The Impact of Effective Mentoring on Family

10/06/21 • 11 min

For many students in STEMM, family life is a top priority. However, some students have found tension when it comes to balancing family life and their STEMM careers, from both faculty and colleagues.

For mentoring relationships to be effective, mentors must acknowledge students as whole people with priorities, responsibilities, and important personal decisions that exist outside of STEMM. In this episode, we hear from students who have juggled raising children and new family milestones as they simultaneously researched and earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees. They share about the challenges of balancing family life and career, the moments they needed to ask for support, and how mentors can support students with families without the student suffering repercussions.

To learn more about the Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM report, and for a guide to implementing best practices at your institution, visit NAS.edu/mentoring.

Brought to you by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

For many students in STEMM, family life is a top priority. However, some students have found tension when it comes to balancing family life and their STEMM careers, from both faculty and colleagues.

To learn more about the Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM report, and for a guide to implementing best practices at your institution, visit NAS.edu/mentoring.

Brought to you by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Previous Episode

Setting Expectations and Boundaries

New mentoring relationships can be intimidating. Mentees may not know what to expect of their mentors, or what the goal of the mentoring relationship is.

For mentoring relationships to be mutually beneficial, both mentees and mentors must establish expectations and boundaries. This is a skill that can take some practice, but helps students reach their full potential in STEMM. In this episode, students share their stories of when they recognized the need for expectations and boundaries in their mentoring relationships, how they established them, and how they responded when their mentor didn’t respect the boundaries in place.

To learn more about the Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM report, and for a guide to implementing best practices at your institution, visit NAS.edu/mentoring.

Brought to you by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Next Episode

Building Trust & Addressing Power

Some students quickly trust their mentors. Others are hesitant to be vulnerable with them. And some students encounter barriers that disallow them to trust their mentors at all.

Building trust may sometimes be easy, or it may be awkward, depending on the relationship. But there’s a reason why trust is critical to an effective mentoring relationship. In this episode, students share how they were able to build trust with certain mentors, how students navigated relationships where they were hesitant to fully trust their mentors, and how they responded in situations where trust was broken.

To learn more about the Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM report, and for a guide to implementing best practices at your institution, visit NAS.edu/mentoring.

Brought to you by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.