mentoring matters

Dr. Mary E. Konkle is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Ball State University (WHERE). Connect with her on Twitter at @mechem44996100 .and by email mekonkle@bsu.edu

Q1: If you had a mentor(s) as an undergrad who you credit for the career path you're on now, please share a little bit about who they were and what they did that made such an impact.

Dr. Jennifer Robison Assistant Professor of biology at Manchester University located in North Manchester, Indiana. Her research program focuses on understanding the molecular and physiological events that occur during abiotic stress in plants. Connect with her on Twitter @JenRobiSci .

Q1:If you had a mentor(s) as an undergrad who you credit for the career path you're on now, please share a little bit about who they were and what they did that made such an impact.

—from the Guest Mentor's Desk

Dr. Brian Cohen is a Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences and Co-Director of Biochemistry at Union College in Schenectady, NY. In his 16 years as a faculty member thus far he has mentored 86 senior thesis students. Connect with him on Twitter @profbdcohen.

Q1: Why is mentoring undergrads in research important to you?

Because I didn't have that mentor as an undergraduate. By the time I expressed an interest in pursuing a career in research, I had missed out on opportunities to get involved.

—from the Lab Manager's bench and the PI's desk

We know that mentoring is challenging, surprising, rewarding, & so much more. On Twitter, we often use #ProudMentor or #ProudPI to retweet when a mentor tags us in a tweets about the undergrad members of their research team.

If you want to share a few words on why you mentor, the impact it's made on you, or other thoughts were listening. And we’d like to share it with others, too.

Our goals for creating the Mentoring Matters series are straightforward.

1. We want to show undergrad researchers that mentors are "real people" and not wholly mysterious creatures.