Tod Treat

The Blue Muppet

This is a blog about mentoring. Not your everyday “how can I help you” mentoring but the kind that makes a real difference in a person’s current performance and future prospects. The crucial point to blog is that none of us has made our way alone but were nudged along by key interventions at crucial times.

The blue Muppet was the first department chair I ever served under. When I arrived at my first college to teach chemistry he was already an “old timer” who had broad institutional memory and the kind of credibility inside the institution that allowed him to both take risks  and to offer up his opinion whatever he saw fit to whomever he wished, including on occasion the president.

The blue Muppet believed that everyone in the  institution should be engaged in influencing  it and openly encouraged employee voice whether the employee had been there one day or 20 years. In my first several years teaching I was in his office daily often for several hours to talk about teaching, about student success, and about science. His enthusiasm was boundless and it rubbed off. At some point it became clear that he saw in me someone who could help advance his change agenda in the department and the relationship shifted to one in which he and I strategized approaches  to departmental governance that remained in place long after I left. My learning curve was steep and, as  my administrative work formalized into the position of assistant to the chair, I began to better understand curriculum development, section management, employee evaluation, partnership development, and communication skills and beliefs that remain critical to my work today. My entire administrative philosophy is rooted in these early days of long conversations, some good wine, and a senior colleague’s dedicated interest in my success.

I remember distinctly the day in which the blue Muppet and I began to part ways. We had engaged for a long time in crucial debates about approach which culminated in his advocacy for “slow steady pressure” versus my “be like water.”  The debate had been building for months as we strategized around some particularly difficult problems involving senior faculty in the department. One held particular interest for me because he was in my area and had become increasingly problematic for me since we taught the same courses. Consistent with my ‘be like water’ approach, I channeled my frustration into a new curricular direction that ended in a class intended to advance scientific literacy for non-science majors. While very proud of that class, I was also teaching organic chemistry and finding that students were entering the classroom from this colleague’s class underprepared in the most basic of scientific endeavors, use of the scientific method in wet lab environments. To be clear, I am an advocate of technology in labs when it meets appropriate learning outcomes and I wrote about it around the same time  in one of the first graduate classes I had begun taking. But my colleague had an unbalanced sense of the role of technology and I believed strongly was failing to meet those learning outcomes.  As important, the course he was teaching was in the middle of our science majors sequence and students from his class were transferring to a nearby institution with an inferior experience and knowledge and skills to match. I implored the blue Muppet to assign my colleague to the non-science majors class which would take him out of the sequence. The blue Muppet argued that the science majors would have the benefit of other science classes but that the non-science majors would have this singular experience and it needed to be one that would forever cement their appreciation and wonderment of science. I countered that our unspoken motto above our doors should state “first do no harm” and that his decision this chair was harming our students. I stopped listening and stormed out of his office. He followed in a flurry, reminded me of my place in the department, and the matter was resolved. We were both focused on students, but our approaches and preferred solutions had diverged.

The theme debate between approaches continued as we brought on a new chemistry faculty member.  The blue Muppet had asked me to chair the search and I was excited to do so. We identified a terrific talent who, by virtue of considerable youth and a short stent in industry, reminded me of my own unlikely opportunity for a tenure-track position. By now of course I had learned that among the finalists for my position were individuals with much more experience but that the search committee (with the blue Muppet chairing) had seen some potential in me and reached for the potential rather than the experience. This new faculty member exuded potential and was brought on, first as part of a faculty diversification initiative and subsequently tenure-track. She became my office mate and good friend. Like me, she had ideas about where the department and college could go.  We had much in common, but, whereas leaving the classroom was and continues to be an internal struggle for me, her path diverted from the classroom much sooner and with less angst. Like me, she was a protégé of the blue Muppet, spending hours in his office, becoming assistant to the chair, and increasingly interested in administrative affairs. The blue Muppet believed that an internal competition for leadership within the department would be healthy and would facilitate continued growth and stature for the department and the faculty therein. For awhile,  all was well. I had moved more fully into graduate work, had family obligations, and had developed yet another course, Essentials of Forensic Science, which remains one of my prized achievements. But the distance between the blue Muppet and I had grown greater. I no longer considered him a mentor. I believed I had outgrown him. My philosophy of “be like water” and my distaste for the department politics led to my departure to be a dean. My office mate and I grew apart too. She became the department chair and has gone on to a very bright career.

The aforementioned story has many happy endings including relationship renewals, but I have thought about what happened to the blue Muppet and I many times since then. I did believe that I had outgrown the blue Muppet. After all, what did he know about being a dean, or getting a PhD, or having kids and trying to manage balance? In hindsight, I had convinced myself that I no longer had a need for him, that he had “picked his horse,” and no longer had my best interest in mind.  In truth, I was a bit hurt, mostly by institutional circumstances, organizational pathologies, and a lack of professional seasoning that the years have provided. Over time, I have grown much more circumspect about this relationship and mentoring.

First, the most important aspects of strong mentor-mentee relationships are the values, philosophies, and support the mentor gives. In that respect, we gain value by broadening mentor relationships and preserving the ones we have even if the tangible relationships to our work weaken. Even my “mentor in chief” (my dad) who had owned a small business with several employees admitted that he did not comprehend the complexity of the organization I was trying to manage, but his counsel is still meaningful.

Second, every mentor must balance the needs and wants of an individual mentee with his or her own aims which are almost never completely altruistic. Mentors do want the best for their mentees, but they must also attend to the needs the work and/or their role. The blue Muppet was engaged in transition planning for the institution and could not ignore the professional development of one mentee for another. The blue Muppet wanted to ensure ongoing wellbeing of the department and he achieved that with enhanced success for both of his mentees.

Third, effective utilization of multiple mentor relationships is the responsibility of the mentee not the mentor. Every mentee must balance the needs and wants of their mentor relationships recognizing the multiple aims, experiences, and capabilities of each mentor. Over time, the development of a constellation of mentors cultivated across a career lifespan optimizes the ability to seek counsel, advice, support, and even suggest new talent, partnerships, or resources. Mentees do outgrow aspects of individual mentor – mentee roles that require consideration of additional mentors. As this occurs, the nature of prior relationships may change, but ideally are reconceptualized and cultivated for sustainability, not discarded.

Fourth, effective mentoring relationships are honest, transparent, and reciprocal, but few relationships do this consistently. As I look back to all the mentoring relationships I’ve had, there are times and places in which the mentor – who is usually the one with more experience or authority – holds back information regarding intent to protect the mentee. Mentees aren’t always mature enough to recognize what is happening. Mentors must be continually diligent to ensure that mentees understand the limits of the role in order to ensure ongoing sustainability.

Finally, the career lifespan transitions mentees to mentors over time. New faculty become tenured faculty become faculty leaders or may even transition into administration. Reflection on where we’ve been and who has helped us can be instrumental in helping us be good mentors for the next generation. At the same time, those who can be effective mentors to us shrink to an ever more select group and may require us to look outside our current institutions or even employment sector.

To the blue Muppet, you know who you are, and I owe much of my professional philosophy and appreciation of mentoring to your expertise and dedication. But the blue Muppet is hardly the only mentor I’ve ever had. My guess is that all of us, if we look back, can identify a host of mentors who guided and cajoled, listened and affirmed, and advocated  to make our paths a little wider and a little easier to navigate. We do the walking, but we aren’t alone, and our mentors deserve a good deal of thanks.

The University of Washington has provided a great resource for mentoring which can provide some structure for thinking about mentoring.