Renewed Focus on Academic Mentoring

A new program of mentoring workshops is placing renewed emphasis on advising and counseling professors of chemistry at the earliest stage of their careers. Mentoring in academia is an effort by experienced faculty members to share their wisdom and professional expertise with undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and novice faculty.

A recent workshop on mentoring, intended to be the first of an annual series, marked the start of the program. "Mentoring for the Future in Academic Chemistry," held in Greenbelt, Md., in May, was organized by chemistry professor Michael P. Doyle of the University of Maryland with input from Program Director John M. Schwab of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

"While there are examples of superb mentors among chemistry faculty, we hypothesized that overall there is a lack of consistency in the mentoring provided to chemistry graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty," Schwab says. "Faculty do a great job of teaching the technical side of chemistry, but young chemists don't always get knowledgeable guidance on key career skills, such as how to manage a research group, how to sell a research idea, or how to teach effectively. The mentoring workshop was conceived as a way to help new faculty acquire some of these skills--or at least to give them ideas about how to get help and advice when it's needed."

A key secondary goal, he says, "was to plant the idea that effective mentoring needs to be a core value of the chemistry community. Everyone benefits when young scientists get off to the fastest possible start, and really good mentoring can help to make that a reality. Mentoring is worth every bit of the effort that it takes, and we cannot afford to approach it in a haphazard fashion."

According to Schwab, 28 young faculty were selected and seven experienced faculty mentors were recruited to attend the workshop. Mentors and new faculty who specialize in organic chemistry and chemical biology were targeted specifically to focus the program and ease informal interactions. At the session, young faculty were coached on a range of topics, including National Institutes of Health grantsmanship, research-group management, and teaching and mentoring techniques. Young faculty also described their research projects in brief presentations that were critiqued by mentors.

"Good mentoring is first and foremost leading by example," says assistant professor of chemistry M. Christina White of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, one of the young faculty participants at the workshop. "I find that I am impacted most by being shown, rather than told. Good mentoring is also making yourself available for questions and providing thoughtful and frank responses. My most rewarding interactions with senior colleagues have been those where I am challenged to think more deeply, or even differently, about a topic or problem. Finally, the best mentoring is recognizing that not all advice given will or should be taken. Encouraging individuals to develop their own scientific style is important for maintaining the high level of creativity that is chemistry's trademark."

Chemistry professor Peter Beak, a senior faculty participant and a member of White's department, says mentoring often is "based on the learning that has been gained by sometimes painful experience and can be very helpful to those entering a new stage in their career. Since we all have different inclinations, it is best if it is individualized and situational, and it requires open communication."

A young faculty participant, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry Robert H. Cichewicz of the University of Oklahoma, says: "Transitioning from postdoctoral studies to becoming a new faculty member is a great deal like traveling to a foreign country. You are entering a whole new culture, and you need to learn the customs, practices, and rules of the system in order to smoothly shift into your new role." In that regard, "the conference was incredibly valuable," he says. "I have suggested to my department chair that all future chemistry faculty hires be given the opportunity to attend this workshop."

MENTORING SERVES as a means "to protect the investment that the department and university have made in you," Cichewicz adds. "If you bought a new tree and planted it in your yard, wouldn't you nurture it until it could establish its own roots and support itself?"

Boston College is one school that has developed a tradition of effective mentoring, according to professor T. Ross Kelly, another of the workshop's faculty mentors. The chemistry department there is relatively small, with fewer than 20 faculty members, Kelly notes, "so every appointment is crucial. Like everyone else, we try to hire the best people. But once we've hired somebody, we try to do everything we can to help them succeed. That sounds obvious, but it's actually pretty uncommon. Probably the most important thing we do is help with grant writing, because if you can't get funded, you're never going to get tenure. It requires several hours of effort to go over someone's grant proposal very carefully, but it makes a difference." Other mentoring activities in the department include reading manuscripts and observing and critiquing teaching, he says.

Such an emphasis on mentoring isn't unique to Boston College's chemistry department, however. "Other departments are similarly committed to mentoring their junior faculty, and it has paid off for them, too," Schwab says.

Besides the workshop, other programs have encouraged mentoring in past years. These include a course in scientific management for beginning academics, held in 2002 and sponsored by Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (C&EN, Nov. 25, 2002, page 64). A book based on that course--"Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty"--is available for free at HHMI's website (www.hhmi.org/grants/office/graduate/labmanagement.html).

The Society for Advancement of Chicanos & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) sponsors mentoring activities to help minority students in science, mathematics, and engineering.

The National Science Foundation sponsors annual Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring, each of which includes a $10,000 grant to support continued mentoring. The most recent awards went to nine individuals, three of whom are chemistry professors, and five organizations, one of which is SACNAS (C&EN, May 23, page 7).

NSF Director's Awards for Distinguished Teaching Scholars are given each year to researchers who have made outstanding contributions in their roles as educators and mentors. Each award includes grants of up to $300,000 over four years to support research and the continuation or start-up of teaching and outreach programs. This year, a chemistry professor received one of the seven awards (C&EN, June 27, page 12).

The recent session "is, to my knowledge, the first time that a mentoring workshop has specifically targeted the chemistry community," Schwab says. "There has never been such a serious and broad-based effort to mentor young faculty in chemistry."

The workshop "had many benefits," Cichewicz says. "It was great to see so many people with the same questions and concerns about negotiating the process of their career development. Discussions covered topics ranging from proposal writing to dealing with new graduate students. And I really enjoyed the chance to discuss these topics directly with other new faculty and see how they handled their problem situations." This is "a valuable program that needs to be continued," he adds. "This program not only will benefit new faculty but also will serve to strengthen academic chemistry programs for the future."

Schwab is thinking of the future as well. "We are hopeful that this workshop will become an annual event and that it may lead to a community-wide commitment to intensive mentoring and nurturing of talented young chemists, going well beyond the technical aspects of conducting lab science," he says.