Mentoring Philosophy My goal as a mentor is to motivate my students to actively engage with the concepts that we are researching. I endeavor to push students to leave their comfort zone and examine their fixed belief systems with a critical lens. I introduce them to media, philosophy, and theory to help them navigate their social worlds as well as critique their relative social position within it. I often use an interdisciplinary framework. It draws on the theorizing of criminologists, demographers, medical sociologists, and public health scholars. I feel this helps to connect the theoretical and empirical work of sociologists with that of other related disciplines, particularly those that are applied (e.g., social work, public health). An important goal of this interdisciplinary approach is to promote an understanding of the influence of social structure on social life, focusing on real world solutions to controversial social problems.
The most important thing that I have learned as a mentor is that our students are the future of our field and if we want to grow our field, we must foster positive relationships with them. To that end, I have worked with several undergraduate students in their own efforts to develop research questions and research agendas. Several of my former students have gone on to present their own research in symposiums and a few have presented at our regional conferences. Some of my past students have even published with me.