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omen mentoring womenhey may not be easy to find, but women mentors appear to make a ll the difference in the

cademic careers of women graduate students.

By MARGARET SCHLEGEL

November 2000, Vol 31, No. 10Print version: page 33

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Mentoring has become a ho t topic in graduate departments thes e days, and women s tudents in particular are urged to find mentors who can help them navigate their careers and

guide them in success fully combining full-time careers with satis fying persona l and family lives.

But where are the women men tors to lead the way?

"Most of us have not had role mode ls for how to do this, and all of us are thinking of starting a family in the near future," says D iana Salvador, who is finishing her PsyD at Rutgers

University. "As gradua te students, we desperately wished we had had m entors that could have shown us how it could be done well."

"The women in leadersh ip roles and who als o have family respons ibilities are the psychologists m any female s tudents want to emulate," says Carol Williams, former chair of the

American Ps ychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS). "But these women also seem to be the ps ychologis ts who have the least time to mentor."

Ruth Striegel-Moore, PhD, professor of psychology at Wesleyan University, sees the shortage of female m entors as a function of the contemporary role of women faculty in mos t

psychology departments.

"Universities are urged to involve female faculty mem bers in a ll aspects o f university life, so wom en are press ured to be on every commi ttee, board and decisi on-making body,"

says Striegel-Moore. "Many of these s ame wom en are assis tant profess ors who are working to gain tenure and have young families . There are only 24 hours in a day, and only so

many students a female faculty mem ber can responsibly take on."

She also no tes that psychology has recently attracted more women than men, and these wom en want female mentors . These students think that female faculty have som ething

unique to offer. All positive developments, no doubt, but also the reasons behind the imbalance between supp ly and demand for female mentors .

Empowering relationships

Some m ight argue that in psychology, female graduate students have faculty advisors and doctoral diss ertation chairs. Why is it im portant to have mentors as we ll?

Mentors differ from advisers in that they provide both psychosocial functions, such as role modeling , acceptance and affirmation, as well as career functions, such as s ponso rship

coaching and networking, say the experts.

According to Lucia Gilbert, PhD, at the Univers ity of Texas at Austin, not only do female graduate students need men tors, they particularly need fem ale mentors who can m odel the

greater diversity in women's lives today. Her research shows that female graduate students, more than male s tudents, rated the sam e-sex mentor's lifestyle and values as high ly

important to their own profess ional development.

Gilbert also stress es that female students working with female mentors may provide an im portant antidote to some wom en's socialization to please and defer to men. Rather than

being in a relationship of unequal power, in female mentor-female protg relationships, students may learn that empowering relationships mobilize the energies, resources and

strengths of both people.

Salvador, while getting her master's degree at Boston University, experienced that kind of mentoring from Kathi Malley-Morrison, EdD. In this relationship , she found s omeone who

listened res pectfully to her ideas, even when she di sagreed w ith them, who believed in her, even when others doubted her abilities, and who talked about her own real-lifestruggles as a psychologist and a person.

"She didn't tell me what to do," Salvador said. "She empowered m e."

Roxanne Manning, now in her internship after completing coursework for her clinical doctorate at State University of New York Binghamton, said that without her first mentor she

would have dropped out of graduate school.

"I went through a number of pers onal challenges in the first year. My father-in-law became terminally ill and moved in," she explains. "My niece and nephew had problem s and

needed to stay with us. I felt overwhelmed. But my mentor encouraged me to hang in there. She told me that as a profess ional psychologist, I would face sim ilar persona l

challenges , so I needed to learn to face them while doing my graduate work. She believed I could do it, so I began to believe I could do it, too. And I did."

Manning also noted that throughout the relationship, her mentor stressed prioritizing her values and s aw her as a whole person, not just as a s tudent or future psychologist.

"She had a family and children and she helped me to s ee that no one could 'do it all,' but that everyone could do what was mos t important to them," Manning says. "By helping m e

define what was mos t important to me, she helped m e develop my own definition of success. That has been incredibly important to me as I've made m ajor decisions , such as to

have a baby before beginning my internship."

Along these l ines , Striege l-Moore notes tha t fema le mentors are important in showing that profess iona l success can be achieved in nontraditional career trajectories.

"Many success ful female psychologists have taken som e time off after graduate school and started families, and their careers have blossom ed after their children are in school,"

she s ays. "It's important for female graduate students to see these women and to know that success can be achieved in a number of ways."

Other psychologists, such as Beverly Greene, PhD, don't believe that the gender of the men tor is critical. The important point is to have a mentor. Greene, professor of psychology

at St. John's University in New York, who won two APA Div. 12 (Clinical) awards for mentoring this year (one for the clinical ps ychology of women and one for ethnic mi nority

psychology), had a ma le and a female m entor and stated both were significant in furthering her career.

Her male m entor, William Johns on, PhD, helped her develop a culturally sensitive model of psychodynamic clinical practice, a model that still guides her work today. Her female

mentor, Dorothy Gartner, PhD, encouraged her to develop her teaching s kills and urged her to write and pub lish, which u ltimately led to her career in academia. Without this push,

Greene says she wou ld never have considered an academic career.

Recent research also sugges ts that a m entor's gender m ay not matter. Faith-Anne Dohm , PhD, of Fairfield University, recently surveyed wom en in clinical ps ychology with regard to

whether they continued to do res earch after getting their doctorate. She found that those who had research mentors during graduate s chool were twice as likely to do research afte

getting their degree than those who did not have mentors. In her s tudy, the gender of the mentor did not make a difference in whether the protg went on to do res earch.

Carol Williams , now APA's as sociate executive director for the American Ps ychological Association of Graduate Students, also did research on m entoring and found that gender

does m ake a difference to female students.

"Women can have good and supportive mentoring relationships with men; however, women wan t mentoring relationships with women as well--and female s tudents want women

mentors who are willing to expose m ore of their personal s ides," she explains.

FEATURE
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Her research, not yet published, also s upports claims that female mentors in academia may be hard to find.

Finding a mentor

One of the mos t difficult parts of the mentoring relationsh ip is finding the right person. First, you have to know what you need. Career guru Richard Bolles sugges ts making a l ist of

what it takes to succeed in your chosen profession--knowledge, skills , personality traits, experience, etc.--then subtract what you already have. Next, look for a person who has the

remaining attributes and go after that person as a m entor. That formula as sum es there is a large pool to choose from.

But even so , the "going after" is a bit nebulous . Many psychologists believe that the best relationships seem to just happen "naturally." A conversation begins, you have more

conversations and pretty soon, you realize you have a mentor.

Manning found her mentor accidentally. She literally bumped into her in her first week in graduate school when she was lost in the m aze of offices in the ps ychology department.

Manning went into the wrong office, and she and her m entor simply began talking. Manning thinks that the psychologist sens ed that Manning was lost in m ore ways than one, and

took her under her wing.

"She wasn't even in the clin ical program," Manning says, "But I've learned that that doesn't always make a difference. So, I'd urge s tudents not to lim it themselves to their specialty

areas when it comes to looking for a m entor."

Saira John, a counseling ps ychology student at the University of Memphis who has com pleted all but her diss ertation, never did find a mentor in graduate s chool.

"The faculty mem bers whom I was most interested in were too busy to take on another student," she says. "But I kept looking, because I knew it was important. The students who

had a m entor seem ed to have an edge over other students. They presented at national conferences. They met influential people in specialty areas. They seem ed to have more

direction and got through the program faster. I don't think they received any special favors. The personal and p rofessiona l relationship with their mentor just seemed to motivate

them to work harder."

Striegel-Moore advises students to think of the mentoring relationship in terms of mutuality--give-and-take. Before approaching som eone you think you'd like to have a relationship

with, think of what you have to offer. It may just be enthus iasm for that person's research and a willingness to contribute to it. Ask if the psychologis t has lab meetings that you could

sit in on to learn more about his or her research. Even if the topic of the research isn 't exactly what you are interested in, you can learn a lot about the research process that will be

transferable, she says.

She stress es that if the first person you approach is no t receptive, you should m ove on to others. In fact, she s ays, it may be a mis take to think of mentoring in terms o f one person-

-it puts too much pres sure on a s ingle relationship. A mentoring network, she says, in which a series of relationships meets different needs m ay be a more realistic way of looking

at mentoring for female graduate students in ps ychology.

Manning agrees. In addition to the faculty mem ber who first m entored her, she found m entors in he r field placements, who provided different kinds of career guidance. She

suggests that if students are having difficulty finding faculty mentors, that they ask their gradua te programs for lists of others who have gotten their graduate degrees from the

program and find out if they are still in the communi ty. If they are, she advises, call them up and s trike up a conversation about their strategies for succeeding in graduate schooland about what they are doing now. They may be willing to help you along, she s ays. As a res ult of her positive experiences with mentors, she has s tarted a men toring program for

undergraduate students.

Manning is now specifically looking for som eone who will men tor her as she writes about her research and attempts to get published. She is up front about her goals when s he

talks with potential mentors and als o about what she has to offer in return. From the student lost in the ps ychology department to the focused and con fident intern and new mother,

Manning has clearly found her way. And she would be the first to tell you that mentors played no sm all part in her journey.

Margaret Schlegel is a freelance writer in Falls Chu rch, Va.

Finding a mentor--or a mentee (/monitor/nov00/findmentor.aspx)

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