Mentoring Philosophy I have developed a set of principles to successfully mentor undergraduate students as follows:
1. Time is necessary for mutual understanding. My willingness to spend time with my mentee affirms my respect and the values of their effort. Also, making progress requires effective use of limited periods of time. I facilitate this by setting a work schedule, deadlines, and regular meetings to assess progress during the UROP Research Mentor Project.
2. Communication is a key to success in both ways. The same conversation can have startlingly different meaning to a student and a mentor because of differences in their backgrounds and how they think through problems. Listening to a student, their ideas, and their responses to my statements and asking questions are critical to establishing mutual understanding and I am open to interactive communication.
3. Organization skill is important to efficiently complete a project. Projects have many elements and include the compilation of data and analyses over a long period of time, so I will provide the organizational chart and spreadsheet to track our work together.
4. The success of their research results from their effort and insight, an ownership that I explicitly acknowledge. No independent work occurs without such personal responsibility. Early in the process I will likely provide more direction, later in the process as independence grows my role is to help retain focus and deliver results.