Chapter Five

The Mentor's Motivation and Concerns

Keith Elkins likes mentoring so much, he does it full-time. Elkins is a professor at Empire State College in upstate New York, where all faculty are considered mentors (interview by the author, 1990). Typically, Elkins holds individual meetings with each of his full-time students about once a week and each of his half-time students about once every two weeks. Together they draft learning contracts and discuss learning strategies. Each student must come up with an individualized curriculum for obtaining a degree. Elkins's job is to guide and aid the student in any way he can.

“In our initial meeting, I ask the new student three basic questions,” says Elkins. “‘What do you want to study? Why do ...

Get Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring: How to Facilitate an Effective Mentoring Process, New and Revised Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.