Mentoring Graduate Students: Going beyond the Formal Role Structure

Offers an account of the authors informal relationships as a mentor to graduate students, drawing on Everett Wilsons (1971) classification to distinguish between roles & relationships as well as David Shulman & Ira Silvers (2004) article on the business of sociology. Discussion begins with a look at what constitutes genuine mentoring from the perspective of faculty members before considering the importance of student needs & capacities to mentoring relationships. A distinction is made between risk-averse vs risk-taking students when it comes to doing sociological research. It is argued that mentors must help students negotiate the dysfunctional experiences of anomie & alienation. Tension between so-called sacred (a calling) & profane (a job/profession) views of sociological work is identified before addressing mentoring in a business setting, focusing on mentee experience in the academic labor market & the kind of professional supports the author was able to offer his students at that point. How the mentoring relationship changes during this is considered. References. D. Edelman