Section II. Mentoring in a Dynamic Learning Community lays a foundation for understanding the nature of mentoring and how it is similar to, and different from, advising. Here you can explore the basic definition and qualities of good mentoring, the benefits of mentoring to you and your mentors, the changing graduate student population, and the various roles and responsibilities you and your mentors have. This section also stresses the importance of seeking multiple mentors.

Section III. Thinking about Your Mentoring Needs offers practical strategies and concrete recommendations for establishing and maintaining effective relationships with your mentors.

Section IV. Getting Started on Your Mentoring Journey helps you lay the groundwork for building great relationships with your mentors. Its focus is on helping you clarify the mutual interests you share with your mentors, as well as your expectations of each other.

We hope this guide serves all members of our graduate community — graduate students, faculty, departmental graduate chairs and assistants, heads of departments, schools and colleges, and our central administration — as a useful starting point for enriching mentoring as part of the graduate student experience and for ensuring vitality in graduate education at UNL.

Use the resources on this page to help you and your mentors make the most of your mentoring relationship.

Worksheets will help you define your expectations, set goals, plan meetings, and move forward with your professional development.

A list of resources includes sources cited in this guidebook and other resources that may be helpful to you as your begin to build a satisfying relationship with your mentors.

You are on your way!

As this guidebook shows, obtaining good mentoring is one of the best investments you can make with your time in graduate school. It takes effort and patience in the beginning, but the returns are great and will have a positive impact on you for many years after graduation.

Good mentoring will give you the edge as you prepare to enter the profession of your choice. Not only do good mentors help you gain solid knowledge and skills — more important, they help you maintain a positive attitude and acquire the self-reliance you need for embarking confidently on your path to success. Remember, many graduate students will follow in your footsteps. You, too, will mentor many others over the course of your professional life, whatever your career trajectory. The mentoring relationships you establish now will directly and indirectly benefit numerous individuals and institutions down the road. On this wonderful journey, we wish you every success!

Further Reading

Adams, H.G. (1992). Mentoring: An essential factor in the doctoral process for minority students. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, The GEM Program.

Anderson, M.S. (Ed.). (1998). The experience of being in graduate school: An exploration. New Directions for Higher Education, 26(101), Spring 1998. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Antony, J.S. & Taylor, E. (2004). Theories and strategies of academic career socialization: Improving paths to the professoriate for black graduate students. In D.H. Wulff, A.E.

Austin, and Associates. Paths to the professoriate: Strategies for enriching the preparation of future faculty (pp. 92-114). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Basalla, S., & Debelius, M. (2001). So what are you going to do with that? A guide to career-changing for MAs and Ph.D.s. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bellows, L.H., & Perry, A. (2005). Assessing graduate student mentorship and development. Unpublished manuscript.

Brainard, S.G., Harkus, D.A., & St. George, M.R. (1998). A curriculum for training mentors and mentees: Guide for administrators. Seattle: Women in Engineering Initiative, WEPAN Western Regional Center, University of Washington.

Brown, M.C., Davis, G.L., & McClendon, S.A. (1999). Mentoring graduate students of color: Myths, models and modes. Peabody Journal of Education, 74(2), 105-118.

Chandler, C. (1996). Mentoring and women in academia: Reevaluating the traditional model. NWSA Journal, 8, 79-100.

Chao, G.T. (1997). Mentoring phases and outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 51, 15-28.

Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy. (1997). Adviser, teacher, role model, friend: On being a mentor to students in science and engineering. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press [On-line]. Available: http://www.nap.edu/ readingroom/books/mentor.

Daloz, L.A. (1999). Mentor: Guiding the journey of adult learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Damrosch, D. (1995). We scholars: Changing the culture of the university. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Faison, J.J. (1996). The next generation: The mentoring of African American graduate students on predominately white university campuses. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New York, NY, April 8-12, 1996). ERIC Document # ED401344.

Frierson, H.T., Jr. (Ed.). (1997). Mentoring and diversity in higher education. In Diversity in Higher Education, v. 1. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Gaff, J.G., Pruitt-Logan, A.S., & Weibl, R.A. (2000). Building the faculty we need: Colleges and universities working together. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Gaff, J.G., Pruitt-Logan, A.S., Sims, L.B., & Denecke, D.D. (2003). Preparing future faculty in the humanities and social sciences: A guide for change. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools.

Gaffney, N.A. (Ed.). (1995). A conversation about mentoring: Trends and models. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools.

Goldsmith, J.A., Komlos, J., & Schine Gold, P. (2001). The Chicago guide to your academic career: A portable mentor for scholars from graduate school through tenure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Gray, G. (2000). Producing results: Effective management and mentoring in academic labs. AWIS Magazine, 29(1), 14-18. Gross, R.A. (February, 2002). From ‘old boys' to mentors. Chronicle of Higher Education [On-line]. Available: http:// chronicle.com/jobs/2002/02/2002022801c.htm.

Heinrich, K.T. (1995). Doctoral advisement relationships between women. Journal of Higher Education, 66(4), 447-469.

Hoyt, S.K. (1999). Mentoring with class: Connections between social class and developmental relationships in the academy. In A.J. Murrell, F.J. Crosby, & R.J. Ely (Eds.), Mentoring dilemmas: Developmental relationships within multicultural organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Johnson, W.B. (2003). A framework for conceptualizing competence to mentor. Ethics & Behavior, 13(2), 127-151.

Johnson, I.H., & Ottens, A.J. (Eds.). (1996). Leveling the playing field: Promoting academic success for students of color. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kochan, F.K. (2002). (Ed.). The organizational and human dimensions of successful mentoring programs and relationships. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publications.

Lark, J.S., & Croteau, J.M. (1998). Lesbian, gay, and bisexual doctoral students' mentoring relationships with faculty in counseling psychology: A qualitative study. Counseling Psychologist, 26(5), 754-776.

Lentin, J. (2004). Strategies for success in mentoring: A handbook for mentors and protégés. Edmonton, Alberta: The Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA).

Lovitts, B.E. (2001). Leaving the ivory tower: The causes and consequences of departure from doctoral study. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Luna, G., & Cullen, D. (1998). Do graduate students need mentoring? College Student Journal, 32(3), 322-330.

Mintz, B., & Rothblum, E. (Eds). (1997). Lesbians in academia: Degrees of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Moss, P., Debres, K.J., Cravey, A., Hyndman, J., Hirschboeck, K.K., & Masucci, M. (1999). Toward mentoring as feminist praxis: Strategies for ourselves and others. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 23(3), 413-427.

Murrel, A.J., Crosby, F.J., & Ely, R.J. (1999). Mentoring dilemmas: Developmental relationships within multicultural organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Age Diversity

The average age of graduate students is on the rise. According to data from the 2000 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, the average graduate student is 33 years old, and 20% of all graduate students are over the age of 40. Thus, many of your peers already have marriage or life partners and dependents (with corresponding family responsibilities), and prior work experience. In addition, close to 57% of all graduate students maintain some form of employment outside their studies.

These changes in the graduate student population affect your and your peers' needs for mentoring and, along with other factors, are driving greater variety in career goals. For instance, although it is true that many doctoral students pursue advanced study to become professors, an increasing number are seeking other professional opportunities. In the U.S., the transition from an industry-based economy to a knowledge-based one has generated new demands for knowledge workers. Many graduate students seek high-level analytical tools and intellectual development to market themselves as future leaders in a wide range of "knowledge economy" sectors. In addition, downturns in the availability of tenure-track positions in academe are leading some students — including many who originally intended to become professors — to shift their job search to arenas outside of academe.

Such developments bolster the case for re-examining the structures of graduate education and students' needs for mentoring. In this context of change, the oft-relied on separation of students into "traditional" vs. "nontraditional" categories is no longer useful. In all likelihood, you don't fit squarely into either category. Because there is no single recipe for good mentoring, your best approach is to engage in ongoing, reflective assessment of your needs, and to learn strategies to interact with your mentors effectively. This guidebook will help you do that.

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)

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, 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 the mentor's support, skills, and wisdom. Later, both will explore and deepen their working relationship, perhaps collaborating on projects in which the student develops into a junior colleague. After a while, the protégé may grow in ways that require some separation from the mentor, 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 mentor and protégé may redefine the relationship as one of equals, characterized over time by informal contact and mutual assistance, thus allowing them to become true professional colleagues.

Early on, graduate students learn that advanced study differs vastly from their undergraduate experience. As undergraduates, the goal was to obtain knowledge, while in graduate school the goal is to contribute knowledge to a field of study. Graduate school is the professional training ground where students learn the skills to be successful in their fields and gain an understanding of how their disciplines work.

Research confirms what most faculty and graduate program directors already know: many students enter their graduate programs with little understanding of the complex landscape of higher education or how different philosophies in graduate programs drive expectations for academic excellence and ideal career pathways. In fact, despite very articulate statements of purpose in their applications, many graduate students initially are unsure of what they will do with a graduate degree.

This is not a problem but rather an opportunity for good mentoring. Students' career goals are evolutionary and good mentors assist students with their professional evolution.

Both graduate students and faculty mentors derive a number of benefits from a successful mentoring relationship. Long range benefits to protégés who enter both business and academic professions include accelerated promotion rates, greater career mobility, higher overall salaries and compensation packages, greater personal and career satisfaction, enhanced professional confidence and self-esteem, decreased role-stress, reduced work-family conflict, and a sense of enhanced power within the organization (Johnson, 2003).

Active mentors report enhanced career satisfaction and fulfillment, creative synergy and career rejuvenation, loyal support from previous protégés, and organizational recognition for skill in talent development.

Three core roles

1. Disciplinary guide

As noted earlier, sometimes a faculty member will be both a thesis/dissertation advisor and mentor; in other cases, the student benefits more by having different people carry out each role. Either way, the role of a disciplinary guide is to help students become contributing members of their disciplines.

This guidance goes well beyond helping them complete the requirements of their academic programs, as important as that assistance is. It is deeper and involves helping students understand how a discipline has evolved as a knowledge enterprise; recognize novel questions; identify innovative ways of engaging undergraduate students through teaching and collaborative research projects; and see the discipline, its questions and methodologies, in relation to other fields.

Another important role of the disciplinary guide is to help students grasp the impact of the discipline on the world outside academe, and to assist them in pursuing the impact they desire to have with a graduate degree.

2. Skills development consultant

While graduate study, especially at the doctoral level, is about learning to generate knowledge, the pressures for specialization can make students temporarily lose sight of the array of skills they need to succeed both during and after graduate school, in part because of the relative intensity and isolation of research. As a skills consultant, a mentor's role is to help students develop the intellectual and professional skills they will need, beyond those related to research. Some of these are:

• Oral and written communication skills. These include clearly expressing the results of one's work; translating field-specific knowledge for application in varied contexts, such as teaching or interacting with the public; and persuading others, such as funders, policy makers, organizations, and conference audiences, of the value of one's work.
• Team-oriented skills. Some of the most innovative learning occurs in teams that problem solve collaboratively. Increasingly, complex problems require inter-disciplinary or multidisciplinary solutions. A mentor can help a student develop collaborative, problem-solving skills by organizing group exercises and projects.
• Leadership skills. Graduate students are prime candidates to become intellectual leaders in any number of settings. Mentors can help them build potential by inviting them to assume leadership roles throughout graduate study; e.g., in seminars, graduate student government, disciplinary societies, outreach to the community, and on departmental or university committees. These activities will help build people skills — listening to others, shaping ideas, and expressing priorities — which are indispensable for advancement in any career.

3. Career consultant

In recent years, the mentor's role as career consultant has taken on increased importance, especially for doctoral students. As a result, many doctoral students are choosing challenging positions in a greater variety of educational settings and diverse sectors of the economy.

As a career consultant, a mentor can help a protégé develop an evolutionary view of his or her career, which requires planning, flexibility, and adaptation to change. Informed of the job market realities, an effective mentor finds ways to help students link aspects of their graduate work with other potential mentors — alumni or other professionals in colleges, universities, schools, community groups, the private sector, nonprofit organizations, government, and industrial laboratories.

Wider relationships can help students explore a multitude of career choices, and learn how to translate their graduate education into various kinds of professional opportunities. With a modest investment of time, mentors and protégés can stay abreast of postgraduate employment trends both inside and outside the academy.

By answering these questions, students begin to define the kinds of mentoring they need while faculty begin to define the kind of mentor they want to be and identify the building blocks for developing productive relationships with graduate students.

Ultimately, your vision will clarify the expectations you have about mentoring. Use Worksheet 1, Mentor expectations to help you think about what you expect from a mentoring relationship.

Students

Enhanced self-knowledge helps you articulate your goals and choose the people whose personality, expertise, and style are best suited to your needs.

To develop a vision of the kinds of mentors you should seek, reflect on others who served as mentors earlier in your life and answer candidly the following questions:

• What kind of mentoring have I received in the past? Was it work-related? School-related? Both?
• Would I describe my past mentoring relationships as collegial ones (as equals or near equals) or apprenticeship ones? What does this difference mean to me now? Which do I prefer at this stage of my professional development?
• What did I find most useful about the mentoring I received? What did I find least useful?
• How does the mentoring I received compare to the kind that others received who were different from me in terms of race, gender, age, ability, or family background?
• How well would the mentoring I received in the past apply to my graduate school circumstances now? How might I need to alter my expectations?
• What kind of mentoring did I not receive earlier that would be particularly helpful to me now?

There are several ways to recognize good mentoring. Faculty who have received awards for outstanding mentoring are excellent models. Advanced graduate students and alumni are also excellent sources of insight into what helps them function optimally in graduate school.

A good mentor will do the following:

Engage students in ongoing conversations

• Invite students to talk often, and welcome them to discussions during office hours, in the lab, department lounges, or hallways. Ask them how they are doing with coursework or projects.
• Get in touch with students at least once a quarter. Reach out to those who seem remote and be sensitive to whether remoteness is a cultural way of showing respect or due to social isolation.
• Share coffee or meals away from the office, if you are able, to engage students in informal and rich discussions without office distractions.

Demystify graduate school for students

• Make sure students obtain the most recent copies of your program's guidelines and the Graduate Bulletin.
• Clarify unwritten or vague aspects of your program's expectations for coursework, comprehensive exams, research, and teaching.
• Help students grasp the finer points of forming a committee and how to approach a thesis or dissertation. At each stage of the graduate experience, discuss the formal and informal criteria that determine what counts as quality work.
• Alert students to pitfalls well ahead of time, especially those that may affect funding or graduate standing.

Provide constructive and supportive feedback

• Provide students with frank, helpful, and timely feedback on their work.
• Temper criticism with praise when it is deserved, and hold students to high standards to help them improve.
• Do not assume that students who falls behind in work lack of commitment. Instead try to assess, with the student, what is going on and offer ways to help.
• Know the benefits of early intervention and address quickly any question about a student's ability to complete his or her degree.

Provide encouragement

• Encourage students to come forward with their ideas at all stages of development.
• Motivate students to try new techniques and expand their skills.
• Remind students that mistakes lead to better learning.
• Share less-than-successful professional experiences and the lessons you learned from them.
• Know that many students experience anxiety about their place in graduate school (e.g., the imposter syndrome), and help them understand that even seasoned professionals experience this kind of anxiety.
• Teach students how to break down potentially overwhelming projects into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Foster networks and multiple mentors

• Help students locate assistance from multiple sources of expertise, and see UNL faculty, graduate students, alumni, department staff, retired faculty, and faculty from other universities as rich resources.
• Introduce students to faculty and other graduate students with complementary interests, both on campus and at conferences.
• Help students connect their work with that of experts in the community (e.g., graduate alumni) who can provide helpful career perspectives.
• Build a community of scholars by coordinating informal discussion and interest groups or occasional social events among students who share interests.

Look out for students' interests

• Convey through a variety of means that you want students to succeed.
• Create opportunities for students to demonstrate their competencies by encouraging them to present at meetings, conferences, and in university forums.
• Nominate your protégés for high-visibility fellowships, projects, teaching and internship opportunities.
• Promote students' research and teaching projects inside and outside the department.
• Be an advocate for all graduate students.

Treat students with respect

• Minimize interruptions and distractions during meetings with students. Be aware of body language that students may interpret as inattention.
• Remember previous conversations with students (perhaps keep notes on all your discussions and review them prior to meetings with your protégé).
• Tell students what you learn from them, to help them see themselves as potential colleagues.
• Acknowledge the prior skills and personal and professional experiences students bring to graduate school.

Provide a personal touch

• Be open and approachable. Demonstrate caring, even when students need to discuss nonacademic issues.
• Do not assume that all students experience the challenges of graduate school in the same way; help them find creative solutions to their challenges or problems.
• Keep abreast of the mentoring and professional development resources at the Office of Graduate Studies and elsewhere designed to help students succeed.

The graduate faculty-student ratio at UNL may be unlike that of your undergraduate experience, especially if you studied in a smaller academic setting. At a large research university, you may need to take extra initiative to seek out interactions with faculty members. You should approach professors openly, as colleagues, and initiate discussions. If your personality, upbringing, or cultural background makes you less comfortable with direct approaches, visit professors during their office hours to initiate contact.

Identify and cultivate multiple potential mentors. Rarely is one individual the perfect mentor for all of your educational and professional needs. Having multiple mentors increases the likelihood you will obtain the assistance and support you need from a range of expert sources — your "team." Multiple mentors can be faculty members within or outside of the University, departmental staff, current graduate students, alumni, and other professionals in the community with special knowledge or abilities related to your academic and career goals.

Invest time in assessing what you need from your mentors and then ask for that assistance clearly and professionally. It is more effective to request specific kinds of guidance than to make general requests for mentorship.

Develop a mentoring policy

It is wise for departments to construct a policy that focuses on effective mentoring as a core component of the graduate student experience. Such a policy is most effective when it emerges from the creative ideas and good will of the faculty, which a few interviews with mentoring focus groups can cultivate. In this way, all members of a department can identify principles of mentoring and agree on how they will institutionalize and reward good practice.

Assign a first-year, temporary adviser

Assign new students a temporary faculty adviser to help them initiate relationships with faculty during the first year of graduate school. Assignments can be based on shared interests and should require each temporary adviser to meet with advisees at least once a quarter to review any questions or concerns about departmental requirements, course selections, and how well the student is being socialized into department life. Such appointments should focus on ensuring that all students receive quality initial support in a systematic way. These temporary relationships allow students to learn the ropes without having to make premature commitments to a mentor. Later on, students' choices of long-term mentors or advisers will be better informed and based upon their developing research, teaching, and career interests.

Establish peer mentoring

In order to facilitate students' transition to life in graduate school, pair first-year graduate students with more advanced graduate students on the basis of similar interests. Peer mentors can help new students become familiar with departmental culture, strategies for success in the first year, and resources at the university and in Lincoln. Departments can support this effort by outlining the basic responsibilities of both peers to each other and to the mentoring process, and making funds available to support regular mentoring activities.

And, finally, reward effective mentoring!

Departments that create rewards for excellent mentorship are usually in the best position to help their faculty turn good principles into action. For example, during reviews for merit increases, departments can take into account the quality and quantity of mentoring by asking faculty to document this information in their portfolio. Departments can also ask graduate students to assess their mentors. Another way to reward good mentors is to factor in teaching credits for faculty who have heavy mentoring responsibilities.

Graduate students can identify potential faculty mentors within or outside their departments using a variety of formal and informal means.

• Familiarize yourself with professors' work to gain a sense of their past and current interests and methodologies.
• Immerse yourself in departmental academic and social activities. Observe how faculty interact with colleagues and graduate students.
• Enroll in classes being taught by faculty who most interest you. Attend their public presentations.
• Ask advanced graduate students about their advisors and mentors. Share your interests and ask them for suggestions about whom you should meet.

Potential mentors will want to know if your intellectual interests are similar to theirs. Be prepared to share how your academic, professional, or personal experiences relate to theirs. Ask about their recent work, and explore ways in which their work interests intersect with what you envision for yourself.

Mentors enjoy protégés who are motivated and eager to move to the next level of their professional growth. State your goals as you see them right now. Ask about ways you can explore these goals together over time and about courses or key projects you should consider given your plan of study.

What you need to know about potential mentors

In addition to telling potential mentors about yourself, you need to seek further information about them. You are choosing to work with them, just as they are choosing to work with you. To assess the amount and type of support you can expect to receive from a potential mentor, find out what you can about his or her:

To understand how much time the professor will be able to give to you, ask about his or her other commitments. Also find out from other students how much time this person normally gives to students. Will that be enough for you? Ask prospective mentors if they expect to be at the University during the entire time you are a student here. If they plan to be away for extended periods (on sabbatical or on a research project), what arrangements could be made to stay in contact?

You should be able to clearly understand the professor and feel you are able to effectively communicate your thoughts and ideas. Do you think you will be able to work closely with this person? Does he or she listen attentively to your ideas and concerns, and ask good follow up questions? Will you be able to adjust to his or her professional and personal style?

It's critical that you find out what a potential mentor considers a normal workload for graduate scholarship (outside your work as a teaching or research assistant).

• How many hours per week does he or she believe you should be spending on your own research or creative projects?
• Does the potential mentor have, or know of, funds to support you? Will that financial support remain available until you complete your program?
• Is there potential for developing a thesis or dissertation topic from the mentor's research program that you would find interesting?
• Especially for those in the sciences and engineering: Does the mentor have appropriate space and laboratory equipment for your needs? What is the size of the mentor's research group, and is this size optimal for you? If you desire to bolster your teaching experience, will this person support your search for teaching assistantships?
• Especially for those in the humanities, social sciences, or professional schools: Will this mentor be able to help you obtain graduate assistantships or fellowships (if you do not already have these lined up)? Will he or she be able to help you achieve the professional development balance you want between teaching and research?

Next

After your initial meetings with prospective mentors, follow up via e-mail or phone to thank them for their time and let them know that what you learned was fruitful. If you agreed to pursue an idea or topic, let them know your plans and when you will get back in touch. Initial meetings will probably give you a sense of a person as a potential mentor; however, you do not need to make any decisions immediately. Allow yourself and the person time to reflect. If you later decide to ask a faculty member to be a mentor, you both will have a better understanding of what each of you stands to gain from the relationship. If a mentoring relationship begins to take shape, this understanding will help you and your mentor create a professional development plan tailored to your needs (see Worksheet 4, Phases of your professional development, and Worksheet 5, Professional development plan).

One of the strongest themes expressed by graduate students, on this campus and in national studies, is the desire for greater clarity about expectations, roles, and responsibilities. When students and mentors have clear expectations of one another, relationships are more likely to be productive, enjoyable, and mutually beneficial.

To prevent misunderstandings, discuss the expectations you and your mentor have of each other, including how they may change over time. Not all mentors and protégés establish formal contracts. Some find formal agreements useful while others prefer to work under informal agreements. See Worksheet 6, Sample mentoring agreement.

Goals and work plans

Students should develop and share with mentors a work plan that includes short- and long-term goals within reasonable (achievable) timelines.  Make sure these plans are feasible and meet the academic program's requirements.  At least once a quarter, meet to discuss progress, as well as any obstacles encountered. Discuss any additional training and experiences students need to achieve their goals. If adjusting timelines becomes necessary, work together to agree upon new plans.

Meetings

Discuss how often you'll meet and what other modes of communication, such as emails, can keep your conversations going.  Identify issues you feel require a face-to-face meeting and those that can be dealt with in other ways.  Each of you should identify the circumstances, if any, under which you feel it is appropriate to be contacted at home by phone, instant message, or other means.

Students, be sure you request the amount of meeting time you believe you need to progress on your goals.  While a mentoring relationship is one of mutuality, be prepared to lead meetings with an agenda to maximize your time together.

Some professors prefer students to take responsibility for arranging and leading meetings while others prefer to share the responsibility. Some prefer students to prepare agendas in advance so as to maximize time together. Mentors should communicate their preferences and extend a clear invitation to contact them when they need help.

Mentors, be explicit if you have a heavy travel schedule, are about to take a sabbatical, or will be assuming an administrative position.  If you are unable to meet often enough to satisfy students' needs, discuss alternative means of communication such as e-mail, and suggest other people or resources to consult.

Feedback

Discuss how often the mentor will give feedback on the student's progress and how long he or she typically needs to return papers or drafts of articles.  Communicate about current workloads so you can plan deadlines appropriately, and offer sufficient lead time.

Mentors should tell students whether to expect lots of feedback or sparse feedback, and explain how they intend that feedback to help the student's intellectual and professional growth.

Reminders

Agree in advance on the best way for the student to remind the professor about getting work back to them. For instance, students can ask: "When you are very busy, how should I remind you about a paper of mine that you have? Should I email you, call you, or come by your office? How much in advance should I remind you — one week ahead, or would you prefer two?"

Mentors, explain how long it generally takes you to review students' work, and let them know how they can best follow up if you are unable to reply within the specified time frame. For instance, you might like an e-mail or phone reminder a few days before the agreed-upon date. Each time students submit work to you, let them know when they can expect you to return it. Take these opportunities to remind students of your feedback style and your expectations.

Drafts

Discuss expectations for drafts of work to be submitted for feedback. Some professors prefer not to receive very rough drafts and might suggest that they first be shared with a trusted peer or writing group and revised before being handed in.  Students should help mentors be more expedient by highlighting revised sections with each document version.

Be efficient in your interactions with faculty

• Arrive on time for scheduled meetings.
• For each meeting, be prepared with an agenda of topics to discuss and prioritize them so you ask your most important questions first.
• At the conclusion of the meeting or through e-mail, summarize any agreements you have reached. Also restate what you will be doing and what the professor committed to doing for you. Ask for a response if there is any disagreement with anything you have stated.
• If your mentor is facing a work emergency at the time of your meeting, offer to reschedule, shorten the meeting, or handle the matter via e-mail. Be flexible, but stay committed to getting what you need in a timely manner.
• If you need to cancel a meeting, make sure your message reaches the professor. (Don't rely only on e-mail, since many people don't check e-mail regularly.)

• Seek the professor's input once you are confident you have a presentable draft. Be sure to proofread the document carefully. If you have doubts about the quality of your work, ask a friend to read your paper first. Ideally, this person should be familiar with both the professor and the topic so s/he can make remarks about the content and style.
• Do not ask professors to re-read an entire paper if only certain sections have been revised. Instead, mark the new or edited sections by underlining them, putting them in boldface, or by using a different font.
• It may be useful to create or join a group in which students present their work to each other for feedback.

• Provide updated copies of your curriculum vitae.
• Leave clear written instructions as to when the letters are due and to whom to send them.
• Attach a stamped and addressed envelope for each letter. If you have several letters, create a calendar for your mentor that lists application deadlines.
• Provide a short description about the fellowship, grant, or program for which you are applying.
• Provide details about how you are structuring your application and what points you would like your mentor to emphasize.
• Submit these materials with enough advance time for your mentor to write a letter.
• In case the professor misplaces the application materials, keep extra copies of all forms.

Encourage students to be proactive

Ideally, all students should feel they can approach their professors openly and candidly. But at a large research university like UNL, some students may find the faculty-student ratio quite different from their undergraduate experience and may need to make extra efforts to seek out interactions with professors. In some cases, personalities or cultural backgrounds may make students feel less comfortable with direct approaches. Remind your students that visiting you during office hours is a great way to maintain contact. At the same time, invite your students to suggest other times and places for discussions, or offer them yourself.

Explain the advantages of multiple mentors

Because one individual is rarely able to meet all of a student's mentoring needs, graduate students need to find and cultivate multiple mentors. Mentors can be faculty members within or outside the university. They might be departmental staff, current graduate students, or graduate alumni. They can even be professionals in the community with special knowledge or abilities related to a student's goals. Students with multiple mentors increase the likelihood that they will obtain assistance and support from a range of expert sources — their "team." This approach is especially helpful for students who want to explore diverse career opportunities.

Help students develop realistic approaches to mentors

Students will find that developing mentoring relationships is more effective if they request specific kinds of guidance, rather than make general requests for mentorship. Help your students understand they need to invest time in identifying what they need from their mentors and request that assistance clearly and professionally.

Remind students to be visible

Help your students become aware of the importance of being visible in department life — that office and hallway conversations build and maintain relationships as well as help people glean vital information. If students have a departmental office, encourage them to use it as much as possible. Many students have other responsibilities outside their departments. Help them find creative ways to be visible, by getting involved in key events or gatherings, or taking a leadership role in coordinating certain events each year.

The mentor

Your first step is to politely and diplomatically remind the professor of your needs. If you are not getting satisfactory results, we urge you to meet with your mentor in person as soon as possible. Face-to-face meetings can lead to more satisfactory results than e-mail, since one's tone and message can be easily misconstrued in electronic communication.

Other mentors or supervisory committee members

Even if other mentors on your team do not know the individual with whom you are experiencing difficulties and may or may not know your department's norms and policies, they will be able to offer you a fresh perspective, and suggest solutions they have found helpful.

Peers

Other students who have frequent contact with a particular faculty member can tell you if the issue is typical and may be able to suggest possible resolutions. Your peers also can explain the norms in your department regarding frequency of meetings, turn-around time for feedback, and general availability of faculty.

At some point in your graduate career, you might face the question of how to acquire a new mentor or advisor. The issues can be more complex if the same person fulfills both of these roles for you. Because of the relatively informal nature of mentoring, there is no formal policy for acquiring mentors as there is, in most departments, for acquiring or changing a research or dissertation advisor. It is important to know the differences between the two processes, and the basic guidelines applicable to each.

Changing mentors is not an issue if the relationship is an informal one (i.e., the person is not your thesis/dissertation advisor). Also, changing mentors does not necessarily imply any difficulties in your relationship. In fact, as you progress through various phases of your professional development, your priorities for mentoring will change, possibly making it beneficial to select a different mentor or combination of mentors. This change is more likely to be motivated by your personal and professional growth than by misunderstandings. A good mentor will support you in your search for others who can assist you.

Changing advisors is common in some fields of study and less so in others. It usually requires that you follow departmental procedures. It is easier to change advisors if your department encourages students to work with multiple faculty members, and making changes earlier in your career is generally easier than later. However, you will need to do extra thoughtful planning if you came to UNL to work with a specific faculty member and down the road find that your interests change or the relationship begins to suffer.

If you are changing an advisor, you can accomplish the task best if you adopt an attitude of respect for the person who has assisted you. The following are general guidelines, but first, always consult your department for the specific policies and procedures that apply to your case.

Students from all disciplines observe that professors devote large parts of their lives to their work in order to be successful in the academy.

In turn, students who feel that faculty expect them to spend every waking minute on their work can become overwhelmed. This feeling causes concern for those seeking to balance success in their graduate career with other interests and responsibilities. To help keep the pressures of graduate school in check, consider these suggestions.

It is unfair to assume that any one student represents the experiences or beliefs of an entire group.

When certain issues arise in classroom or theoretical discussions, especially those relating to race, class, or gender, the pressures of being a spokesperson arise. These pressures tend to burden underrepresented students more than others. Consider the pressures put on a woman in an engineering seminar if she were asked, "How would a woman approach this design problem?" or on the man in a feminist theory class if he were asked to provide "the male perspective."

Some students are concerned that if they select questions of gender, race, sexual orientation, or the content of marginalized cultures as their thesis/dissertation topics, faculty will assume they are interested in pursuing only these topics for their entire career or will question the relevance of their work.

Students who are passionate about such questions in their research and teaching should not feel apologetic. Instead, they should consider these ways to bolster the scholarly nature of their agenda.

At times, graduate study may seem to be an isolating endeavor. Isolation, whether from other students or one's home community, is a difficulty all graduate students face at one time or another.

If it goes unchecked, isolation can lead to loneliness and self-doubt, or, in more severe cases, to depression or dropping out. Depending on the discipline, students from historically underrepresented groups or women might feel more isolated than other students, especially if the composition of students, faculty, and content in the department is highly homogenous.

All graduate students benefit from role models they can admire — professionals whose lives they may want to emulate. Quite often, people identify role models based on shared outlook and connections to similar experiences.

Although the composition of faculty at UNL is becoming more diverse, students from historically underrepresented or marginalized groups, and women in some disciplines, can face greater challenges finding faculty role models who have had experiences similar to their own. Some students convey that they hope to find "someone who looks like me"; "someone who immediately understands my experiences and perspectives"; "someone whose very presence lets me know I, too, can make it in the academy." Even so, while shared background and experiences are important, they do not "guarantee" a good mentoring relationship. What is key are shared interests and interpersonal compatibility. All students also benefit from reaching out to potential mentors who are different from them in race, gender, or other characteristics.

To do adventuresome academic work, students may need to question the implicit assumptions and ways of knowing in their disciplines.  Indeed, it is because of this kind of questioning that disciplines evolve.

Sometimes students find that their perspectives or intellectual interests do not fit neatly into the current academic canons. For instance, interest in interdisciplinary questions and the social applications of knowledge is growing, but the structure of some programs makes it difficult for students to pursue these questions in their research and teaching. Studies suggest that underrepresented students experience this disjuncture more keenly; however, majority students face it as well.

Productive scholarly environments value new ways of thinking and encouraging students to explore, and possibly challenge, different models of inquiry.

Older students can be more focused and aware of their goals for graduate school than their younger colleagues. Their maturity is an especially strong asset for graduate study because their life experiences make them familiar with complex problems and independent thinking. Even with this important advantage, older students sometimes face challenges that are less common among younger students.

Fear of having "rusty" skills

Older students, especially if they have been in the workforce for several years, might worry about how they compare academically to their younger counterparts, who might be more up-to-date in the discipline or possess more experience with recent educational computing technologies.

Devaluation of life experiences

Many older students pursue graduate school after spending a number of years running a business, leading developments in industry or the public sector, or raising a family. A difficult issue they sometimes face is learning that their hard-won, "real life" knowledge is devalued during the graduate experience. This is particularly frustrating when older students' experiences contradict the research or theory they are studying.

Invisibility in the classroom

Older students commonly describe feeling excluded when a professor refers to an event or popular film from many years ago and then says to the entire class, "And, of course, none of you would remember that." Although not intended to be harmful, this kind of remark makes older students feel overlooked.

Isolation from fellow students

Because of the age differences between them and their peers, older graduate students can sometimes feel socially isolated. Many prefer to socialize in environments different from those of younger students. Also, although they do develop friendships with younger colleagues, older students are aware that some of them may be the same age as their own children.

Awkwardness with faculty

Some students are close in age or even older than their professors, and may worry that their professors are more accustomed to interacting with younger students.

Regardless of their reasons for pursuing advanced studies, students enter graduate school today with more experience and more diverse career aspirations than ever before. For many, it is common to have had one or more career-track jobs before beginning advanced study.

Often such prior work experience sparks a person's decision to pursue a graduate degree, whether it is for love of the discipline, advancement in a current profession, entrance into a new profession, or a combination of these reasons. Thus, if real world perspectives or examples are not valued in the graduate experience, students with prior work experience can feel especially disappointed. Many graduate students want to feel valued for their prior work accomplishments, especially if those experiences were as teachers or practitioners in a field that they are now researching.

Students with disabilities have differing needs and concerns, depending on their type of disability. Disabilities vary greatly; some are visible while others are not. Some students experience physical disabilities, learning disabilities (such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia), chronic disabilities (such as lupus and multiple sclerosis), and psychological disabilities (such as depression and bipolar disorder). Students' needs vary depending on whether they have had a disability since birth or whether it developed later in life.

Given such a wide variety of disabilities, it is important that students work collaboratively with their professors and with the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) to ensure that their needs are met. The SSD office is charged with establishing eligibility for disability-related services, such as academic adjustments and auxiliary aids for qualified students with disabilities, and can help students and faculty determine effective ways to meet disability-related needs in courses or programs.

Be aware of the following factors that can influence mentoring needs.

Reluctance to ask for help

Some students with disabilities fear appearing or becoming too dependent if they ask for help. Those whose disabilities are of recent onset or are "invisible" may be unaccustomed to asking for help or may fear being stigmatized as less capable due to the accommodations needed.

Effort exerted just to keep up

For many students with disabilities, meeting basic requirements demands more time and energy than it does for other students. A student with multiple sclerosis, for instance, may only have a certain number of hours in the day for school and studying before fatigue, vision problems, and cognitive deficits flare up. A student who is hard of hearing and uses a real-time captioner (like a court stenographer) may have to review several pages of notes from the captioner in order to create suitable study materials. This process requires additional preparation and study time. Some students find it challenging to participate in certain professional activities as much as they would like to (such as submitting papers for conferences) because they need to devote all their time and energy to meeting the demands of their programs.

Problems that arise from last-minute changes

Changes in reading assignments can be very difficult for students who are blind or visually impaired or have a learning disability in reading. As much as six weeks prior to the beginning of the semester, these students may submit requests to the Services for Students with Disabilities Office to render course reading materials in alternate formats. If any readings are added at a later date, it may take up to two weeks for students to get these new materials translated into accessible formats. It may not be feasible to meet reading deadlines if the conversion process cannot occur quickly enough.

Classroom relocations also may cause hardships for visually impaired students or students with mobility limitations, such as students in wheelchairs or with conditions that impact walking distance. (Note: People with disabilities prefer not to use language such as "physically challenged.")

As the graduate student population increases in age, so do family responsibilities, such as raising children (whether with a partner or single) or becoming the primary caregiver for elderly parents or relatives. Graduate students who have children or parents who depend on them for support may find that the structure of graduate education in a large research university still presumes an ability to be on campus at any time, which can conflict with other responsibilities.

Dual commitments

Students with family responsibilities often are highly organized and intensely focused during the blocks of time they carve out for their graduate work. Unfortunately, students may fear that their professors might misconstrue their attention to other responsibilities as a lack of commitment to scholarship. Emergencies, such as an ill child or parent, occasionally prevent them from attending a class or a meeting and can exacerbate that misperception. Even after a child enters school, childcare demands do not lessen. Other demands arise, such as picking up or dropping off children and attending school functions.

Isolation

Students with family responsibilities might find it difficult to attend some social, academic, and professional functions. As a result, they may begin to feel isolated from their cohorts and departments, missing out on the "academic business" that takes place in those functions.

Time constraints

Students with family responsibilities often need to be home in the evenings to tend to those in their care. For this reason, study group assignments or research projects that require meeting in the evening can present difficulties, as can evening lectures.

Cultural differences

Cultural beliefs influence the ways graduate students deal with family responsibilities. During the mourning for a family member, for example, some students may be expected to spend a considerable amount of time consoling relatives at home. You can ask your mentor to help explain to other faculty the need for participating in family activities different from mainstream practices. On another note, some students enter graduate school without the full support of their families, who might question how graduate study is beneficial to the entire family, particularly if it has been experiencing economic hardships. Your mentors can help all their students communicate how a graduate degree can bring long-term benefits to them and their families.

Women are as ambitious as men in pursuing success in graduate school. Women and men demonstrate their ambition in their day-to-day persistence, interest, and intellectual contributions, which are changing the face of graduate education. Even though the graduate community is more enlightened than ever about the benefits of having both sexes well represented in teaching and research, it is still working to transform the traditionally male-centered structure of advanced study.

When sexism and other unconscious biases surface, women graduate students may experience the negative effects more pointedly, although men also report negative effects. For this reason, while students share many concerns about academic interactions, women express some concerns that differ from those of men.

Assertiveness

The unspoken code in graduate education is that, aside from being intelligent, students who are assertive in classroom discussions or conference presentations attain success. However, students from marginalized groups often demonstrate a different approach to academic interactions. Many women and racial minorities, and even international students, express concern about difficulties they experience making their contributions heard. For example, in classroom discussions, women have noted that to contribute an idea, often they have to interrupt another student. They tend to interpret interruptions as rude and disrespectful, yet fear that professors and peers will wrongly attribute lack of participation to having no ideas at all. Many women report that when they do assert their ideas strongly, they feel subjected to criticism in ways their male counterparts are not — even though the assertive behavior is the same.

Competitiveness

Research has shown that an overly competitive and critical atmosphere in graduate programs can alienate minority students, and that women, in particular, feel such alienation more intensely. There is no doubt that women are capable of providing insightful criticisms of others' work when warranted. But some interpret critical behavior as an attempt to appear intellectually superior, and thus as a form of insecurity. Women, and indeed a growing number of students in general, lament that the system does not reward one for praising the contributions of other scholars. More opportunities for collaborative work would help balance the competitive culture of graduate school.

Importance of positive feedback

Many students desire to receive frequent constructive feedback on their work. Although lack of feedback is problematic in its own right, the lack of constructive feedback can lead students to doubt their capabilities. Women tend to attribute negative experiences in graduate school to personal deficiencies, whereas men tend to attribute them to insufficient guidance or problems within the department. Regarding their mentor's personal style, men are more content than women with mentors who may be impersonal but offer solid instrumental advice. Women may interpret a professor's distance as an indication that he or she has a negative opinion of them. Studies suggest that these nuances hold true for racial minorities as well.

International students who attend graduate school in the United States recognize the many advantages of our graduate education system and arrive with appreciation and energy to accomplish great things with their faculty and peers. At the same time, these students experience significant challenges that go beyond adjusting to living, learning, and working in a foreign language, and vary depending on the background of the student — whether he or she is new to graduate study in the United States or has experience in this system.

Students and mentors alike will benefit from understanding that no matter where a student is from, there are cultural, educational, and social norms to be learned in graduate school.

Language and culture in the classroom

Despite their abilities and accomplishments, international students can feel less competent in the early stages of their programs. Lack of linguistic proficiency or lack of knowledge about the U.S. academic system can be hurdles to overcome in the initial stages of a research or teaching assignment. Most international students have experienced very different classroom communication patterns. For example, in the educational systems of East and Southeast Asia students are passive in interactions with professors, whose authority goes unquestioned. International students can be taken aback when U.S. students speak up without being called upon or challenging their professors' views.

Interaction in graduate seminars can seem unnecessarily competitive to international students, who fear that if they do not exhibit these same behaviors, professors will judge them as less capable or less intelligent. Finally, many international graduate students come from countries in which only a small number of high school graduates are admitted to university, so the different level of preparation of first-year undergraduates in the United States can be a new challenge for international teaching assistants.

The rules of the academic game

When international graduate students arrive on campus, they need to demystify three cultures: the U.S. culture, the culture of the university, and the academic culture in their departments. They discover that policies in graduate departments can be quite different from those in their home institutions, or are opaque or difficult to interpret. For instance, some may find it hard initially to understand why they can accept teaching or research assistantship "work" but are not permitted to work off-campus. On a subtler note, international graduate students might rely on different assumptions about how faculty members and graduate students should relate to each other. Many East Asian graduate students, for example, have reported sensing a kind of interpersonal "coldness" from some U.S. faculty who, while informal and jovial with students during seminars, remain distant regarding students' personal or family lives. In other countries, the faculty-graduate student relationship often extends beyond academic discussions and may include various types of non-academic interactions with students and their families.

Social stresses

In moving far away from families and friends, many international students can feel a great sense of displacement. Those who are new to this country and who bring their partners and children with them worry about how well they or their families will adjust to life in the United States. Even for students from countries with a large number of fellow nationals studying at UNL, uncertainties about how to socialize with Americans can raise stress levels. After a while, some students may begin to wonder about how they will be accepted at home when they return with different dress, talk, and behavior. In essence, they worry about becoming foreigners in their own countries.

Race and ethnicity are important factors that shape the academic, social, and professional experiences on campus of faculty and graduate students alike. Although the racial and ethnic diversity of the UNL graduate student population has been increasing over the last 20 years, the campus community as a whole remains relatively homogenous.

One reason is that efforts to enhance the pipeline of students at primary and secondary levels preparing for higher education have been well-meaning, but sporadic and limited. Another reason is that disciplinary programs are still learning how to expand their student recruitment and outreach efforts. Thus, ethnic minority graduate students at UNL can feel marginalized, not only in the student population but in how research problems and curricula reflect, or fail to reflect, their scholarly influence and experiences.

We need more role models of faculty and students who engage in multicultural scholarship, research, and teaching so as to make diversity awareness and support structures in graduate training more explicit.

Role models

When students enter a large and complex research university, they can experience feelings of isolation or become overwhelmed. One of the first things students do is seek out people with whom they can identify in order to temper those feelings. This search can be especially challenging for students of color because the dearth of minority faculty, and of white faculty who resonate with their academic and sociocultural experiences, makes it difficult to find role models in their fields. It is not the case that ethnic minorities only want other ethnic minorities as professors and mentors. Rather, they seek to find affinity with role models who have "paved the way," who actively work through the dissonances between their home communities and the academic community, and who can help students do the same. Mentors help students see pathways to their own futures more clearly. When one of the few faculty of color leaves UNL for another university, minority students can feel the impact — it often means losing a potential supporter of their work.

Stereotyping

Stereotypes still exist on campus and there is a great need to eliminate unexamined assumptions. Stereotypes are particularly burdensome to graduate students of color, not least because many have worked hard to overcome significant barriers to get to graduate school. A stereotype they worry about is whether other graduate students and faculty will have low expectations of them. This stereotype makes minority students feel awkward when seeking advice and guidance. Another harmful stereotype is that "all ethnic minorities are alike" or have the same goals for graduate school and thus experience the same challenges. This lumping together of outlooks or abilities creates an environment that compromises collegial interaction and undermines students' individual needs and talents.

Lack of an explicit support system

At least two kinds of support are necessary for students, and students of color in particular, to succeed. The first is sufficient financial support and the other is environmental support, including mentoring and networking. It is dangerous for departments to assume that students automatically "know" how to navigate the system or pursue support in such areas as grant writing, locating assistantships, and establishing networks with potential mentors. Marginalized students may have fewer direct channels to such sources. Students in a number of programs have found ways to form groups to address these issues.

Exclusion from support networks

Underrepresented students on fellowships often are inadvertently overlooked for teaching and research assistantships. As a result, they experience fewer opportunities for collegial, career-building interactions with faculty and peers who may be student instructors or research assistants. They also miss out on how such teaching and research assignments can enhance graduate training and strengthen their curricula vitae.

Many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students are members of our community. Unlike other underrepresented students, many GLBT students are "invisible" because sexual orientation and gender identity are not always determined through physical expression, or because some students choose not to be out. Some students do talk about their sexual orientation or gender identity openly. Mentors have the responsibility, regardless of their own sexual orientations, to maximize learning and professional opportunities for all their protégés. You can help your academic community eliminate, or be more aware, of the following:

Homophobia

Even within a fairly accepting climate such as ours, GLBT students can still encounter homophobia around campus. Behaviors can range from the blatantly offensive, such as verbal or physical threats or attacks, to the less obvious, such as the casual remark "that is so gay" in classroom or hallway conversations.

Heterosexism

Many graduate students and professors discuss topics with the unconscious assumption that everyone is heterosexual. Even some straight faculty and students who have a heightened awareness of gender issues might still talk about the world from a heterosexual perspective. GLBT students experience such scholarly discussions as biased, and the absence of GLBT perspectives can make them feel isolated from opportunities for intellectual engagement.

Genderism

Similarly, many people on campus assume that all individuals identify fully with the gender in which they were raised. Genderism is the assumption that male and female assignments of gender are fixed at birth. This is not the case for every person. Gender biases in classrooms and departments (e.g., saying "it" to refer to individuals of ambiguous gender; gendered bathrooms) are oppressive to individuals who feel the need to alter their gender identity.

Disclosing

Being out as a GLBT student is not a one-time event, but a decision experienced in each new social situation. Each new interaction comes with the burden of having to assess the personal, social, and political ramifications of disclosure. Heterosexual students do not bear this weight when interacting with peers and professors.

Students come to graduate school from a variety of socioeconomic trajectories, determined either by their parents' educational and occupational circumstances or by their own occupational histories. Some students delay higher education in order to earn and save money, gain professional experience, or support their families. Socioeconomic background is a largely "invisible" but important factor that influences students' mentoring needs. Rural or inner-city origins; growing up in a blue-collar family; being raised by a single, struggling parent or in a very large family; low family income; and family unemployment are all factors that can put students at an educational disadvantage.

Quite often, graduate students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are the first in their family to complete an undergraduate degree.  The fortitude these students develop to perseverance and pursue their academic ambitions is a highly desirable quality for success in graduate school. The effects of a disadvantaged background do not stop, however, just because a student has entered graduate school. Students who experienced hardships earlier in life need mentoring that is attentive to their concerns.

Economic concerns

Students from working-class backgrounds often cannot turn to family members for monetary support throughout graduate school. What is more, some students carry responsibilities for financially or physically supporting their parents, siblings, or other relatives while obtaining a degree. It is common for these students to feel the need to work additional jobs outside of their departments, even if they have graduate fellowships or appointments.

Access to professional networks

Graduate students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds can experience greater difficulties accessing or creating professional networks in academe. They might not have had as many opportunities to develop these relationships as their peers from more advantaged backgrounds, especially those peers who grew up in academic families. This disparity surfaces most pointedly when students struggle with the costs of financing travel to professional conferences or the need to seek summer employment each year.

Summer professional opportunities

Students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds often face having to disrupt their academic training during the summer. Because of financial constraints, they may seek better-paying jobs off campus instead of accepting low- or no-pay (but academically relevant) internships. Outside employment temporarily distances them from their studies, and fears of falling behind can arise. Professors who are unaware of their students' financial situations can inadvertently misconstrue interest in outside employment as a lack of commitment to academic study.

Difference in background experiences

Some students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds can find it intimidating to hear about the spring break or summer travel experiences of fellow students. Those in the arts, humanities, and social sciences can feel especially vulnerable knowing that some of their peers have traveled to, or even lived in, the foreign countries they are studying.

Disconnection with family and friends

Like many other graduate students, those from disadvantaged backgrounds probably have had to move away from their families. Once a student becomes socialized into the discipline, talking with old friends and family about scholarship or academe may be difficult. Some relatives might have trouble relating to the way a student talks about scholarly endeavors or might wonder why the student is not working in a "real job." This communication gap can cause graduate students to feel disconnected because they feel less comfortable in their old worlds but not yet settled into their new ones.