building a network

Nobody should ever have just one mentor.  Whether you are reading this as a mentor or a mentee, you may be thinking, "But I've never even had one mentor!  Now you want me to have more than one!?!?"  Bear with me.  I bet you've had many mentors throughout your life, even if you never thought to call them mentors. 

Why might you want more than one mentor?  For a couple of reasons.  First, if you have more than one person to call when you hit a crisis, then you don't have to panic if the first one doesn't pick up right away.  One mentor can be sick, busy, offline, whatever - and you are still likely to get a hold of someone. 

Second, no one mentor can help you with everything that might come up in the course of an academic career.  One person may be particularly helpful in discussions about pedagogy, but useless for discussing department politics.  One person might know the ins and outs of your institution, while another will know the ins and outs of your field.  One person may have personal experiences that give him insight into your situation, but another person has the benefit of distance that allows her to ask important and unexpected questions.

We all need support, advice, and a leg up from a variety of different people in order to thrive in our careers and in our lives.

If you are a mentor, this is very good news.  You do not have to be everything and everyone to your mentee. 

If you are a mentee, this is also very good news.  Now you get to be self-conscious and deliberate about developing a network that will help you to achieve your professional - and personal - goals.

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, in a series on mentoring on Inside Higher Education, advocates for working with mentees on developing what she calls a "mentor map".  Sadly, the link to her file is now defunct.  (You may also be interested in her National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, which offers coaching and mentoring online.)  I have borrowed from it in developing my own materials for assessing one's network, and I will be posting my material later to the blog later this week.

Many networking needs that we have are quite general.  We all need people in our lives for emotional support, no matter what career we pursue.  And as academics, I think we all want to have a network of colleagues at our home institution who are intellectually stimulating. 

Other networking needs that we have are more specific to our career and life stage.  An ABD likely will not yet need an extensive network outside of her home institution (although it is a good idea to start developing one).  A junior faculty member on a tenure-track will need to develop a new network internal to her home institution, one that extends beyond her home department.  Someone who has just made a move across the country will need to develop new social connections and friendships.  And so on.

So a few things to reflect on before filling out a mentoring map in this post:

For mentors: 

• who is in your network?  think of supporters, mentors, advocates, funders, editors, etc.
• what did your network look like when you were at your mentee's stage?  how and why has it developed since then?

For mentees:

• brainstorm about different people who are important to your life.  Don't just think about the warm and fuzzy people - think about people who are supportive and about people who are not supportive.
• possible categories to think about (not an exhaustive list):  friends, family, lovers, professors, advisers, administrators, therapists/counselors, religious/spiritual leaders, colleagues, peers, graduate school cohorts, people you have met at conferences