Benefits of mentoring are hard to measure. Mentoring is personal. It is given voluntarily and many of us feel that we can never pay back all the mentoring that we have received. Today I find that it is a joy to mentor a single colleague or a youngster because I feel that I have benefited greatly from it and wish to pass it on to others.
Several people have told me that I helped them and I have told others that they helped me. This is no true measure of mentoring on a grand scale, but mentoring is personal, and there may be no true measure if its value.
A few years back I became involved with mentoring on an organized scale when I was in a position to send a young lady to an ACS mentoring course. She had done mentoring in college before this, and she has been a mentor with added skills after the course. She spent a year working with Trailblazers Academy for 6-8th graders in Stamford. The girl she mentored won a prize for her invention at the UCON Invention Convention.
A mentor is advisor, councilor, consultant, guide, tutor, teacher, and guru. It is also a source of great personal reward. Come to the symposia and learn how you can be involved.
Back to Chemical Education Symposia: Mentoring
Back to The 33rd Northeast Regional Meeting (July 14-17, 2005)