Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius
Professor of Counseling Psychology

Since I was a small child, I have always been a nurturer, someone who helps others. I patiently listen to their concerns, let them express their feelings, and, when appropriate, help them look at ways to feel better or behave differently. In its simplest form, I think of mentoring as a process of nurturing others. For me, it is using who I am and what I know to foster the personal and professional growth of graduate students. This is what I find most fulfilling about being a professor-the opportunity to develop meaningful individual relationships with my students with the primary goal being their academic and career success and fulfillment.

As I reflected on my almost 29-year tenure as a faculty member at Arizona State University, I realized that I have had the privilege of fostering the development of 50 doctoral graduates, as well as numerous master degree graduates. Currently, I am directing the dissertations of nine students. The students who enter our doctoral program in counseling psychology are amazing. They are unbelievably bright, articulate, and curious, and invariably kind-hearted. To be able to work with them is a privilege. I have never viewed being a teacher and mentor as a task or as "a job." Instead, I believe that these students have been gifts to me. As I have tried to enrich their lives and careers, they have enriched mine both personally and professionally. Mentoring is a reciprocal process, occurring in stages.

Establishing a Relationship

Being a counseling psychologist, I like to think in terms of stages of growth and change. In any therapeutic setting, before growth can occur, an interpersonal relationship must be established. This is the first stage of forming a mentoring relationship. When new doctoral students are assigned to me as a temporary advisor, I meet with them and discuss their goals for the program, help them with course selection, and try to facilitate their adjustment to the demands of being a doctoral student in a rigorous degree program. I want them to know that I care for them as individuals, I want to support their matriculation through the program, and I respect their individual career goals and their ability to attain their Ph.D. I also want to establish an atmosphere of trust between us. This requires that I make myself available, welcoming, and accepting. I have an open-door policy and invite students to just stop by to chat. Being a new student is stressful as each student struggles to find his or her niche with respect to research and coursework and finding a balance between their personal and student lives. As advisor, and potential mentor, it is my role to help each student explore possibilities while inviting each to become involved in the research process and to think about how research informs clinical practice. I try to be a role model on how to balance school and family life.

Exploration of and Fulfillment of Possibilities

As new doctoral students get involved in research, the second stage of mentoring emerges. This stage is the exploration of possibilities. Our program encourages students to become involved in research from the very beginning of their program. This involvement often happens when they join a research team, mine or that of another faculty member. As a scientist-practitioner, I want to get them excited about the process of inquiry, about testing theory and generating knowledge, and about how this knowledge can inform their clinical practice. To do this, students need to be able to read the literature and to think critically about research studies. At my research team meetings, we will discuss the current research, and I try to teach them to find each study's weaknesses and strengths. I role model for my students how to critique and integrate the literature to generate researchable questions. I also share my failures, the mistakes I have made in doing research. I want them to realize that they need to develop sound research skills and become good statisticians, but that there is no perfect study. Learning, whatever the context, is a lifelong process that should be approached with a sense of humor and a good bit of humility. There are always more questions that need to be asked and alternative ways to get valid and reliable answers to these questions. I try to make the process of research fun and fulfilling.

I also believe that this is a time when each student needs to meet individually with me to personalize the interests surrounding the questions being investigated by the team. Our program requires all doctoral students to do a master's thesis or thesis equivalency. Often their study is embedded in the team's research. For example, I had two small grants from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors and the ASU Graduate College to study how non-cognitive factors are related to the academic success of freshmen. I invited two junior faculty and six first-year doctoral students to form a team to conduct a three-year longitudinal examination of over 900 freshmen. Every member of this team chose a set of constructs, based on personal interests, persistence theory, and the literature, that she or he wanted to investigate. Each took the lead in reviewing the relevant literature and recommending valid and reliable instruments to assess their variables. Everyone became involved in data collection. I taught each student how to enter, code, and analyze his or her data using SPSS. Each of the students became the lead author on a national professional presentation based on his or her set of variables. Thus far, four refereed publications have resulted from this comprehensive study.

I believe that a mentor has a responsibility to students get involved with research early and then to guide them in the processes of doing and disseminating research. These activities foster a student's self-confidence on multiple levels-reading critically, sharing ideas with peers in an environment that encourages exploration not perfection, developing a coherent written proposal, being part of the comprehensive design process, gathering data, analyzing the findings, and then tying it all together to share with the professional world. Students learn an "I can do it' attitude. Research is not some black hole that they dread. Instead, students become excited and want to learn more about being a researcher. The mentor's role is not only to model being an inquisitive, creative researcher, but also to share his or her knowledge, time, and expertise as teacher who guides the process so that each student experiences a sense of accomplishment and increased self-efficacy. For the student, there are both intrinsic (increased self-confidence and feelings of personal accomplishment) and extrinsic rewards (presentations, publications, and meeting a program requirement). As a mentor, I also benefit. I get to vicariously experience the satisfaction students have when they know they have done a good job and demonstrated mastery over a literature base and the joy that accompanies their first publication or professional presentation. I also experience personal pride and satisfaction in my role in helping them achieve these milestones in their development.

This stage lasts for most of the doctoral program. As a mentor, I nurture their development as a scientist-practitioner. In addition to encouraging them as researchers, I invite students to join me in teaching, asking them to guest lecture in my classes. To prepare them, we meet to discuss the topic and their goals for the class. I also provide them with constructive feedback to help them mature into effective teachers. I encourage my doctoral students to become involved in the Preparing Future Faculty program. I also involve them in my professional activities. I serve on several editorial boards and have gotten editorial permission to involve my advanced students in manuscript reviews or conference proposals. I also believe that as a mentor I have a responsibility to take them to professional conferences where I introduce them to my professional colleagues and foster their initial professional networking. This might require that I use research incentive funds to help support their travel costs or that I write student travel costs into a grant budget. I facilitated the development of a Counseling Psychology Continuing Education series conducted by our faculty with all profits going to support doctoral student conference travel. I also consistently write letters to nominate students for various awards and recognitions. I believe that we need to recognize the excellent work our students are doing by forwarding their names for recognition outside of our doctoral program.

Letting Go but Not Saying Goodbye
This may be the hardest stage of mentoring. We foster their abilities as researchers, coach them as teachers, challenge them as clinicians, and introduce them to the professional world. Then comes the time to let them go. Our relationship has evolved from an academic advisor to mentor and, finally, to professional colleague and friend. The student has become an autonomous professional who is beginning a career either in an academic or practitioner setting. Some may occasionally call to talk or ask for advice about their careers, research ideas, or ethical considerations, but mostly they are occupied with establishing themselves and their careers. We may continue to write together as colleagues or we may have less frequent contact. I have co-authored books and articles with my graduates and a small cohort still present with me at conferences. The power differential has faded, and we are truly colleagues. Many I now call my friend. My office bulletin board is full of pictures of my "academic grandchildren," and I post announcements of the special achievements of my graduates on our faculty announcement board. I am proud of my graduates and would like to believe that I have made a difference in their lives. The most rewarding aspect of being a professor has been working with doctoral students and watching them evolve into competent, accomplished professionals and caring human beings who are mentoring others as I have tried to mentor them.