Mentoring and My Blog

MENTORING AND MY BLOG

I solve many of life’s problems in a semi-unconscious state of sleep around 2:00 AM each morning.  I’m not an insomniac.  Far from it.  I’m usually in bed around 9:00 PM and arise at 5:00 AM each day.  But, for some reason, I awake at 2:00 AM and a parade of thoughts are marching through my head.  Last night, it was about new faculty members and my idea of writing a blog that might help these folks navigate the tricky waters of higher education. 

Over the past decade, I’ve served as an informal and formal mentor to a host of people.  Some of my most memorable young faculty members were Finney Charian, an East Indian with a steel-trap mind.  Finney was a Canadian by birth who later married the love of his life, Sindu.  They were married shortly after the 9/11 tragedies and were trapped by the bureaucratic red tape of attempting to get work visas to remain in the country.  Eventually, they moved back to Winsor, Canada where Sindu worked as a medical oncologist and Finney took a professorship at the University of Winsor.  I loved talking to Finney.  He had a brilliant educational mind but even better, he had a philosophical understanding of the nature of man that he had gained over his young life.  He went on to become a runner-up in the Outstanding Professor in the Province of Ontario.  Brilliant.

I’ve also served as a formal mentor to big Matt Zbracki.  Matt towered over everyone at 6’8” tall.  He was good midwestern stock from Iowa.  What I remember most about Matt was his high academic standards for both students and other professors.  Nothing would rile him more than individuals who attempted to corrupt the system.  Matt and I became good personal friends, just like Finney and I did.  Eventually, Matt met a lovely Australian educational consultant who worked here in the States, got married, and started a family.  That’s when Jane decided it would be good to return to Melbourne to be closer to her family.  Matt followed her, leaving RIC, just as Finney did.

Along the line, Meryl Kaya was hired and assigned an office next to mine.  Meryl was from Turkey and had come to the States to study and earn her Ph.D.  She was a lovely lady who worked incessantly to improve her understanding of the nuances of the English language.  Meryl and I spent untold hours in my office discussing how to handle cunning students, learning the tricks of becoming a competent professor, and living with the sometimes-dysfunctional system of higher education.  Eventually, Meryl’s husband accepted a professorship at New York University and they both moved from Stonington, CT to New York City.  We lost another good junior faculty member. 

My most recent formal mentee was Jen Davis-Duerr.  Jen is the third person we’ve hired from the University of Northern Colorado.  UNC produces individuals with that wonderful midwestern work ethic that is sometimes lacking in parts of New England.  I’ve loved working with Jen.  She’s a quick study who goes above and beyond what is asked of her.  It’s been an enjoyable experience listening to her asks questions and seeing how she fits into our all-male Reading Committee.  She’s turned out to be another one of our real “finds.”  There’s virtually nothing that she can’t do when asked.  Watching her gives me great confidence and hope in the future of our profession.

While these are the most recent of my mentees, there are also a handful of other new faculty members who have sought out answers to questions as they’ve attempted to learn the ropes.  It’s been an enjoyable experience watching these individuals mature into productive members of higher education.  So, when I start to think about my eventual departure from higher education, there’s always the question relating to “Did I make a difference?” to these faculty members.  I would like to think they might have picked up a kernel or two of wisdom.  In that spirit, I began to wonder if other “newbie” faculty members might also profit from some insights I’ve gained over the years.  That’s when I started to run the idea of a blog for beginning professors past a few of my coworkers.  They encouraged me to give it a try.  Hopefully, these messages will offer some food for thought.  I won’t pretend that they are brilliant or original thoughts, but instead, ideas that I’ve found to work or help me understand this somewhat crazy world we call higher education.

January 21, 2012