In a 2014 essay on mentorship in The Chronicle of Increased Training, American scholar Leonard Cassuto wrote: “In Greek delusion, Mentor was a sensible man who earned the belief of Odysseus, who chosen him to teach his son, Telemachus. The phrase has a legacy: ‘Mentor’ is a title that must be earned.”
Earlier this yr, it was introduced that two MIT associates — Kimberly “Kim” Benard, affiliate dean and director of distinguished fellowships and educational excellence at MIT Profession Advising and Skilled Improvement (CAPD), and Leigh Estabrooks, longtime invention training officer with the Lemelson-MIT Program — had been honored by the Joe Biden administration with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Arithmetic and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). The award, administered by the Nationwide Science Basis on behalf of the White Home Workplace of Science and Know-how Coverage, celebrates those that’ve made “vital contributions to mentoring and thereby help the longer term productiveness” of the nation’s science, know-how, engineering, and arithmetic workforce.
Whereas this award marks Benard’s and Estabrooks’ many years of service and management on the Institute, it additionally spotlights the methods MIT workers and different group members present important mentorship.
“Too usually, notions of excellent mentorship concentrate on college advisors and overlook the important work completed by others,” notes Anjali Tripathi ’09, certainly one of Benard’s nominators. To her, the PAESMEM awards acknowledge the devoted effort behind cultivating efficient mentoring relationships throughout greater training, which may encourage different unsung heroes as they present up for his or her mentees.
Kim Benard: Rising a backyard
When Tripathi, now a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, established a mentoring program whereas incomes her superior levels at Harvard College, she took inspiration from a transformative mentoring expertise from her senior yr at MIT: engaged on graduate fellowship functions with Benard. All through the method, Benard’s energy to inspire, hear, and provides to her college students left a mark on Tripathi, who later wrote, “I’ve had many ‘mentors’ within the type of advisers, however in my life solely two mentors, as Cassuto would have it. Kim is certainly one of them.”
In Benard’s 18 years at MIT, she has personally mentored over 2,000 college students from all backgrounds as they deal with the query of what comes subsequent after MIT and discover post-graduate alternatives such because the Rhodes, Marshall, and Fulbright scholarships. To assist college students by the aggressive software course of, Benard established MIT’s Distinguished Fellowships program, which sits inside CAPD.
“Somebody as soon as mentioned to me that mentoring is like rising a backyard. You plant a seed and hope that it grows and bears fruit,” Benard notes. “Some produce fruit shortly, and others take a very long time to lastly see the consequence. Being nominated by a former scholar for this award, and seeing so many others have fun it, implies that I’ve hopefully allowed these college students to bear fruit.”
As Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor within the Division of Mind and Cognitive Sciences, sees it, “Kim is outstanding in so some ways.” Alongside one-on-one consultations and mock interviews, Benard will get to know dozens of candidates individually, then synthesizes their data into suggestion letters every summer time. “She works extraordinarily arduous, undertaking along with her small workforce a job completed by a lot bigger groups at our competitor establishments.”
Whereas her work has left a outstanding affect on college students exploring fellowships, a lot of that garden-tending occurs within the duties described above — the quiet consistency that doesn’t usually make the information. Thomas Levenson, professor of science writing and co-chair of the Distinguished Fellowships Committee, describes Benard as “one of many hidden heroes who maintain MIT.” He provides: “Each college wants somebody like Kim. We’re very fortunate to have the unique.”
Benard sees this recognition as a chance to light up the tangible methods MIT group members can — and do — make an affect on the following technology. “Mentoring and advising is efficacious work, however usually unseen,” she explains. “This recognition demonstrates the trouble MIT mentors and advisors put into budding scientists and demonstrates that these are vital and important duties for the success of analysis.”
She designs her work round two essential tenets of excellent mentoring: adaptive practices and deep, or lively, listening. As Benard has seen in her numerous classes, every individual’s distinctive wants require a special type of guided self-reflection. All through the method, she employs lively listening. It’s not at all times a straightforward dialog, so a caring method is important.
“She has guided 20 years’ value of scholars by an intense technique of self-examination and reflection along with her terribly profitable mixture of powerful, usually existential questioning and unconditionally caring ethical help each step of the best way,” Will Broadhead, affiliate professor of historical past and MacVicar School Fellow, says. “Her college students love her, and it’s straightforward to see why!”
Actually, the cohort of Benard’s advisees — each fellowship winners and non-winners — who proudly name themselves “Kim’s children” can converse to all the massive and small ways in which mentorship performs out. Years after they graduate, “Kim’s children” are nonetheless in contact along with her, and plenty of volunteer their time to assist present fellowship candidates. Eager to emulate Bernard’s mentorship and pay it ahead, alumni akin to Tripathi change into part of the MIT group “of individuals keen to assist, help, and elevate one another up.”
In spite of everything, Tripathi observes, “Kim is the human coronary heart of MIT.”
Leigh Estabrooks: Inspiring mentees to pay it ahead
Because the Invention Training Officer for the Lemelson-MIT (LMIT) program for 18 years till her retirement from MIT final December, Leigh Estabrooks performed a pivotal function in mentoring 1000’s of scholars and educators by LMIT’s Excessive College InvenTeam grant initiative and different applications.
Stephanie Sofa, LMIT’s government director, notes, “Leigh created a community of outstanding educators dedicated to serving to college students uncover their full potential. Her analysis led to the event of latest curriculum and program choices for all ages and grade ranges, fueling the expansion of invention training throughout the U.S. We’re so grateful for her time with the Lemelson-MIT program.”
“Receiving this award has been a humbling and emotional expertise,” Estabrooks shares. “I by no means got down to be an honored mentor; I merely got down to assist others construct confidence in and understanding of what it means to invent technological options to enhance the world. I shall be eternally grateful for the sustained mentoring alternatives with Ok-14 college students and lecturers whereas at LMIT.”
Michael Cima, MIT college director for LMIT, underscores the depth of Estabrooks’ affect: “Leigh is a tireless champion of the worth of invention training. Her efforts have helped untold numbers of scholars and lecturers through the years. We nonetheless cross paths with college students from many years in the past who inform us in regards to the distinction Dr. Estabrooks made of their lives.”
Estabrooks emphasizes that mentoring is a long-term dedication moderately than a one-time occasion. For college kids, it may well start in center or highschool and proceed into faculty {and professional} careers. For lecturers, mentoring begins even earlier than they apply for grants and stays integral all through their careers and academic developments. “[Mentoring] doesn’t happen inside one college yr; it’s casual with no finish date,” Estabrooks says. “The continuing act of mentoring forges sturdy bonds and builds relationships that endure for many years.”
“Leigh has been capable of alter the trajectory of scholars’ lives by invention training,” Cima provides. “Many college students who had by no means even thought of faculty, not to mention engineering or science as a profession path, ended up attending faculty — some even at MIT.”
Believing that each scholar and trainer deserves a caring mentor, Estabrooks encourages others to tackle mentorship roles, noting how important mentors have been in shaping her personal private {and professional} journey. “College students and lecturers might in a roundabout way ask, ‘Will you be my mentor?’ Nonetheless, you possibly can change into a mentor just by being obtainable,” She says.
One former scholar shared that Estabrooks naturally assumed a mentor function throughout their time working collectively. As a tenth grader, this scholar wouldn’t have thought to ask, but Estabrooks grew to become a mentor and has remained one for over half of the coed’s life.
One of the outstanding points of mentorship, based on Estabrooks, is its ripple impact. Lots of Estabrooks’ mentees have gone on to change into mentors themselves, fostering a tradition of help and steerage that spans generations. As one mentee put it, “One hallmark of a terrific mentor is their capability to encourage their mentees to pay it ahead, growing their affect exponentially.” Katelyn Sweeney ’18, for instance, whom Estabrooks has mentored since Sweeney was in tenth grade, now mentors center and highschool inventors and roboticists and serves as an academic counselor for MIT.
Doug Scott, an LMIT Invention Training Fellow who nominated Estabrooks for the PAESMEM award, affirms her affect: “Leigh is the real article and a mentor in each sense of the phrase. She has developed inventors each younger and previous by her data and kindness. Through the years, I’ve seen her assist each individual she has encountered.”
Instilling the significance of mentorship in her mentees, Estabrooks encourages them to mirror on how steerage has helped them navigate key resolution factors of their education and careers. She hopes they may prolong this generosity of spirit to others who might not initially see themselves in STEM or know how one can pursue faculty and profession alternatives.
Right this moment, Estabrooks continues to collaborate with LMIT. “Mentoring, to me, contains the present of time to hear, present alternatives, make connections, and provide light steerage — all whereas genuinely caring about mentees,” she says.
The legacies of each Estabrooks and Benard will proceed to form future generations of scientists, engineers, inventors, educators, and extra, guaranteeing that the cycle of mentorship stays unbroken.
