My kids went skiing for the first time this winter. It was cold, really cold, on the snowy slopes of Colorado. Twenty inches of new powder fell that first day, making the slopes soft for my kids as they crashed over and over in beginner lessons. By lunchtime they were exhausted. Their moods were so discouraged that my husband and I worried that they wouldn’t go back out for afternoon lessons. But they did, and things got better. By the second day my daughter had mastered the snow plow, sailing all the way down the mountain on greens, while my son tackled his first blue. Everyone was smiling.
The key to their success was ski instructors. My daughter was clingy to me at first, and didn’t want to ski without me. But one of the instructors simply took her poles and turned to me. “Mom,” she said, “leave her with me,” and thirty minutes later I watched my daughter ski down her first slope. It was really amazing to watch how the instructors brought my kids from not even knowing how to put on their skis to successfully skiing all the way down a mountain by the second day.
While learning to ski is not the same as completing a graduate degree, there are some parallels. Both require student persistence–my kids had to keep trying to ski just as graduate students have to keep making progress toward their degree. Both also require skilled teachers who are able to effectively guide students–down a mountain, in the case of ski instructors, and through the rigors of an academic degree, in the case of faculty mentors.
But what happens when the teachers aren’t very good at conveying what they know to the students? What happens when the teachers lack patience and get frustrated too easily? What happens when the teachers expect too much too soon from learners? What happens when teachers don’t explain the rules well and leave students confused and anxious?
Just a couple of weeks before our family ski trip, I heard a session at the 2019 National Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). It was on anti-mentors–faculty who, instead of guiding students down the mountain, hinder (sometimes even thwarting) the progress of graduate students. According to the CGS session outline, co-authored by Karen Colley, Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Sherri Irvin, Associate Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Oklahoma, there are 5 types of anti-mentors (and I quote directly from their categories and descriptions below, with some amplification):
- The hostile-aggressive bully who is abusive, isolating, destabilizing, and creates an environment of undue pressure and overwork.
- The indecisive advisor who is inconsistent and constantly changing their mind on what the student should pursue in their research.
- The neglectful advisor who hinders the student’s progress by being non-responsive, extremely hands off, or who is very busy and not around.
- The micromanaging advisor who is excessively hands on, sometimes to the point of harassment.
- The super-agreeable advisor who fails to give the student key advice and important critical feedback, hindering their progress and growth.
Or, in terms of my ski instructor analogy:
- The super-agreeable advisor is the ski instructor who never actually tells the beginner skier how to ski–she just shouts encouragements from the ski lift as the poor skier tumbles down the mountain.
- The micromanaging advisor is the ski instructor who skis closely in front of the learner, interrupting every time progress is made and trying to get the learner to not just ski–but ski exactly like the instructor (to the frustration of the student).
- What if the ski instructor simply handed the beginner a list of instructions on how to ski and then, before any questions could be asked, left the learner alone on the top of the mountain. “I will be back,” the neglectful advisor/ski instructor shouts, “after you have figured it out.”
- The indecisive advisor keeps changing his mind about what to teach the student. First, he tries to teach the snowplow, but then before the student can try it, he decides it is best for the student to learn how to tilt the skis uphill for turns and stopping, and just as the student begins to try it, the instructor decides the poles are interfering with student progress and so takes them away and then switches the student back to the snowplow, only to return the poles because maybe they were actually helping……
- And finally, the hostile-aggressive bully is the ski instructor who would be fired on the spot for his treatment of beginner skiers. He shouts at the learners, telling them how stupid they are for not already knowing how to ski. He doesn’t let them take a lunch break until they master skiing down the mountain without falling, pushing the class to exhaustion. And when he gets really frustrated with student mistakes, he just shoves the skiers down the slope instead of teaching the what they need to do better.
My kids had a wonderful first ski trip because their instructors were fantastic. They taught what needed to be done, they modeled how to do it, they worked one-on-one with my kids when they needed extra help, they skied with them several times down the beginner slopes to make sure they had mastered the skills, and they offered constructive criticism and encouragement every step of the way. Shouldn’t our graduate students have just as good an experience with their academic advisors?
Next week we will discuss the connection between the mental health crisis of graduate students and anti-mentor behavior, as well as corrective strategies for both graduate students and faculty. Until then, I want to leave you with the framing statement of the CGS Anti-Mentor session: “To fundamentally change the current academic culture that tolerates overwork and abuse of graduate students, we need to change the way that all stakeholders perceive the graduate school experience and what is acceptable faculty behavior.”
The goal is not just to get students down the mountain, but to show them the value and the joy of skiing itself.