests leading to a criminal conviction. According to major recidivism studies, offenders who completed two years of college have a 10% recidivism rate as compared to 60% for those receiving no additional education . . . a tremendous cost savings to the State of Texas and its taxpayers!