By: Angela Wong, SFU VPR Undergraduate Student Research Award holder
Dr. Mackey recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Jen Heemstra for the BPK Dialogue Series. Dr. Heemstra is a Professor of Chemistry at Emory University, and she is passionate and informed about academic mentorship and leadership.
Supervisors take note:
Self-leadership is what a leader would do for a group but done for yourself. You can’t lead other people well if you don’t lead yourself well. So, go ahead, cast a vision, set some goals, manage how you execute goals, monitor yourself to stay accountable, and navigate through setbacks!
Good mentoring by coaching is an essential part of the job. The role of a mentor is not to find the answers for somebody, but rather to help them find the answers for themselves
Failure is inevitable. When failure is experienced by a mentee, it is a mentor’s job to provide support and even reward failure sometimes, such as when a mentee fails in an outstanding ‘I learned something’ way
Imposter syndrome can arise from your external surroundings and your innate self-doubt. An evidence-based approach to deal with this is to recognize the distorted thought patterns you may have and reframe them in a positive light
Follow Dr. Heemstra on Twitter @jenheemstra
