Leona S. Aiken

Professor of Psychology

The mentor role. In Germany, the PhD mentor is referred to as the "Doktor Vater" or "Doktor Mutter" (Doctor Father or Doctor Mother). This title captures the role of the mentor-part teacher, part parent, over the course of time. The mentor provides the experiences and opportunities that lead talented young scholars to reach their potential and to fulfill their own professional dreams. The mentor encourages each student to be intellectually curious and adventurous, to study broadly, and to set forth on a path that will be productive and intellectually fulfilling. The mentor is a role model; the mentor's passion for her own work and excitement about the scholarly enterprise provides the context in which the student matures as a scholar.

My own philosophy of mentoring, the product of my experiences, is summarized in 10 themes.

(1) Mentoring requires a lifetime commitment that does not end with graduation.
The role of mentor is a "lifespan" role. I maintain relationships with my former students and convey to them that I consider my role as mentor as ongoing. My own PhD mentor was lost to me early, and I sorely missed his wise counsel. I have continued to collaborate with former students; several have returned to ASU to join forces in writing projects. I have advised former students on career decisions, have supported their attainment of important goals (e.g., a 5-year career development award, the K-award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, to Kristina Jackson), have shared teaching materials with them, have written letters of support for them, and now help them in mentoring their own students. My students are forever my students; my role as mentor does not expire.

(2) Mentoring must be molded to the unique qualities of each student.
I have had to learn how to work productively with each student as an individual. One of my early advisees was a bold student who dominated our meetings with her ideas and research plans. The next PhD student I mentored would hardly speak her thoughts; I had to learn to tolerate silence and to gently draw her out. Student strengths vary widely. One student writes easily; another student struggles over producing each word. Mentoring is an ongoing effort to develop students' unique strengths and to overcome their limitations.

(3) Students should be encouraged to voice their own ideas early in their graduate training.
Early success is an important inspiration for students, providing them with evidence that they "have what it takes." I work with students in their first year of graduate study on developing a research idea and carrying it forward. I work closely with them to submit proposals for highly competitive pre-doctoral fellowships. My former students Angela Bryan, Mary Gerend, Mindy Erchull, and Allecia Reid have won National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowships from this effort.

(4). The PhD degree signifies that one has achieved extraordinary depth of mastery in a unique focal area of scholarship; yet, creativity in scholarship is supported by broad study that permits novel integration of multiple areas of knowledge.
There is an inherent tension between training broadly across perspectives and training intensively in a single area. In an ongoing process, I work with each student to develop a scholarly focus that can form the centerpiece of the early career. As part of our joint effort, we identify related areas of interdisciplinary knowledge that might inform and enlighten this primary focus. I encourage my students to participate in colleagues' seminars and research teams. These experiences contribute multiple perspectives and emergent integrations to students' scholarship. For example, I encouraged a student studying risky sexual behavior to study evolutionary psychology to gain that theoretical perspective on mate selection, and also to train extensively in quantitative methods to support the complex methodologies in her research. This approach was successful; in 2006 the student, Angela Bryan, received the American Psychological Association early career award. Kristina Jackson, similarly mentored, has received both international and national early career awards in alcohol research.

(5) Mentoring requires the faculty member to sustain contact with students and be readily accessible to support their work.
I have individual weekly meetings with each student-I aim to avoid ever having to ask, "What is going on with student X? One of my students is now finishing her degree in absentia due to her husband's job reassignment. We have weekly telephone meetings and regularly share work back and forth. I make myself available to my students seven days a week, by email, by phone, in person. Being successful with students requires large blocks of time, most often available on weekends, for listening, for designing research, for writing. I am delighted to spend this time.

(6) Mentoring leads students to develop their own distinct research programs, independent of the mentor's work.
I expect that each student will develop a unique research program within the broad context of my expertise. Students should not be clones of their mentors; each should have a distinct scholarly voice. I guide students to seek important questions that excite them and will sustain their interest and intense effort over time. I may invite students to join my own research, but I never press them to work on something because it is my interest. I train students in health psychology and in quantitative psychology. My students' dissertation topics have included, among others, risky sexual behavior among delinquent adolescents, model-based interventions to increase protection against skin cancer among young women, use of hormone replacement therapy among postmenopausal women, and the effects of misspecification of statistical models of multilevel data on bias in parameter estimates. Currently I have five doctoral students, three in health psychology, and another two I co-mentor in quantitative psychology. Each has a unique research program; all have promise of making important contributions in their diverse areas.

(7) Taking over the mentoring of a student who wishes to change paths can have excellent results.
Students may begin their graduate careers with other faculty mentors. On several occasions students have come to me during their PhD study to ask if I would serve as mentor. I have welcomed these students and worked to understand their rationale for transition. I am careful in this regard to interact with the former mentor; student theft is not appropriate collegial behavior. Two former students transitioned from basic experimental social psychology into health psychology; each built on a strong experimental background to develop an innovative health behavior change intervention. Another transitioned from environmental to quantitative psychology; I encouraged her in this large transition because she was no longer interested in the substantive area but was talented in and excited about quantitative methodology. All these former students are succeeding in their careers.

(8) Sustaining students through difficult times that challenge their productivity and creativity is of critical importance.
Students stumble; they encounter serious threats to health and well-being; they lose faith in themselves. There are times in a mentor's role for "tea and sympathy." I have learned that we can sort the scholarly enterprise into tasks of varying difficulty and intellectual demand. If a student encounters a difficult period, I help the student select a level of work at which success is then possible. When a PhD student of mine had a life threatening illness, we triaged what she could accomplish during treatment in order to remain in school. The strategy was successful; she remained in graduate school and is now interviewing for her first academic position. Of course, there are less dramatic examples, a broken engagement and resulting temporarily broken heart. Students know that my door is open and that I care deeply about their personal welfare; they seek me out in dark times. This makes our joint celebrations of their professional and personal triumphs even more joyful.

(9) Maintaining my own professional activities at the national level provides a vehicle for my identifying and even creating opportunities for my students.
I stay active at the national level in governance of professional organizations in psychology and research methodology. This provides networks that yield opportunities for my students. I am vigilant in seeking these opportunities. One of my former students is now receiving tenure and promotion in a position into which she was hired upon her receipt of the PhD, even through the position had been originally conceived as a senior position. My conversation with the national colleague who was designing the position led to my student's being considered and ultimately being hired.

(10) Conveying to students my respect for their own choice of career paths frees them to seek that is best for them.
My hope for all my students is that they will go forth to productive careers of their own choosing. My use of the phrase "their own choosing" is central here. I am fortunate to be a professor in a superb department in a research intensive university. Do I convey to my students that this is the only path, the "chosen" path? I do not. I convey the message that I will guide them, but that in the end they will choose the careers they pursue, and that I will both support and respect their choice. Two of my former students hold tenured professorial positions at major research universities; another is a faculty member in a medical school; another, a faculty member in an excellent liberal arts college. One is a research professor at a major research university, and another is a researcher in a nonprofit organization. All are flourishing in their chosen life course.

Doctor Father, Doctor Mother.
It is my good fortune that all my former students have completed the PhD and have productive careers. My life is enriched by the role I have played in mentoring them. I celebrate my students' successes, I encourage them to stay on course, I help them in every way I can. They bring me immeasurable fulfillment that goes beyond my own work. Mentoring to me is both a privilege and profound responsibility-to be granted the opportunity to work with gifted, motivated, and hopeful young people. The sweetness of hooding each new PhD at graduation cannot be overstated. The emptiness of each newly graduated student's desk is poignant indeed, assuaged only by the promise and excitement of the next new student. But once my students have left to pursue their own careers, I take pleasure in bearing witness to and supporting the unfolding of their lives. I am most grateful for this part of my own career.

A final note on my mentoring efforts.
As a quantitative psychologist, in addition to my own students, I have served as quantitative methodologist on the dissertation committees of well over 100 doctoral students within and beyond psychology. This includes my work here at Arizona State University and at my previous institution, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. In my capacity as quantitative member of dissertation committees, I have sometimes helped students conceptualize the design of the research and often have taken much responsibility for oversight of the data analysis, as well as presentation and interpretation of findings. This is intensive, time consuming work that requires I come to understand research questions in many substantive areas. I view this effort as an integral part of my role as mentor to doctoral students, a role that has contributed to the completion of many PhD degrees.