Because excellent mentors often beget scientists who themselves are excellent Alisertib clinical trial mentors, when evaluating a young scientist, it would make sense to take a look at the M-indexes of his or her mentors. But identifying great mentors is only a first step. Whenever I meet
a great mentor, I always ask them what they do that has the highest training impact. I rarely get the same answer, yet everyone thinks they know what matters. I have made some guesses in this essay, but data are lacking. We need to investigate what practices great mentors have that have the most impact in training successful young scientists. Recently, it has been increasingly realized that the teaching ability of K–12 public school teachers varies dramatically. The Gates Foundation funded the “Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)” project, designed to determine how to best identify and promote great teaching. The project demonstrated that it is possible to identify great teaching by combining classroom observations, student surveys, and student achievement gains (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/press-releases/2013/01/measures-of-effective-teaching-project-releases-final-research-report).
They are now doing detailed studies to identify what practices underlie the most effective teaching. Perhaps academic science should do the same to understand what great mentorship consists of. Then we could start to actually teach this to our students. I have argued that the greatness of a university Lenvatinib molecular weight may well depend on high quality of mentoring; happy and well-mentored trainees to a large extent drive great innovation. Effective mentoring should be an expectation that is not only talked about but actually ensured. Universities have an obligation to better track the experiences of
trainees in each laboratory, so that pertinent data can be collected (in a confidential system that protects trainees’ careers). I suspect that some mentors might well be surprised to learn that their trainees are unhappy and would be grateful for and responsive Vasopressin Receptor to any feedback. If, despite counseling, a faculty member continues to routinely take advantage of their graduate students, harass them, or fail to mentor them effectively, then I strongly believe that privilege should be revoked. Once we can identify great mentorship, we should much better reward it. This is more important than ever. When awarding prizes, let us not consider only those who made a great discovery but rather those who made a great discovery while at the same time effectively mentoring their students. Doing great science should be necessary but not sufficient. The honor of top prizes can only be enhanced by giving them to great scientists who are also great human beings.