Rodney Priestley, dean of the Graduate School, has written that mentoring is “essential” to the success of all graduate students, regardless of whether they are pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees — and he has identified enhancing the mentoring of graduate students as a prime focus for the School this academic year. It's an effort that builds upon previous work. 

In the summer of 2020, the Graduate School released the Graduate Student Mentoring Report. Professor Hendrik Lorenz of the Department of Philosophy was a member of the task force that examined the critical issue of faculty mentoring of graduate students. Now, Lorenz has been appointed a Mellon Fellow and Vice Dean of Strategic Initiatives at the Graduate School for this academic year to focus on improving mentoring in graduate education at Princeton. Here, Lorenz talks about why he has taken on this role and what he hopes to accomplish for students and departments.

What is mentorship in the context of graduate education? What is the difference between an adviser and a mentor? 

In the context of graduate education, mentorship is a professional alliance in which mentors and mentees work together as partners to promote the development and success of mentees. Effective mentorship includes not only career support but also social and emotional support, as mentors build community for mentees and affirm and encourage mentees in pursuit of their personal and professional goals. Advising is a form of teaching and so is focused more narrowly on imparting knowledge and skill to students. Not all advisers are mentors, and vice versa. All students should have access to both effective advising and effective mentorship, and not just from a single person. It takes a village to support a graduate student! 

How is mentoring important to graduate students, faculty, and the research and teaching mission of Princeton? 

There is a wealth of evidence from many academic disciplines that mentorship benefits graduate students in all kinds of ways, including degree completion, research and publication productivity, career outcomes, and strengthening well-being and a sense of belonging. Effective mentorship is a lot of work for faculty, as well as for students, but the rewards are students who are more successful, more productive and happier. 

What role has mentorship played in your life as a mentor and a mentee?

Throughout my life, I have been fortunate and privileged to receive excellent mentoring from a series of teachers, professors, and colleagues. I have also enjoyed mentoring relationships with students from whom I learned a huge amount while teaching and supporting them. I have often been struck by how fluidly mentors and mentees swap roles in effective mentoring relationships. I believe that effective mentorship is an art and that it is at once an art of being a good mentor and of being a good mentee.       

Why did you decide to take on this role at the Graduate School?

I have long been aware that while talent is distributed equally across all social groups, access to educational opportunities is not. I took on the role of Vice Dean at the Graduate School as part of an Ivy+ Mellon Leadership fellowship, which started in 2023. My goal as a leader is to promote access to opportunity for all students. Access to effective mentorship is not distributed equally, but it should be. I am delighted that I am now in a position to drive change towards access to effective mentorship for all graduate students.    

What do you see as the role of the Graduate School in strengthening the mentorship of graduate students at Princeton?

The Graduate School has long offered a wealth of opportunities for mentorship and for learning about mentorship. Apart from offering such opportunities centrally, the Graduate School can and should work to promote access to effective mentorship in the departments, as for most students, the departments are the primary environments in which their growth and development take place or fail to take place. The Graduate School can strengthen mentorship in the departments by making mentorship resources and tools available to faculty and advocating for their use, and by fostering communities of mentors and mentees within and across departments.  

What do you hope to accomplish, and what will you do this year?

My goal is to foster an expanding community of faculty members and graduate students who will learn together to be more effective mentors and mentees, in conversation with one another and others in the Graduate School and the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. I hope this community will keep growing long after I return to my faculty position in the Philosophy department. In the course of the year I will lead a team that will work with a number of departments to build that mentorship community. I will also work on other programming to do with mentorship, both faculty-facing and student-facing.   

What are the benefits for departments and programs to participate in your process? 

Apart from free lunches and opportunities for career development, departments will hopefully benefit from stronger mentoring relationships between faculty and students, with all the advantages to student success and well-being that the scholarship on academic mentoring has identified. It’s also reasonable to expect that if students are happier and more successful, this will improve the climate in participating departments, which is a benefit to all.  

Will graduate students be directly involved in your activities this year?

Yes, and in a number of ways. Some of the programming we will be doing this year will be student-facing. Some of it will bring faculty and graduate students together. I will also be working with four graduate students who will help me in their roles as University Administrative Fellows in gathering information about the state of mentorship across the 45 degree-granting departments and programs of the university. Every step of the way, I will be eager to hear from graduate students about their mentorship experiences and about challenges we face and opportunities for further improving the experiences of all students.  

How do you hope your work at the Graduate School will impact graduate students?

I hope my work at the Graduate School will drive change towards a future in which students from all sociocultural groups will have access to the effective mentorship that I had the good fortune and privilege to have when I was a graduate student.