Mary Behan is a professor specializing in neuroscience in the Department of Comparative Biosciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is among the first group of mentors to participate in MentorNet's Academic Career E-Mentoring Program, launched last fall. The program is designed to provide information, encouragement, and support to women graduate students and postdocs considering faculty careers.
Behan recently talked with us about her experiences as a mentor and the value of mentoring in academia.
Why do you think mentoring is valuable for women students pursuing university careers?
I see it as critical to success in academia. It's as logical as providing you with office space and a good benefits package. It's as important as your desk or the journals you use for research. I think it definitely helps people achieve their goals and it helps with retention. At the next level, postdocs receive such poor guidance! Their committees don't serve them well in a personal or private sense.
It isn't just for women. Mentoring is valuable for everybody. When I joined the department [here at Madison] it was new, and we had to create a school. We did need help, and it was taken very seriously that we would be mentored by the senior faculty who were around.
Did you have mentors when you were in graduate school?
No. Graduate school is very isolated in Ireland. I had no graduate committee, just a major professor, and he and I didn't communicate very well. I did two postdocs [in the United States], and overall I don't think I got very good mentoring. But since then, I've always found people to mentor me, to ask for advice and what they think.
What was your MentorNet experience like? How did you help your protégé?
I matched with a mentee in September -- a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Cornell from Mexico City. She was a great mentee and a wonderful student to correspond with. We wrote probably once a month. She has finished her thesis, and is looking for a job. And we'll probably continue our relationship.
We both enjoyed the experience -- I provided an ear and a voice and perspective. I said I really love my job, and I think I probably reassured her that it's OK to feel slightly out of control and overwhelmed. I think I brought a face to being a successful senior scientist and a woman in academia.
What pressures and issues do women students face?
Children. That's a big one. When should they schedule a family? I could never imagine my grad students walking in and asking, "When should I have a baby?" And it expands into the issue of how do I balance a life? How do I become successful and get tenure? They don't have many role models.
Does having a mentor from another school offer students the opportunity to get help with issues that might be better addressed by someone who is disinterested, outside their department?
I think that's exactly it. To give you perspective, as a mentor in this institution I would be very conscious of the institution per se, and how I see this discipline. Having mentees who are in, say, engineering, I'm willing to think more critically. It has less to do with the discipline than what it takes to have success.
How has mentoring affected your life?
It's made me think how tough it is for students to actually achieve their career goals. I feel it's much harder now that it was when I was a student. I think it's harder now for students to make it in any career, not just academia. It's just made me a lot more thoughtful about interacting with students. I make more of an effort now to stop and talk to students and ask them how things are going.
Another thing I get out of it: it's very reaffirming. It's not often you get to sit back and think, where am I? what have I done? I'm looking at me through their eyes, thirty years ago.