The power of mentorship in graduate school success

As a graduate student, you will likely hear "mentor" often. Your peers may share their experiences working with a mentor or you might be asked by peers, faculty or staff who you've identified as your mentor. We discuss mentoring as a formal role with graduate students because graduate education was historically structured around an apprenticeship model. This structure required a junior researcher to learn from someone with more seniority so they could carry certain research techniques and experiences forward. 

As the structure of graduate education has evolved, so has the thinking about mentorship in graduate school. These advancements are supported by studies conducted about the experience of graduate students and the positive impact of mentoring on graduation rates and, more importantly, gaining confidence in expertise within their chosen field. 

The word mentor can be confusing because it is often conflated with terms like teacher, supervisor, advisor, committee chair or sponsor. All of these people could be mentors, but the relationship between a mentor and a mentee is less official than each of these roles. In many ways, the best mentoring can be informal. Like Odysseus' friend, who was his mentor in Homer's "Odyssey," graduate student mentors support students' success through their program. 

Mentors can serve as guides, sharing information based on their experience, or as counselors, listening to help students navigate their experience or cheerleaders who motivate in the face of challenges. Most importantly, mentoring is a reciprocal relationship. Sarah Hokanson and Bennett Goldberg describe it as "a combination of the human and social capital that leads to reciprocity and mutual benefits for both the mentor and the mentee." This means that mentors and mentees are equal partners in developing an effective relationship.

Mentors are all around you, not just faculty in your program or classes. Your fellow students can be mentors just as much as professional colleagues and community members. Remember that your need for guidance and support is not limited to your degree program. As a graduate student, you should consider how to develop a vast network of mentors. A helpful exercise is to create a mentoring map. You can try this mentoring map template to get started.

You can also review mentoring map examples such as the one provided by GEMS or a version of this one designed for faculty by NCFDD.

Once you have identified areas of interest and where you need support in your program, it will be easier to begin your search. Suppose you are looking for support in honing your research skills. In that case, you can find people with experience and interests that mirror yours or ask program faculty for recommendations. If you need help being accountable, look for students in your program at a similar stage in their degree progress.

If you are seeking a faculty mentor to help you learn more about a specific research topic, you can search using the ASU Graduate Faculty Finder by research focus.