Professorial Advisory: explicit content

There's a lively discussion over at YFS about various aspects of mentoring and sexism (street smarts, how men pass on information to male students, etc). There is a recurring theme of unstated expectations, of mentors, mentees and of people who are evaluating the junior scientists.

Ideally our supervisors would be true mentors, and want to help us figure out what it is we want to do, and to help us achieve our goals. In reality, professors often only want students who are very sure they want to go research track, in academia or industry. This is largely because professors, especially those earlier in their careers, need trainees who will be motivated to publish many papers, as an ambitious trainee would want to do.

After the mentorship is over, though, what are the benefits to the advisor of the trainee becoming a prominent member of the scientific community? What do advisors need/get from former advisees?

1. Reflected glory and success. Their work is partially attributable to you... when you go up for full professor it will look good that you trained a couple of bright, active R01 assistant profs. Maybe some schools quantify it -- you get to add 10% of the papers published by former trainees to your publication count...
Pedigree can be a very big deal in certain fields, but it primarily benefits the trainee. Sometimes people will say they want a "BigName" person to fill this symposium slot, or faculty position, etc.

2. Someone who owes you a few who is a colleague in your field. Need something onerous reviewed? Want to know the latest review on XYZ without doing a search? Want someone whose vote you can maybe influence on that committee? (That last one is speculation -- the other two I happily do for mentors on a somewhat regular basis)

3. Advance knowledge of the cool results coming out of the mentee's lab. We all want to know new things first!

4. A network of people whom you can rely on to train your future students. If your mentee was a tissue culture savant, send your new student who is struggling to the mentee's lab for a month or two.

But your mentees can't review your grants, probably shouldn't review your papers... there's a potentially lifelong conflict of interest. I suppose the mentee's trainees -- the academic grandchildren -- will not have such conflicts and could be favorably disposed towards the original mentor. Collaborations with former mentees can also be problematic for the mentees. We're supposed to be illustrating our independence in our pre-tenure years, and we have to obtain funding and publish without our PhD and postdoctoral advisors. So there are some things mentors cannot expect from former mentees.

While enumerating the concrete benefits to having successful trainees, I realized, with the exception of reflected glory, they all rely on the mentor-mentee having cordial relationships. Cordial relationships, however, can't just be assumed. Many people have discussed toxic mentor-mentee relationships on blogs, and some (many?) of these trainees survive and stay in science. For instance, one of my colleagues is the most successful trainee to date of his famous postdoctoral advisor, but they left things so badly, they haven't spoken since a very abrupt end to the fellowship. There probably is a positive correlation between getting along with your advisors and succeeding in ambitious academic/industry careers, but it's no guarantee, and no requirement.

Maybe I'm missing something important from my list (please tell me in comments!), but if the major impact that trainees have on their mentors' career success is from papers published while working together... then as long as the mentee pursues a 'sufficiently' ambitious track while with working with BigName, PI... it doesn't matter so much what they do afterwards. Even if they drop out of science to home school ten children... or opt for one of the many career tracks that require a PhD that are not academic research. Yes, someone whose career ambitions won't be advanced by publishing may have trouble feigning enthusiasm for publishing. And if the PI is under the false impression that the student wants to be/should be publishing, the PI will become disappointed, frustrated and perhaps resentful of the student. However, if students are honest about their less-than-R01 goals, many PIs repay their candor by investing less in the student... so what can be done to create realistic expectations on both sides?

I feel it's the advisor's job to train people in the ways and means of science, and it's the trainee's job to figure out how to use that knowledge in their life. We will overinvest in some trainees, and underinvest (a failure of debatable magnitude on our part) in others, but it's our job to invest somewhat in our trainees. Ideally, our trainees also recognize they have a vested interest in their advisor's career success.

Some mentors don't begin investing in trainees until the trainee has jumped through hoops and concretely proven their intentions to stay in science... but that means 1) all the trainees are getting subpar mentoring in their first few years in that lab, and 2) the PI has absolute power in determining what's an appropriate level of sacrifice or productivity to show such intent. I bet these PIs do not reveal their secret formula to their trainees, and I'm equally sure they change the formula, move the line for trainees based on personal prejudices. Would it help mentors to be more explicitly contractual with their mentees? For instance, inform the student early on: "whatever you want to do, I need you to write the first draft of at least three first-authored papers from a PhD thesis." Or: "I expect that you will fulfill your teaching requirement as part of your degree, but I don't like my students to take so much time away from research and I will not support you if you want to TA additional classes."

PI-trainee contracts would also force PIs to think about their expectations and what they are prepared to offer a student. Some of the unconscious mentoring/gender bias issues being discussed at YFS might be resolved if professors had to articulate what it is they do to provide mentorship. They would necessarily become more aware of how they differently treat each trainee, and it could be a step towards limiting unconscious preferential treatment.

I know some PIs who thrive on keeping their students unsettled, on edge, not knowing the PI's expectations... I can't comment on whether that makes the lab more productive, but I am certain it's not useful for the trainees to spend years marinating in stress hormones. I imagine individual PIs would craft their own contracts, reflective of their lab cultures and mentorship styles. Short of that, it might be worthwhile for departments to ask for specific mentoring plans in annual faculty reviews... and perhaps elicit feedback from the students on the mentoring, under the promise of anonymity. But people gossip, and the anonymity would likely fall apart.

I know that some granting agencies have been asking for mentorship plans on training grants, and that could be one of the first steps towards codification of what trainees should expect of their PIs.

I have trouble knowing how honest, how contractual to be with mentees, especially when such discussions are not expected or typical when joining a lab. I feel that if you tell a first year PhD student what you genuinely expect of them over a ~5 year PhD, they will run screaming from your lab and will work for someone who is less upfront with them, even if eventually that PI expects as much, or more. Even if that PI's unstated expectations will cause problems down the line. By the time that student is a 3rd or 4th year, and has enough background and experience to realize that the upfront PI might have been a much better mentor... they have hitched their wagon to a less palatable, less productive situation. However, I see being open about expectations early on as one of the only ways to make sure that my mentees feel comfortable discussing whatever career plans they are considering with me, and to make sure they know what it is I want/need from them even if they don't want to stay in science.

Like any contract, like any cooperative agreement, either side can choose to unilaterally end the cooperation. A student can choose another mentor, a student can drop out... but a PI can also take a job in a place to which the student is unwilling to move. Or the PI can leave science (this happens even when the scientist is tenured). Or the PI could say the student has repeatedly violated the expectations both the student and PI agreed to, and that the PI would like to end the mentorship. These are unavoidable possibilities, and I don't know how to smooth these situations. I think how well it goes is up to the individual maturity of the PI and trainee, and formal agreements won't necessarily help these potentially tense situations.

My perspective may sound very naive, and it's because I can't speak from the other side... yet. My department has a tradition of some students going into policy positions, so I absolutely will end up mentoring people who will have different career goals from my own. I look forward to having students that will become science journalists, or go to work for the government, including (dare I dream?) at a funding agency. What's bad about having a student who goes to a primarily four year college -- if you two still get along, wouldn't this create synergistic opportunities for creative 'outreach' and 'broader impacts' for future grants? I also hope I don't feel negatively about students who completely eschew science and academia. If you care about your mentees, and they are happy doing what they are doing, and send christmas emails assuring you of this... that has to count for something. I don't know how successful I will be at this, or how frustrated I will be after a few years. I remember being chilled by reading Too Many Bad Apples on the CofHE a while ago, and I don't know how confronting dishonesty in my mentees will affect me. My strongest mentor experienced this (masters student plaguerized large portions of a thesis... from a book the mentor had on his bookshelf!) and it did not change his warmth and his willingness to extend himself to his subsequent students.