TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Student Mentorship as a Teaching Practice

Weekly teaching tips are designed to bolster your teaching toolbelt with local examples grounded in teaching and learning literature and relevant professional development opportunities.

Introduction

What do we mean when we talk about mentorship and how do we do it well?

The answers vary across individuals and contexts, and are shaped by discipline, student and faculty priorities, and mentor/mentee skill development. We invited faculty panelists for next week’s CAFE on student mentorship to offer a glimpse into what mentoring looks like in their own practice. Their reflections raise possibilities and questions about trust, invitation, agency, intellectual risk-taking, opportunity, and recognizing potential.

Grounded in cura personalis and SCU’s teacher-scholar tradition, mentorship at SCU invites attention to the whole person and to the evolution of our relationships with students. Early in the academic year, as relationships with students take shape, we’re making space to consider how we cultivate them with intention.

 

Pascale Guiton | Assistant Professor, Biology Build trust and establish expectations Mentorship is a relationship built on trust, active listening, and mutual growth. It’s not just about handing down advice. As a mentor, my role is to create a safe space with clear expectations where my mentee feels comfortable sharing ideas, identifying blind spots, and building self confidence. At the same time, I strive to offer honest perspectives and help open doors to new opportunities whenever possible.

Margaret Hunter | Professor, Sociology Extend an invitation Mentorship is about building a unique relationship with a student where I am really pushing them to try new things, take intellectual risks and "rise to the occasion," so to speak. I also want to expose them to professional experiences they haven't had before. I tend to think more about what would help the students than what would help me when I employ research assistants.

Of course, their work helps me too, but I want to make sure they are learning and that they feel like they are important to the project. 

When I am looking for students to work for me as research assistants, I try to invite students who are not already necessarily at the top of their class. There are lots of talented students at SCU and many are sitting quietly at the back of the class and just need the invitation to really thrive and take off.

Jennifer Woolley | Professor, Management & Entrepreneurship Support agency and discernment Mentoring is an opportunity to support students beyond the classroom, bridging the gap between academic performance and personal self-efficacy and agency. I find it rewarding to support mentees with their career goals and help them discern what success means on their own terms. Mentoring also keeps me connected with fresh perspectives from the next generation of emerging professionals.

Heather Clydesdale | Assistant Professor, Art & Art History Recognize potential Thinking back on people who mentored me, the shared quality was that they recognized something in me that I didn’t see in myself. At the heart of my mentoring is an ironclad belief in my students’ potential and a willingness to help them kindle and realize it.  For major assignments, I give students freedom in crafting a topic.

As they puzzle out how to develop it, I have the chance to offer guidance and demonstrate confidence; with their final work, they have the chance to teach me things I didn’t know. 

 

Want to explore further?

Podcast: Student Scholar Perspectives on Mentoring Relationships

One lens for thinking about mentorship comes from student-faculty pedagogical partnership, which offers three key attributes of a mentor/mentee relationship: respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility (Cook-Sather et al, 2014). The 3Rs invite questions for reflection: How do we communicate and enact respect? What does reciprocity look like given varied roles and expertise? How is responsibility understood and negotiated?

NAS-NAE-IOM. Adviser, teacher, role model, friend: On being a mentor to students in science and engineering. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 1997 (1997 National Academies report.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/5789 

The science of effective mentorship in STEMM by Maria Lund Dahlberg, Angela Byars-Winston National Academies Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/25568 

 

UPCOMING EVENTS:

• CAFE: Student Mentorship on Monday, September 28 RSVP
  
  
• First Fridays Shut Up & Write on Friday, October 2 RSVP
  
  
• Center for Engaged Teaching & Learning Launch Party on Wednesday, October 7 RSVP
  
  
• Third Thursdays Shut Up & Write on Thursday, October 15 RSVP

 

Missed a teaching tip? Read them all here. 

And check out our full calendar of CAFEs and other Faculty Development events.