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MentorNet Update
Kristin L. Gosselink, Ph.D.
University of Texas at El Paso
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Dr. Gosselink received her B.A. from Luther College in Decorah, IA. From 1992-2005, she worked as a technician at the NASA-Ames Research Center near San Jose, before returning to school to complete her M.S. (1998) and Ph.D. (2001) in Physiological Science at UCLA. From 2001-2005, Dr. Gosselink was a postdoctoral research associate at the Salk Institute in San Diego and an Associate Faculty member at MiraCosta Community College in Oceanside. She joined the University of Texas, El Paso as an Assistant Professor in 2005 and served as Interim Director of the Neuroscience and Metabolic Disorders Unit of the Border Biomedical Research Center in 2007. Currently, she is an Associate Professor and the Orville E. Egbert Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences. Dr. Gosselink’s scientific interests bridge the fields of physiology, endocrinology and neuroscience, and her research deals with endocrine responses to external factors. Her laboratory uses physiological, cell biological, molecular and biochemical techniques to study the relationships between nervous system activation and hormone secretion following stress and/or exercise. She has been a Research Mentor in the APS Frontiers in Physiology program and a member of the APS Women in Physiology Committee.
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In August of 2009, I wrote a summary of my experiences with mentoring through the
MentorNet.net website (Online Mentoring Through MentorNet; see link below). The present article is offered as an update to the earlier piece, with a few additional perspectives. It seems unnecessary on some level to discuss the importance of mentoring with readers of The Physiologist, as our membership has long been engaged in and committed to fostering success and professional development in young scientists. However, significant challenges still exist for students and junior faculty seeking scientific careers in academia, industry, government or the myriad other places they may choose. Budget cuts and changing perspectives in higher education, fewer jobs with greater numbers of qualified applicants, and increased competition for diminishing external funding resources are just a few of the many obstacles that must be overcome by members of the scientific community. In addition to these, issues with retention and success still disproportionately face women and others who tend to be underrepresented in STEM fields. Effective mentoring, therefore, still stands to contribute in a significant and positive way to the realization of career and personal goals for young trainees in science.
The overarching goal of MentorNet is e-Mentoring for diversity in engineering and science. On the site, one-on-one links are generated between mentors who are established science and engineering professionals, and individuals at the community college through junior (untenured) faculty levels. Promoting the retention and increased success of underrepresented persons and women are key foci of the MentorNet approach. Mentor-mentee relationships are created online, based on the matching of characteristics and discussion topics identified in the enrollee profiles. MentorNet supports these new relationships for eight months, by sending regular discussion prompts and checking in with the participants to ensure they are in contact. The newly updated website itself also contains drop-down menus for the MentorNet Forum, Resources, and FAQs. Corporate partners for MentorNet range from IBM and Texas Instruments, to AT&T, 3M, and Lockheed Martin. The APS is an “Affiliated Partner Plus”, allowing for enhanced participation by our membership and student access to all programs regardless of the current university or college in which they are enrolled.
More than 29,500 mentor-mentee matches have been made since 1997, with over 1,100 currently active as of the writing of this article. In previous years, I was able to search for mentees with stated interests in physiology, which now appears to be more of a challenge in the current rendition of the website. At the time of the last Experimental Biology meeting (April 2011), 110 mentors and 354 protégés had active MentorNet profiles; a search by the term “physiology” yielded 74 profiles, 37 of whom were women (including a number of Women in Physiology Committee members). Clearly, the commitment of the APS and its members to mentoring is strong, since nearly 16% of the total MentorNet roster is comprised of physiologists or at least persons with an interest in the field. We would like, however, to further harness this system to promote the success of our trainees and to build on our excellent mentoring foundation in the APS. Self-reports have demonstrated that mentees in the MentorNet program feel a stronger desire to pursue their career goals and an increased sense of confidence that they will succeed. MentorNet mentors have also stated that their participation increases their personal satisfaction, strengthens their commitment to their work, and enhances their mentoring abilities with their own personnel.
So, what are the potential challenges that prevent our numbers from growing within the MentorNet framework? Increasing awareness that this site exists was a first approach that met with some success. Section newsletters and the Executive Director's APS News Update emails have helped to spread the word and resulted in a sharp increase in enrollment. The number of participants has subsequently stabilized, however, and the reasons for this remain unclear. Perhaps limitations in discipline-specific interest have led to our people going unmatched? For example, MentorNet has frequently released calls for mentors in specific research areas, and communities such as neuroscience have historically been weakly represented in MentorNet. It is also possible that many of our students and trainees are already benefiting from multiple other mentoring opportunities, through their universities and/or professional societies. As for myself, I have at times felt that I am spending so much time being mentored that I ultimately have less time to dedicate to my actual research and teaching productivity. Streamlining these activities may allow us to achieve or extend the benefits of mentoring while reducing the associated time costs. It seems important at this time to evaluate the reasons why APS members do or do not choose to participate in MentorNet. Look for the results of this analysis at a later date!
As a final thought regarding my own MentorNet experiences, I would like to share a story about a recent match. I was matched as a mentee with a mentor from Australia, a female Associate Professor working in a research field similar to my own. This match was made just as I was being considered for a large teaching award, was beginning to assemble my tenure application, and had a number of personal changes happening in my life. While the system in Australia and Texas are quite different in a number of ways, she helped me tremendously by allowing me to bounce ideas off of her, openly sharing her thoughts and experiences during her transition from junior faculty, and delivering pep talks at some critical moments. Having an unbiased person who is invested in you and your success, independent of your institution, can be a real asset.
The Women in Physiology Committee and APS strongly encourage all regular members to sign up as mentors and all trainees to register as protégés. For more information or to sign up, please go to
mentornet.net or
APS-Partners-with-MentorNet.
Comments:
I was an active Mentor on MentorNet for about 2 years with at least a half dozen students over that time. Most of the "relationships" did not go beyond just one or two emails back and forth with questions about my job and career. In most cases, it turned out that I was not as good a match as initially thought. For example, I got a biology major who was interested in industry (a good initial line up) but who turned out to be interested in pharmaceutical sales (which is really not my area of expertise). I got the impression that many mentees were just curious about different jobs and careers and were trying to find out some initial information and not really looking for "mentorship". I think the longest interaction I had was over about one semester and during that time the mentee decided to pursue other areas of interest. I am willing to admit that I may not be the perfect mentor; however, I did take the role seriously and was interested in answering questions as best as I could and providing advice where it seemed appropriate. My overall impression was that most of the mentees were looking for information in a casual way or simply searching for potential job opportunities rather than seeking a real mentor to guide them in career planning. I think that is fine, but it doesn't quite seem to fit with the goal of MentorNet. My guess is that it may take many tries to really achieve that kind of relationship.
Michael F. A. Finley
Merck & Co.
Having recently joined MentorNet I agree with Dr. Gosselink that this is an excellent resource for additional mentoring opportunities, particularly for those of us in smaller institutions with perhaps less availability or choice of suitable potential mentors. Such a resource also contributes to the philosophy of having a ‘team’ of mentors which in my experience is hugely beneficial, no matter what stage of your career or education. As such, we strongly encourage our graduate students to mentor more junior students, and emphasize the importance of having different mentors to provide advice. Each person’s experience and circumstances are unique and there is often no ‘right way’ to achieve something. As Dr. Gosselink suggested, having different points of view allows the mentee the opportunity to come up with new ideas and approaches in order to reach ones goals.
Caroline B. Appleyard
Ponce School of Medicine
This is an extremely interesting article about online mentoring. In this age of heavy reliance on technology for communication, online forums are becoming popular strategies for individuals to find mentors. I think that this is a very effective way for APS members to find a mentor who can offer valuable advice about career development, balancing work and family, and general issues that face scientists today.
Angela J. Grippo
Northern Illinois University
I was previously a mentee on MentorNet and found my experience to be extremely educational and helpful. However, it took me a very long time to get matched. To me it seems like there are not enough mentors in the Physiology field.
Sarah Hoffmann Lindsey
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Unfortunately, field of study is not a matching preferences mentors can choose or search by. However, field of study is one of the most important factors our algorithm takes into consideration. For example, if a mentors field of study is physiology, then they will be matched with a student whose field of study is physiology.
Sapna Protheroe
MentorNet