Graduate student Eligio Martinez Jr. has benefited greatly by working with his mentor, Frances Contreras. Photo by Karen Orders.
SHAPING STUDENTS & THE SYSTEM MENTORING MAKES AN IMPACT FOR UW GRADUATE STUDENTS OF COLOR By Julie H. CASE
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ere it not for her mentor, Summer Lockerbie, ’01, ’04, would not be working on nuclear non-proliferation right now. Perhaps she’d be working in industrial science, for a company like 3M, Dow or ExxonMobil, instead of trying to combat and detect weapons of mass destruction before they enter the United States. Like Lockerbie, who was mentored by Paul Panetta, a scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, students at the University of Washington have for years benefited from mentoring—whether it is formal or informal, peer-to-peer, faculty-to-student or professional-to-student. While many people may think of mentoring as career focused, at the university level mentorship goes beyond that. It prepares students—especially graduate students—to succeed and provides valuable guidance on how to handle life at a major public university. For graduate students from underrepresented communities, mentorship can be even more critical.