Room To Grow

Initially I was conservative in estimating my abilities to provide advice on various topics, and filling out the application again was a measure of what I'd gotten out of the program.

Often a MentorNet mentoring experience helps a mentor to grow in her abilities and confidence as much as it helps a protégé to do the same.

Eden Fisher is a senior business advisor at Alcoa Technical Center, located outside of Pittsburgh. Eden has been with Alcoa for 17 years and is currently part of a group involved in technology strategy and planning. She manages a program called the Front-End Innovation Process, which encourages early-stage testing of high-risk, high-potential innovations. Before joining Alcoa, Eden had a post-doctoral fellowship at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She has a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

The Alcoa Foundation is a major MentorNet sponsor, and Eden learned about the program through work as well as from her husband, Allan Fisher, who serves on a MentorNet advisory group. In Fall 2000, she decided to apply to become a mentor.

How to mentor?

"I have a MentorNet poster in my office, and it says 'Inspire through e-mentoring,'" Eden says. "It's nice to think you can inspire someone, and of course mentoring is also an opportunity to be in touch with a current student. I'm still involved with Carnegie Mellon and am asked annually to speak to students there about working in industry, and I have the impression students would like more opportunity to hear from us. I've been part of 'What next?" panels for students, and they're not often balanced with people who represent choices outside of academia. E-mentoring was another way to share some perspective I've gained by working in government and industry.

"I had heard good things about MentorNet but didn't know how to go about being a mentor," Eden continues. "MentorNet suggests establishing expectations with your protégé, and Lisa, who had had a MentorNet mentor previously, knew what she was looking for and helped shape our relationship. That gave me confidence. Also, I believe that it's good to have multiple mentors, and I was happy to be one of Lisa's."

She gave me examples of people she knew with environmental interests like mine but had experience in industry as well as with the government and that opened my mind to additional job possibilities.

When Lisa Smith was paired with Eden, she was in her final year of graduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Virginia. She earned her Ph.D. in October 2001 for studying how swimming bacteria attach to surfaces and plans to pursue a career in environmental restoration.

"When I signed up with MentorNet initially, I was simply looking for someone to talk with and bounce ideas off of in addition to my professors. Since my first mentor had only been out of graduate school for about a year, it was very easy for us to identify with each other. For my second year participating the program, I wanted to have contact with a woman who was further along in her career-someone to help me imagine where I'll be not only a few years down the road but also 20 years down the road," she says. "Since I was in my last year of school, my questions to Eden were mostly about finishing up and looking for a job, so she and I exchanged résumés and talked about interviewing. She gave me examples of people she knew with environmental interests like mine but had experience in industry as well as with the government and that opened my mind to additional job possibilities."

A mix of professional, personal

Eden says their email exchanges were a mix of professional and personal as she focused on trying to help Lisa during her transition to the next stage but make sure there was room for developing a sense of each other as a person.

"I'd find articles on the Web-I remember one related to women communicating via email in business, for example-and share those with Lisa, and I've passed along technical things that I thought would be of interest to her or people she knew," Eden says. Adds Lisa: "Eden sent me pointers to interesting Web sites and fun chemistry sites, recommendations for books, anything she thought I'd like."

At one point, Lisa asked Eden for advice related to an uncomfortable work situation.

"I was working with someone I wasn't really enjoying, and I asked Eden if she'd worked in less-than-optimal conditions like that before," Lisa says. "She validated that I was doing the right thing by making the best of a bad situation, and we talked about focusing on common goals with co-workers rather than, in this case, on what I found objectionable about this person. She also suggested that when I'm working with people I enjoy, to recognize that and try to get on more projects with them. In short, focus on the positive."

Ratcheting it up a notch

"When Lisa asked for advice in that situation, I emailed something back right away, then later I had more and different thoughts and sent those," Eden says. "I hope both levels of response were useful to her, because both were important for me to send. As a mentor, if a student has a critical situation, you want to respond and be there for her. But I wanted also to take an important question and give it more thought."

Eden was reminded of that as she signed up to be a MentorNet mentor again this year.

"On the application, there's a section that goes into detail asking how comfortable you'd be providing advice on different topics," Eden says. "When I looked at my responses from last year, I realized that I was inclined to move everything up a notch or two this year. Initially I was conservative in estimating my abilities to provide advice on various topics, and filling out the application again was a measure of what I'd gotten out of the program."