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:

• Advisers, who have career experience and are willing to share their knowledge
• Supporters, who give emotional and moral encouragement
• Tutors, who give specific feedback on one's performance
• Masters, who serve as "employers" to graduate student "apprentices"
• Sponsors, who are sources of information and opportunities
• Models of identity, who serve as academic role models

(Zelditch, 1990)

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

Advising focuses on the activities, requirements, and attainment of satisfactory progress through the steps needed to achieve a graduate degree.

Mentoring focuses on the human relationships, commitments, and resources that help graduate students find success and fulfillment in their academic and professional pursuits.

This guidebook focuses primarily on mentoring, although many of the recommendations also extend to advising. (By advisers, 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, a mentor recognizes a student's unique qualities and need for special coaching. In turn, this recognition inspires the student to seek to benefit from your support, skills, and wisdom. Later, both of you will explore and deepen your working relationship, perhaps collaborating on projects in which your student develops into a junior colleague. After a while, your protégé may grow in ways that require some separation from you, to test his or her own ideas. This distancing is a sign that the mentoring relationship is maturing and providing the protégé with the skills needed to function independently. Finally, both you and your protégé 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.