Mentoring success stories

by Tina Henne (CEPA), Postdoctoral Coordinator

This past spring, we asked the postdocs and mentors to participate in a survey for the Postdoctoral Mentoring Program. As a fairly new program, it is important to periodically assess how satisfied participants are with the program, and gain your feedback on where we should take it in the future. The first phase of the survey asked for input from the postdocs.

The second phase asked for input from Argonne staff. We had a response rate of about 30 percent for the postdocs and 81 staff members participated in the survey. A more comprehensive report on the survey results is forthcoming. I’d like to take this opportunity to share a glimpse of what you told us.

More than half of the postdoc respondents feel that it is important or highly important to have a mentor through their postdoc tenure. A majority of the respondents view this program as a vehicle to discuss career goals and expand their professional networks. When asked what types of programs would help strengthen the Mentoring Program, both the postdoc and staff respondents felt that networking events for mentors and mentees would be beneficial. There is also a need to provide clear goals of the program to both the postdocs and mentors, and provide readily available resources on mentoring. When these goals are met, the concept of what it means to mentor and be mentored will permeate more smoothly throughout the laboratory.

To give you an idea of how one can benefit from a mentoring relationship, I’d like to share some perspectives from a couple postdocs. As we move forward, it will be important that we continue to share these stories. Not only does it speak to the success of establishing relationships, but it will also give others ideas on how to approach mentoring.

Kuldeep Mistry (ES) has a unique perspective on postdoc needs. Kuldeep recently attended the National Postdoctoral Association meeting this past April. Through meeting peers from other institutions, he has gained an appreciation for how his experience at Argonne compares with other institutions. Kuldeep notes that an active Postdoctoral Society at Argonne is helping to better postdocs’ lives. He also credits his mentor with enriching his experience.

Kuldeep selected his mentor after perusing a book of mentor bios that the ES Divisional office keeps on hand. Having that book was important for selecting a mentor whose research and experience was interesting to Kuldeep. Through their lunch meetings, Kuldeep has gotten to know about his mentor’s career path, as well as thoughts on the auto industry, research funding and the impact of interpersonal skills and proposal writing on having a successful career as a scientist. Kuldeep felt that, for him personally, the mentoring experience is helpful for any early career researcher.

Luis Ortega (CSE) sees himself as a self-sufficient researcher and originally did not expect to gain much from the mentoring program. He has a great group leader, wonderful coworkers and plenty of work experience under his belt. What he found, though, that not only was his mentor a great person to talk to, but also is a great collaborator. His mentoring discussions allowed Luis to focus on things he had not previously paid much attention to. After discussing some research experiments, his mentor encouraged him to present his findings at the
Postdoctoral Research Symposium and Luis is now
writing up that work for a journal article.

These are just a few examples of unexpected benefits from mentoring. Other topics that mentors and mentees focus on, as noted by the survey respondents, are: work-life balance, long-term career goals, job seeking and engaging management — all topics that are critical to the success of any early career scientist or engineer. What will be important moving forward is to hear what each division is doing in terms of postdoc mentoring. Please continue to share your stories with us. We will be looking at strategies to have these discussions and share resources in meaningful ways.

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