InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
A good mentor will be interested in how your upbringing and experiences influence your perception of the world and your decisions. . . . wanting the best for you doesn’t necessarily mean always telling you that everything you are doing is great. . . . Gaining perspective on your role in God’s bigger picture is one of the most valuable outcomes of a healthy mentoring relationship.Read more…
To find a good mentor, it is important to have a strong sense of self. You need to know who you are, and what kind of person you want to become…Both mentor and student need to respect one another’s time, honesty, and commitment to the relationship.Read more…
How can grad students identify good mentors? In this series, we’ll look at 5 characteristics that are useful to look for in a mentor. Keep in mind that it may not be realistic to find a single individual who exhibits all of these characteristics. You might need to look for a group of people . . .Read more…
Beth Madison shares two things she’s learned about teaching from Ephesians. Read more…
Three years ago, I had no idea how to obtain a mentor or how you would go about finding one. Through God’s grace, I’ve actually found three mentors since then in different ways.Read more…
Hannah, Thank-you for offering this letter of encouragement! The faculty with whom I shared your words at Mentoring over the Long Term: Crafting Conversations, a seminar co-led with Terry Gustafson (OSU, Chemistry Professor) at the 2014 MidWest Faculty Conference on TheRead more…
“Christian Faculty Mentoring Students” and “Beyond Academics: Kelly Arispe and Spanish Linguistics” are two of several excellent resources for Faculty MinistryRead more…
I have not only previously referred to Transformative Conversations: A Guide to Mentoring Communities Among Colleagues in Higher Education by Peter Felten, H-Dirksen L. Bauman, Aaron Kheriaty, and Edward Taylor (Jossey-Bass, 2013), but also Bob Trube’s review of it (see Reclaiming Conversations?).Read more…
In Chapter 18 of Minds, Brains, Souls and Gods: A Conversation on Faith, Psychology and Neuroscience (InterVarsity Press, 2013), Malcolm Jeeves[1] discusses the question “Can Science ‘Explain Away’ Religion?” with his fictional psychology student “mentee”. Have you wrestled with thisRead more…
“Reclaiming conversations, that’s the next frontier.” — Sherry Turkle‘s [1] concluding line to her TEDxUIUC 2011 presentation Alone Together. This morning David O’Hara’s Can I Ask Questions In Church? [2] spurred me to read Jaweed Kaleem’s Keeping Alive The Big Questions [3]. In Kaleem’sRead more…
Preface Robert Boyle, illustrious scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society, described how, while in Geneva on a continental holiday, he underwent a conversion from nominal, unthinking Christianity to committed Christianity. As a result of his experiences, he stressed theRead more…
Thank-you to J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media, for venturing into and reporting on Women and the Academic Life as part of his Urbana12 series.* We’re looking forward to your responses to this material — any seminar participants withRead more…
Christians are characteristically convinced of the importance of mentoring because of the deep way it is embedded in their faith.
Tom recently posted about graduate students mentoring undergrads at Johns Hopkins. Graduate school offers many opportunities to mentor, whether that means chatting with your undergraduate students during office hours or introducing new graduate students to your department. Here are aRead more…
My last post ended with a section on following up with mentors, and I’d like to expand on that a bit here. In this post, I’ll look at a few ways of maintaining mentor relationships over time. Sustaining anything overRead more…
Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. — Proverbs 20:5, KJV Even if you have good mentors, learning wisdom from them is a skill. It’s an art that takesRead more…
Now that we’ve explored some ways to find mentors as an undergrad, I’d like to transition and focus on some elements that make up the art of being mentored. I hope that what I say here will be helpful acrossRead more…
Last week, I gave some general thoughts on finding good mentors as an undergraduate. This week, I’ll talk a bit about finding mentors who share your beliefs. This is not in any way to minimize the value of mentors whoRead more…
Everyone agrees that mentoring is important at every phase of an academic career, but finding mentors and growing in mentoring relationships can be a challenge. In follow-up to and to expand upon Resource for Grad Student mentoring of Undergraduates (5/29/2012).Read more…
In a recent visit to Baltimore, I ate lunch with a group of Johns Hopkins University (JHU) graduate students. Dwight Schwartz (InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry Area Director for the MidAtlantic and Campus Staff Member at JHU) couldn’t wait toRead more…
Great question. Do you resonate with the response Rachel Toor received from a graduate class in physical education? When we were wrapping up, I asked them a question: “What is your relationship to reading and writing?” At that moment, theyRead more…
Related to our series on Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis, InterVarsity Press, 2009),* below is an email I received regarding the purpose of education. Agree/disagree? Thoughts/reactions? The purpose of education isRead more…
In addition to the seminar mentioned in Query: Social Media, Community Development, Campus Ministry, I’m preparing a Bibliography for the upcoming Graduate & Faculty Ministry National Team Meetings. What do our friends in the Emerging Scholars Network have to shareRead more…
Two recent articles on the profession of education worth consideration: In Search of Education Leaders, by Bob Herbert, NY Times Op-Ed, December 4, 2009 The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, byRead more…