Q&A With the Provost: A Life in Mentoring

We asked Provost Alec Gallimore about his experience with mentoring — both as a mentor and as a recipient of mentoring advice and guidance. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Can you talk about a mentor who’s been important to you? How did that mentor make a difference for you? 

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The most consequential mentor I’ve had was, without a doubt, the late, great Dr. Jerry Faeth. Jerry was the top professor in terms of research in aerospace engineering at my former institution, the University of Michigan. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and we had recruited him with much fanfare to our department. He was “feared and revered.” I came in as a junior faculty member right from my Ph.D. program, and I found out that he thought I should have done a postdoc before I started as an assistant professor. This was just starting to become a common practice then, to hire someone for a year to let them get the lay of the land before the tenure clock started. I respected him for that perspective. But it also made me think, “I’ll show him.” 

I would drop by his office on Fridays late in the afternoon — when he and I would be the last ones there — and I would give him updates on my lab and my research program. We talked about our families, and we discovered that we grew up only a few miles from each other (albeit separated by three decades!). I grew to really like him. He had always been number one in the department in terms of research funding, but I became number two, as an assistant professor. I told him I was planning to write a lot more proposals to get even more funding. He said, “Why do you need more money?” I answered that I wanted to grow my research program. And he said, “You could do that, or you could focus on executing on the funding that you have — and when you do that, the money will come naturally.” 

He was right! With that conversation, he helped me realize that what is important is not the number of beans but the quality of beans that you have. And from that moment on, he became my mentor. We never had an explicit conversation about it, but that’s what happened. He chaired my casebook committee for promotion to associate professor with tenure, and he did it again for promotion to full professor. So someone who initially thought I wasn’t quite ready to come out of the oven — he very quickly became a champion of mine. 

While I learned a lot from him, I didn’t always agree with him. Very early on, he told me I would have to choose whether to become an administrator or a member of the National Academy of Engineering. And I thought to myself: I’m going to do both. But it was always helpful to hear his perspective and hear how he thought about things. 

I pursued him partly because other people spoke of him with reverence. I also saw how people listened when he spoke at faculty meetings. That inspired me. I thought: When I grow up, I want to be him. What can I learn from him? Sadly, he died unexpectedly a year after I was promoted to full professor. The loss hit me like a ton of bricks.

I’ve also had two other mentors. When I was an associate dean in the graduate school at the University of Michigan, the dean of the graduate school was a great mentor. And then when I became an associate dean in the College of Engineering, the dean of engineering was a wonderful mentor, and I eventually succeeded him as dean. 

Over your career, you have become a mentor yourself. Can you share a moment that you found particularly challenging, in addition to the moments that have been rewarding and meaningful, and what you learned from that experience? 

I’ve graduated 44 Ph.D. students and continue to be a mentor to many of them, if not all of them. They are now faculty members and administrators; some of them work in corporate America; a few have started very successful companies. There was one particularly frustrating situation. A protégé of mine is in a job that he’s not happy about and he’s no longer thriving in. And I didn’t feel that this individual was taking any ownership or agency in plotting his course going forward. I would give advice and offer to help, and nothing would happen. And this would happen over and over again. I’m empathetic; I understand people can have a rough time. And I’ve certainly not given up on this individual. But sometimes a person is in a state where they can’t execute. But that’s very frustrating for somebody like me who likes results and likes to see progress. And it saddens me, too, because I just don’t know what to do. 

What advice would you give to faculty who want to become more effective as mentors? And what advice would you give to junior faculty to get the most out of their mentoring relationships? 

I would begin by saying that even as a junior faculty member, you have an opportunity to be a mentor — you have undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty members who are even more junior than yourself. Everyone can play a role as a mentor. 

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Pay attention to what works for you. Think about the best mentors you’ve had. What have they done well? What are the things you wish they had done, or done better? 

As a mentor, it’s important to be in “receive mode” rather than “transmit mode.” As a mentor, I almost never give someone “the answer.” Instead, I listen with curiosity, ask questions and try to pull the answers out of them. If you ask someone, “Why do you think that? Why do you think you’re in this situation? Have you thought of ways of going forward?” — these questions will help them to process in real time what’s going on. And then sometimes the neurons fire the right way and that “aha” moment happens. 

At the same time, a mentor should pay attention to nonverbal cues to figure out when it’s time to dig in more and when it’s time to leave a topic alone. You can lead a horse to water, but then you have to stand back — and then not scold that person if they don’t take your advice. Even though it’s frustrating, it’s their life and they know things that I don’t know and that they’re not sharing with me. And I have to be respectful of that. 

If you’re a junior faculty member and you have a mentor — either a formal mentoring relationship, perhaps assigned by a chair, or an informal arrangement by mutual agreement — first of all, be extraordinarily respectful of the other person’s time. Be punctual, be ready, do your homework and read what they ask you to read. If they give you an hour, be respectful of that. It sounds straightforward, but it’s important to use that moment as wisely as possible. And frankly, by being respectful, you put everybody in the right mindset. 

Be thoughtful and communicative about what you want to get out of the relationship. Why are you seeking a mentor? Why are you seeking this particular mentor? What do you hope to achieve through this relationship? What are your goals? Are you trying to do something specific, and do you need help in one particular area? The more specificity you can provide, the better off you’ll be. 

As with any type of relationship, there are different phases. As you move forward, you can provide feedback, assess the situation and make sure that there’s mutual value added to both parties. It’s important for both parties to be thoughtful, respectful, engaging partners in the relationship.