The Elusive Challenge of Mentorship

Mentorship programs have become a staple in higher education, but creating a truly meaningful, remarkable mentor/mentee relationship remains an elusive challenge for those of us working to magically create them through mentor matching programs.

Mentorships can be hugely powerful relationships.  A great mentor can support, guide, and challenge their mentee to achieve passions and goals related to their careers.  Highly effective mentoring relationships can give each person the opportunity to learn from each other and understand another’s perspective.  For female* students, a mentor can be a great support or outlet for discussions of the additional challenges women face in work and throughout their education – including but not limited to sexism, work/life balance, the glass ceiling, imposter syndrome, two body syndrome (the list could go on and on).  At the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where I work in the Center for Diversity, women make up a minority of the student body and it is even more crucial to connect female students and professionals who have and continue to succeed in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) fields.  

But for all we know about why a mentorship is a great idea, they can be difficult for students to create on their own.  Successful mentoring relationships have an organic quality that is difficult to replicate; there is an ineffable chemistry between mentor and mentee that no algorithm or formula can capture.  Nevertheless, there is a growing trend in higher education to create mentorship programs, for obvious reasons.  Having a mentor may offer the encouragement and support a student, especially a female student, pursuing her field of interest to carry on.  This is not only good for the individual: this could also mean better student retention for the university. 

Currently I run two official mentorship programs for women at Caltech: one where first and second year female grad students are matched with upper class female grad students (third/fourth/fifth year students).  The second program is to match female undergrads with female upper class undergraduates, grad students, or staff members.  There are almost ninety participants in the graduate group, and thirty in the undergrad group.  The pairs are matched based on their applications information and stated priorities for a mentor/mentee relationship, interests, and/or career goals.  The participants also have the opportunity to attend one networking mixer where they can meet, then let our Women Mentoring Women Advisory board know the people with whom they think they had a good connection.   

I am new in my position, but based on students’ feedback it is clear that results from this program tend to vary.  I have heard some really great success stories: there are many women who form great bonds in their mentorships that last well beyond the year long commitment of the program.  For others, the mentorship lasts for a quarter or two, but they are ready to move on to try a connection with someone else.  For others, no matter how carefully we try to match, it does not take. For whatever reason (schedule conflicts, commitment, or mentoring chemistry) the pair just does not click. 

Despite the mixed results, I’ll continue our mentorship program for women at Caltech.   Ideally mentorships could happen organically for everyone, but this is a chicken and egg scenario.  Until there are more women in STEM fields, access to female mentors will be scarce. In my position I have the opportunity to provide infrastructure and programs so women may have more opportunities to meet, connect, and hopefully support one another.  I am optimistic that successful mentorships will play a part in the success of leading more female STEM professionals and students to find an abundance of successful women mentors from which to choose.

*I use an inclusive definition of “woman” and “female” and the Women Mentoring Women programs at Caltech welcome trans women, genderqueer women and non-binary people who are significantly female-identified.

Erin-Kate Escobar is an Assistant Director at the Caltech Center for Diversity located in Pasadena, California. Erin-Kate has a decade of community based and student affairs programming experience.  Her background includes conflict resolution, social justice education work, and supporting under-represented/under-served communities including women, LGBTQ students, and cultural, racial, and ethnic students' experience. She welcomes your best practices around mentoring programs and is happy to offer you resources upon request. She can be reached at erinkate.escobar at gmail.com