A recent study reports that with each passing year students spend in a doctoral program, they are less satisfied with their experience, less likely to pursue a research career, and less content with guidance received from advisors. Overall, just 57% of American doctoral students reported satisfaction with their on-going training.[i] This leaves a lot of room for improvement. As faculty, we may not be individually empowered to change pressing structural issues in graduate education, such as funding, or disparities between institutions. We can, however, take responsibility for the quality of our communication, implement best practices for staging our students’ progress toward autonomy, and think more cogently about how students progress through their course of study, recognizing in all phases the responsibility and impact we have as advisors.

 

Prior to ASTR’s recent conference, I facilitated a two-day workshop to assist faculty in optimizing their effectiveness as mentors. This was based on a curriculum developed at the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching[ii] then tested nationally; in September 2010 I participated in the training sessions that briefed facilitators at sixteen medical schools nationwide to participate in the NIC/NCRR-supported study of mentor effectiveness. Along with colleagues in the Feinberg School of Medicine (Northwestern University), we subsequently offered the curriculum in workshops for faculty across the spectrum of humanities, social science, science, and engineering disciplines and continue to adapt the program in a continuing series of professional development sessions.[iii]

 

Participants in the ASTR workshop identified their predominant communication styles and investigated how students with alternate communication styles could misapprehend intentions both through statements and affect, undermining rapport even in routine conversations. By improving the clarity of our communication, and becoming more aware of how to ascertain whether messages are accurately received, participants explored ways to work more effectively across many kinds of diversity (including racial, cultural, educational differences) and to mentor students to be dynamic partners in their own intellectual and professional development. Staging our expectations as mentors, and helping students grasp necessary steps in their progress, makes autonomy more realistic for more kinds of students. To help with this, the workshop introduced mentoring philosophies, mentoring compacts, and individual development plans, encouraging participants to tailor these genres to their own purposes.

 

 For more information, contact Tracy C. Davis This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

 

 "Tracy's mentoring workshop was enormously enriching for me, on both personal and practical levels.  It invited me to reflect more deeply on mentorship as a serious calling, and my students and I have already benefited from several of the tools and practices she introduced.  The chance to gather with other mentors with various levels of experience and from different institutional perspectives was also very welcome.  I highly recommend this workshop to anyone who takes seriously the charge to prepare the next generation of theatre and performance scholars."

 

 

“This workshop changed the way I think about mentoring doctoral students. I gained knowledge and practical tools that I can put to use right now for students currently writing dissertations. In addition, I gained a new perspective on how to approach mentoring, which I can use to reflect and develop my own mentoring philosophy. I was very impressed with how much time and effort Tracy put into this workshop, and I also learned a lot from interacting with my peers. I STRONGLY recommend this workshop for all professors mentoring doctoral students, whether they are new or more experienced.”

 

 

"What I took away from Tracy's workshop more than anything was a new awareness of the assumptions and automatic behaviors that were informing the way I was mentoring graduate students.  I learned techniques and strategies to intervene in assumptions and behavior that weren't serving me or my students."

Kélina A. Gotman, King’s College London:

 

"The workshop was stimulating and productive - full of take-home lessons and debate, and a great opportunity to connect with colleagues before the conference rush. Highly recommended."

 

 

 

Tracy C. Davis is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in The Graduate School and Barber Professor of Performing Arts at Northwestern University, where she founded and continues to direct Northwestern’s Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring initiative. She is immediate past president of ASTR and a member of the Performance Studies international’s board of directors. Editor of the book series “Cambridge Studies in Theatre and Performance Theory,” she has published widely on nineteenth and twentieth-century performance.

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