A close, individualized mentoring relationship between a graduate student and a faculty member (or others) develops over time and requires both caring and guidance. The Council of Graduate Schools, a national policy organization dedicated to the improvement and advancement of graduate education, defines mentors as:

• Advisors, people with career experience willing to share their knowledge
• Supporters, people who give emotional and moral encouragement
• Tutors, people who give specific feedback on one's performance
• Masters, in the sense of employers to whom one is apprenticed
• Sponsors, sources of information about and aid in obtaining opportunities
• Models of identity, of the kind of person one should be to be an academic

(Zelditch, 1990)

Although there is a connection between mentors and advisors, not all mentors are advisors and not all advisors are mentors. Think of the difference this way:

Mentoring helps you understand how your ambitions fit into graduate education, department life, and postgraduate career choices. As you progress through your own graduate program, you will find that rarely is one individual able to meet all your mentoring needs. As discussed later, you will obtain more effective guidance by cultivating multiple mentors anyway.

This guidebook focuses primarily on mentoring, although many of the recommendations also extend to advising. (By advisors, we mean those individuals who serve as thesis or dissertation supervisors.) Think of mentoring as the consistent and developmental evolution of wisdom, technical knowledge, assistance, support, empathy, and respect to graduate students through, and often beyond, their graduate careers. In other words, mentoring is a constellation of activities — educational, interpersonal and professional — that constitutes more than advising students on how to meet degree requirements, as critical as that is.

An effective mentoring relationship passes through developmental phases. Early on, your mentor will recognize your unique qualities and your need for special coaching. In turn, this recognition should inspire you to seek to benefit from your mentor's support, skills, and wisdom. Later, both of you will explore and deepen your working relationship, perhaps collaborating on projects in which you develop into a junior colleague. After a while, you may grow in ways that require some separation from your mentor, to test your own ideas. This distancing is a sign that the mentoring relationship is maturing and providing you with the skills needed to function independently. Finally, both you and your mentor may redefine your relationship as one of equals, characterized over time by informal contact and mutual assistance, thus allowing you to become true professional colleagues.