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This review has been accessed times since November 17, 2006

Mullen, Carol A. (2006). A graduate student guide: Making the most of mentoring. Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Education.

pp. ix-xxii + 215
$24.95   ISBN 1578863481

Reviewed by W. Brad Johnson
United States Naval Academy

November 17, 2006

The classic journey from neophyte graduate student to college professor is usually suffered in relative silence; many endure it, but rarely is the experience opened to scrutiny. In fact, the mystery, angst, and loneliness of this journey has often been celebrated and perpetuated—implicitly if not explicitly—by those of us safely ensconced in academe. For such reasons as these, Carol A. Mullen’s (2006) new book A Graduate Student Guide: Making the Most of Mentoring is a welcome harbinger of change on the graduate education horizon. Mullen specializes in graduate student development, mentoring theory and practice, and curriculum leadership. She is an award-winning researcher, author or co-author of 10 other academic books, and editor of the refereed international journal Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning (Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group).

Drawings of a door on the book’s cover and thereafter below each chapter heading signal a running theme throughout this work: Entering graduate studies and traveling upstream to a career in academe involves passage through several metaphorical doorways—some institutional, some relational, and some deeply personal. In fact, Mullen states that “this book is a doorway” (Preface, p. xiv), welcoming her readers and also inviting graduate students to become intentional travelers. Although explicit about the doorway theme, the book’s warm artwork and the author’s invitational prose serve to welcome readers on unconscious levels as well. In the book’s preface, Mullen emphasizes transformation of the graduate student’s identity as a central theme in this guide. She more than delivers on her promise to help students attain glimpses of academia’s “underground culture” (p. xiii) and “hidden curriculum” (p. xiv). A second running theme in the book is the dire importance of taking charge of one’s own graduate school odyssey. According to Mullen, graduate students with an eye on the tenure-track prize can ill afford a passive stance. She is persuasive in showing students that success in an academic career will be powerfully enhanced by assertive career planning, mentorship-seeking, and strategic vita-building—even during the fledgling years of graduate education.

Carol A. Mullen

A Graduate Student Guide is clearly organized into three parts, each including several chapters. Part I, Getting Started: Strategies and Options, describes the creation of “mentoring maps” of the academy, establishing contact with faculty and peers, and finding out about resources and opportunities. Part II, Becoming Immersed: Relating and Learning, features chapters on making every minute and day count, joining mentoring networks and programs, and practicing comentoring and reciprocity. And part III, Establishing Leadership: Receiving and Giving, describes the development of disseminating and publishing skills, recognizing and overcoming job-market constraints, and planning a two-way mentoring agenda. In the final section (chapter 9), the author has incorporated a surprisingly thorough collection of appendices containing very practical and tangible lists, forms, and templates for managing crucial hurdles during the graduate school journey—everything from recommendations for thesis and dissertation writers to sample job application letters.

Undoubtedly the most compelling aspect of this graduate student guide is the presentation of numerous real-life case examples based on Mullen’s qualitative research. In fact, each chapter is framed with first-hand narrative by a graduate student, faculty member, or administrator that Mullen either surveyed or interviewed in preparation for writing the text. From 2004 to 2005, Mullen elicited responses about graduate school and early career experiences from hundreds of students and faculty members, both at her home institution, the University of South Florida, and across the United States. She then kicks off each chapter with an intriguing narrative case highlighting the chapter’s theme. Each narrative is followed by the author’s case analysis—often drawing out key themes and even emphasizing reasons why a student or faculty member either succeeded at achieving personal and professional goals or failed to do so.

Weaving qualitative data into scholarly prose is one of Carol Mullen’s trademarks. Much of her earlier work capitalizes on this technique (c.f., Mullen, 2005a; 2005b; Mullen & Lick, 1999) and it proves especially engaging in a book designed for graduate students as well as junior professors and new doctoral supervisors. Neophytes in any field often yearn for models or exemplars that they can relate to and that can help guide them. Mullen’s emphasis on case examples and lessons learned effectively reassures the reader that others have traveled this way before, and more, that some of these travelers were kind enough to take the time to look back, sharing encouragement, advice, and even dire warnings.

This book also contains several novel and helpful structural components. In addition to beginning with a case vignette and analysis, each chapter closes with the author’s summary of key lessons learned and a list of practical, reflective exercises. These exercises run the gambit from reconnaissance missions within one’s own department, to personal imagery work, to active assignments such as contacting faculty and forming liaisons with colleagues. Capitalizing on the fact that active learning is nearly always preferred to passive techniques, these exercises will likely help graduate students to immediately put Mullen’s advice into practice. Each chapter also concludes with a short glossary that assists with the deciphering of crucial terms belonging to the academic culture. A final novel touch in this guide is the author’s creative habit of using song lyrics to reinforce each chapter’s central theme. These opening words offer a humorous and compelling musical association with each chapter’s key task.

Getting Started: Strategies and Options

        Mapping Mentorship

In chapter 1, Mullen introduces an indispensable concept to early graduate students—creating a mentoring map. From the outset, the author makes it clear to graduate students that they alone must assume full responsibility for creating a life, school, and career structure. Becoming a deliberate scholar, no matter how novice, involves generating an informed picture of how mentoring can be garnered and maximized. Although it would be wonderful if all graduate programs utilized orientation programs, formal mentorship structures, and other methods for tracking and monitoring student adjustment to graduate school, programs that do these things consistently and reliably are, unfortunately, rare. Mullen uses her formidable qualitative data set to highlight the characteristic struggles graduate students can go through as they seek assistance, support, and even an intuitive sense of the program’s contours and faculty and university expectations.

        Assertive Relationship Formation

Chapter 2 emphasizes the importance of social connections—especially early on in the graduate school enterprise. Again, Mullen utilizes qualitative data—this time elicited from a small sample of faculty in American universities—from faculty with track records of excellence in the mentor role. In this case, Mullen asked the professors to forward all their correspondence with a student during a 12-month period who eventually became their protégé. The correspondence between one professor and student in particular is unpacked and thus highlighted throughout as a means of opening a window on how a proactive graduate student may go about the task of establishing a key primary student–faculty mentorship early in graduate school. This chapter should prove motivating to new graduate students who might otherwise wait (usually in vain) to be noticed by a professor.

        Maximizing Resources

The final chapter (3) in this section enjoins students to actively sleuth out resources and opportunities within their department, institution, and the larger academic field. Interestingly, these resources are not all external. The case vignette of a graduate student named Miranda highlights the salience of internal sources of strength (e.g., yoga, meditation, travel, reading, various artistic pursuits). Obvious as it may seem to some, graduate students often ignore not only key internal sources of strength but also external sources of information and inspiration such as catalogs, seminars, events for students and faculty, associations on campus, scholarship and assistantship opportunities, and support groups. Mullen urges new students to actively attend the dissertation defenses of more advanced students so that entrenched cultural rituals are effectively demystified and major obstacles ideally avoided. Again, the crucial message delivered here is student assertiveness in seeking out information, resources, support, and liaisons: “An important message underlying this chapter is that you are your own best resource. Your ability to tap into internal and external resources alike is key to making the most of mentoring…” (Mullen, p. 49).

Becoming Immersed: Relating and Learning

        Pursuing an Academic Identity

In chapter 4, Mullen encourages the reader to make every moment count in the sense of using available opportunities to grow as a developing scholar and to forge connections likely to bear fruit in graduate school and beyond. The author uses an episode from her own innovative mentoring cohort, the Writers in Training (WIT) cohort at the University of South Florida, to illustrate how such personal development, while enriching and necessary, can be painful and anxiety-provoking at times. Mullen’s WIT cohort model is described in greater detail elsewhere (see Mullen, 2003, 2005a), but in short, the author has made a long-term mentoring commitment to a reasonably large group of graduate students who meet regularly in the author’s home over the entire course of their graduate school careers. For these fortunate students, Dr. Mullen fills simultaneous roles as mentor, writing coach, and encouraging colleague. Further, group members learn to both support each other and provide incisive scholarly feedback in the service of helping novice members rapidly accrue professional writing and critical thinking skills, as well as a social sensibility that values learning in productive groups. Perhaps the only downside of Mullen’s WIT model is that it is rarely duplicated in other institutions. Some graduate students reading this guide may be deflated to find that nothing of this sustaining nature exists in their own graduate program. Mullen provides various explanations as to why faculty may shy away from investing so much personal time in building informal doctoral cohorts. The chapter also informs readers about the nuts and bolts of strategic immersion in the culture of academe (e.g., learn to appreciate the culture of academe, become an astute observer, and carefully consider major professors and dissertation committee members).

        Comentoring Relationships and Constellations

In chapter 5, Mullen again capitalizes on her expertise with mentoring networks and programs. This time, she distills qualitative evidence gleaned from a sample of 10 graduate program coordinators and uses the insights therein to coach readers on the intricacies of proactively establishing one’s own mentoring constellation. In contrast to formal mentorships arranged and monitored by the graduate program—and less likely to be effective in the long run—informal mentoring networks represent a collection of individual, group, and organizational connections fashioned informally by a graduate student to achieve the desired level of personal and career support. The author offers clear guidance about the process of establishing mentoring cohorts and study groups. Although she describes comentorship dyads, it is less clear how one might go about actually creating such truly reciprocal and mutual relationships with faculty members—especially when, as Mullen (2005b) explains elsewhere, much mentoring in academe has been nested within hierarchical models of student–faculty interaction.

        The Dance of Reciprocity

Chapter 6 is foundational to Mullen’s overarching theory of effective mentoring. Titled "Practicing Comentoring and Reciprocity," this chapter addresses the importance of reciprocal and mutual student–faculty mentorships; these relationships are characterized by rapid transitioning of the graduate student from neophyte junior to co-equal colleague. Mullen writes convincingly that comentoring promotes intellectual growth and self-efficacy in advanced and receptive students more effectively than traditional hierarchical mentoring models. Essential guidance is offered regarding what to look for in faculty members (e.g., resourcefulness, integrity, humility, interpersonal skill) when seeking comentorship.

In the opening vignette and throughout the chapter, Mullen emphasizes how comentoring might look in the context of collaborative publication efforts. In fact, she presents a rating tool of her own making, a mentoring-based Reciprocity Gage, which is a behaviorally-anchored rating scale for students to employ when honestly assessing their own contributions to a co-authored work. Mullen notes, “… individuals, pairs, or teams can use this tool to spark an introspective process for making transparent their own coauthoring realities” (p. 105). She also reminds students that reciprocity with faculty mentors does not occur magically—it can be facilitated through such strategies as clarifying one’s own life philosophy, engaging in visioning exercises, and participating in collegial groups. Although most faculty members reading this book will applaud the overarching construct of reciprocity in student–faculty relationships—especially if we limit discussion of reciprocity to co-authorship as Mullen seems to, a few may wince or even shift uncomfortably in their chairs as the potential ethical quandaries associated with emotional mutuality between professors and students begin to sink in. For instance, how will genuine emotional mutuality influence faculty members’ evaluative obligations relevant to students? This chapter will hopefully generate questions among students and faculty alike about the inevitable tensions between reciprocity and good boundary maintenance in mentoring relationships.

Establishing Leadership: Receiving and Giving

        Becoming Prolific

Chapter 7, “Gaining Disseminating and Publishing Skills,” is certainly one of the most tangibly useful chapters in this guide. In it, Mullen introduces graduate students to the importance of assertive dissemination of one’s work—in peer-reviewed outlets and a range of alternative venues. Readers will be encouraged by the lead-off case vignette of a graduate student who leveraged mentoring to publish independently in scholarly journals. In addition, Mullen gathered data from a number of other solo-author graduate students and compiled a list of key recommendations for students seeking to benefit from mentoring in this way. She notes that three dynamics may converge to make publication intimidating to most students: “(1) the mysterious, foreign waters of the publishing world; (2) the panic of a striving, novice writer encountering a learning curve; and (3) the clarification of the mentor’s boundaries and role…” (p. 112).

What are grad students to do? For one thing, they can strive to bulk up on this chapter’s abundant ideas that range from developing relationships with peer readers, to revising work willingly, to writing frequently and out of habit. For another thing, they can ponder the steps outlined regarding scholarly publication and act on what makes sense for them. As only a prolific author and busy journal editor can, Mullen provides extensive advice about the mechanics of publication, from selecting the right outlet, to contacting the editor, to preparing the manuscript and cover letter. This chapter links to many excellent appendices, which include templates and models that have emerged out of the author’s own graduate school experiences as a doctoral-level supervisor, committee member, and external examiner. Graduate students are sure to find this toolkit quite useful for their own purposes.

        Breaking Into the Academic Market

Chapter 8 addresses contemporary constraints within the academic job market. It begins by translating many of the terms for new and part-time faculty in higher education and proceeds to a thoughtful analysis of some of the unique challenges for women trying to gain a foothold in the academy. It is in this part of the book that Mullen offers salient examples from her own early career struggle—including a period of spousal separation in order to find employment, and a compulsive emphasis on publishing and achieving tenure—sometimes to the neglect of her own health, “although the struggle for realizing my own professional dreams as a tenured faculty member was arduous indeed, the sacrifices were well worth it” (p. 135). It is in her self-disclosure and refusal to sugar coat the hurdles new academics must clear in the march from graduate school to a tenure-track job in academe that Mullen will certainly achieve genuine credibility with her student and faculty readers. She has been there and uses this chapter as leverage for offering seasoned advice about such issues as the job application cycle, preparing for jobs well before the end of graduate school, and negotiating one’s first salary. It is in this chapter more than any other that Mullen becomes mentor to novice academic readers of A Graduate Student Guide.

        Becoming a Deliberate Comentor

In chapter 9, the final chapter, Mullen returns to the salient theme of comentoring, with a focus on new faculty. She leads off with her own experience—first as graduate student and later as faculty member—with the development of what she describes as two-way mentorship:

I have come to believe that not just senior but also junior faculty members should deliberate on the mentoring they wish to receive and give. Planning a two-way mentoring agenda as new faculty is an ongoing process that involves seeking mentoring and becoming a mentor. (p. 149)

The point here is that traditional, technical, and hierarchical mentoring models are simply not a good fit for most new faculty. While acknowledging that numerous hurdles exist to excellent mentoring within academe (e.g., poor operational definitions of this activity, too few mentor exemplars, university accounting systems that give little or no credit for mentoring students and new faculty), there is some good news. The good news is simply this: “…there are professors who see dissertation advising and mentoring as an intrinsic part of their job and selfhood…” (p. 153). Mullen rounds out this chapter with ideas and encouragement for creating individualized “programs” for one’s students and co-mentors.

Concluding Comments: Keys for Opening the Doors of Academe

Carol Mullen’s (2006) A Graduate Student Guide: Making the Most of Mentoring is sure to become a standard guide and oft-referenced tool for graduate students and the faculty who work to facilitate students’ passage from protégé to colleague. As Mullen states explicitly and symbolically, this book is a doorway—a doorway to the both the delights and challenges on the road to professorship. This book is about identity transformation, taking charge of one’s own education, and leveraging reciprocal collegial relationships to grow personally and professionally. The text’s leading qualitative narratives will both nourish students emotionally and provide them with poignant exemplars of success in academe. Simultaneously, the book’s pragmatic advice and template-oriented appendices will provide tangible “how to” guidance for students and junior faculty wondering about the practice of getting material submitted for publication and responding constructively to dissertation draft feedback. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Mullen’s new book is the apparently seamless combination of practical advice, emotional encouragement, and distillation of relevant data. Readers will easily visualize Carol Mullen as mentor in the pages of this book.

Because all of the narrative examples and qualitative data utilized in this guide originate in Mullen’s discipline—education, graduate students and faculty members in the education field may find the book more relevant than readers from other disciplines. Also, some of the mentoring ideas Mullen offers, such as comentorships with faculty members, may in practice be fairly rare in other academic fields. For example, I am not familiar with many professors in my own discipline (clinical psychology) that would conceptualize relationships with students in such reciprocal terms. One danger then is that student readers may be disappointed in their efforts to pursue Mullen’s advice about arranging such relationships—this remains to be seen. On the other hand, the comentoring relationship construct can perhaps be expected to emerge or even flourish in various academic disciplines, especially as more and more women enter programs that have been traditionally dominated by male faculty.

In summary, A Graduate Student Guide: Making the Most of Mentoring is an excellent resource for both graduate students, undergraduates who are preparing to enter graduate school, and professors interested in becoming more effective in the mentor role. The book’s accessibility, reassuring advice, and engaging narrative vignettes will give it perennial popularity among students. The book’s novel approaches to arranging mentorships—especially team mentoring—will be intriguing for faculty who are too often harried and overwhelmed by student oversight duties. Mullen’s guide will not only be useful as a student and faculty resource, it would make an excellent text in courses on careers in academe, preparing for the professorate, and adjusting to graduate school. I suspect academic departments will also want to have copies available for both new students and faculty as a way of introducing best mentoring practices right off the bat.

References

Mullen, C. A. (2003). The WIT cohort: A case study of informal doctoral mentoring. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 27, 411-426.

Mullen, C. A. (2005a). Fire and ice: Igniting and channeling passion in new qualitative researchers. New York: Peter Lang.

Mullen, C. A. (2005b). The mentorship primer. New York: Peter Lang.

Mullen, C. A., & Lick, D. W. (1999). New directions in mentoring: Creating a culture of synergy. London: Falmer.

About the Reviewer

W. Brad Johnson

W. Brad Johnson, PhD, is an Associate Professor of psychology in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy, and a Faculty Associate in the Graduate School of Business and Education at Johns Hopkins University. A clinical psychologist, he is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Johnson has authored more than 70 articles and book chapters, as well as six books, in the areas of ethical behavior, mentor relationships, and counseling. His most recent books include: On Being a Mentor: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), and The Elements of Mentoring (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004). He is a contributing editor to several journals in the field of psychology, and is Associate Editor of Military Psychology. He is past-president of Division 19 of the American Psychological Association—the national association of military psychologists.

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

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