Interview with Carolyn Ash - Caltech Oral Histories

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Ash–41 I wanted to tell you about a new program we started last spring, to provide training and support for the grad students and postdocs who find themselves mentoring undergrads. All these twenty-five years, of course, students who work in a laboratory generally work on a day-to-day basis with grad students and postdocs. And it very often happens that the SURFer shows up on the first day of SURF and the faculty member says to the grad student or postdoc, “Oh, by the way, here’s this student for you to work with all summer.” That has an effect on the grad students and postdocs, because they’re doing their own work, and now suddenly they have this other person they’re responsible for. So there’s, in some sense, a resentment factor—but also a bewilderment factor: “What do I do with this student? This student wrote a proposal for work that has something to do with what I’m doing, but not exactly.” COHEN: And they’re pressured to get their own work done. ASH: They’re trying to get their own work done, and they don’t have any experience in scoping a project for somebody with no experience, for ten weeks. So the year before last, the grad students, who are quite well organized, put out a survey in the graduate student newsletter on mentoring experiences with SURF students, and the first question was, “How was your interaction with the SURF office?” And they showed me the survey. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t even have known that this survey came out, because I wasn’t on the grad student newsletter mailing list. I said, “You know, this is really a loaded question, because I can tell you they didn’t have any.” COHEN: You never saw them. ASH: We didn’t see them. In some cases, we knew what their names were, but we had no contact with them, so they didn’t have any contact with us. But it became clear that this was an issue for them, and I thought, “If it’s an issue for them, it’s an issue for the SURFers. It’s going to impact their experience.” COHEN: Sure. ASH: Just as the undergrads are being introduced to research, here’s a whole group of people, a http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Ash_C
Ash–42 whole constituency of people, who are being introduced to the mentoring process. So last year we got together a core group of grad students and postdocs who were willing to help develop this program. We put on workshops before SURF began, to explain what SURF is. In some cases, they didn’t even know what the program was. COHEN: Sure. Why would they know? ASH: [We explained] what SURF is, what the expectations are, what the SURF philosophy is. We gave them tips on mentoring. We brought in faculty and grad students and postdocs who had had mentoring experience to talk about the process of mentoring and the importance and value, and the benefits to them of having mentoring on their résumés when they go on to the next phase of whatever they do. And then we had some discussion groups over the summer. COHEN: How many of these grad students did you get to come? ASH: Well, we did the workshops based in the divisions, so the biologists were talking to the biologists, the chemists were talking to the chemists, the physicists were talking to the physicists. When they talk about things like developing a project, that looks different in different departments. For the biologists, anything a student might have proposed in March has probably been done by the time summer starts. The article may have been written by June. In engineering, they might have the same thing going for years. So there are a little bit different issues. Plus, the grad students thought they would feel more comfortable and ask more questions and engage better if we did it within the divisions, so we did that. And we got probably twenty to thirty in the largest workshops—probably five to eight in the smaller workshops. But we started the process—the most important thing is, we started the process—and we gave them a name, “co-mentors.” We put them in our annual report and other materials; whenever we list the student with the mentor’s name, we also list it with the co-mentor, to give the co-mentors recognition for the work they’re doing. COHEN: They’re doing the work. ASH: They are doing the work. We are going to hold, in the next couple of weeks, an http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Ash_C
Page 1 and 2: CAROLYN ASH (b. 1944) INTERVIEWED B
Page 3 and 4: CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Page 5 and 6: Ash-2 Professor of Molecular Biolog
Page 7 and 8: Ash-4 ASH: I think he was. And it w
Page 9 and 10: Ash-6 Libbrecht [professor of physi
Page 11 and 12: Ash-8 [there was] a recognition tha
Page 13 and 14: Ash-10 program like this and got a
Page 15 and 16: Ash-12 COHEN: You’re juggling you
Page 17 and 18: Ash-14 ASH: Yes, but it’s interes
Page 19 and 20: Ash-16 we still had the faculty off
Page 21 and 22: Ash-18 students? ASH: The first one
Page 23 and 24: Ash-20 CAROLYN ASH SESSION 2 Decemb
Page 25 and 26: Ash-22 move the decimal points. [La
Page 27 and 28: Ash-24 COHEN: By now you have becom
Page 29 and 30: Ash-26 COHEN: Well, it works. ASH:
Page 31 and 32: Ash-28 will come in.” Because whe
Page 33 and 34: Ash-30 COHEN: Just to make it more
Page 35 and 36: Ash-32 SURF office also administere
Page 37 and 38: Ash-34 ASH: It was different work.
Page 39 and 40: Ash-36 Begin Tape 2, Side 2 ASH: Ha
Page 41 and 42: Ash-38 The Axline students always l
Page 43: Ash-40 a work plan before they begi
Page 47 and 48: Ash-44 for those 350 students. COHE

Interview with Carolyn Ash - Caltech Oral Histories

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