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So I would suggest that to any mentee.
Mihoko, do you want to add to that?
Is that okay, Mildred?
Mihoko, please.
Okay, sure.
The first thing from a mentees' perspective, I completely agree
with James, so he makes my story shorter.
[laughter].
Other than that, I want to share some of the experience
that I had very much unique to me personally.
First of all, when I came to the east and that was two years ago,
the biggest issue or the concern that I had was how much
cultural differences that I should have.
What I mean by cultural differences, I have two meanings
here, number one: that was a huge move from being a student
to being a faculty's position.
When I first came here, I was in the Unit B faculty member but
last year, I moved to the Unit A so that was cultural gap there.
But she was a great mentor and a guide for me and it guided me
through the how to plan for the next five or six years to get
a promotion or how to do the research or where to go
if I'm lost.
Also, that was a great time.
That gave me a great excuse to get up and get away
from the office as well.
She introduced me to a lot of different perspectives in terms
of the culture and sometimes, of course, fortunately I do have
a great relationship in my department.
I do have a great [unclear audio] in the chairs and in
everyone but it's always good to have someone who have different
perspective cultures particularly coming
from different departments.
So it was the most beneficial thing in terms of that aspect
of culture.
The second thing of culture that I have is, I'm pretty sure
you already know this but I'm not American.
Yeah, I'm Japanese, seriously, I'm originally from Japan even
though I've been here for 10 years but I always consider
myself [unclear audio] and a foreigner.
You know all of those kinds of differences.
That was a huge issue for me and obviously I was interested
in the mentor circle, but I was hoping that I could have
someone who has the cultural tolerance and acceptance
and she was exactly like that.
We learned a lot about each other and we shared
the different culture aspect not only academically,
but in our personal life as well that was so great.
She was literally guiding me through to a closer culture.
So that was a great experience.
I want to say, I'm going to talk a little bit about matching
in just a moment because, Mihoko, she went there about.
She wanted someone from the same culture which became a challenge
for me when it was time to match.
The first question that I had from the higher learning
commission was how do you match your mentors and your mentees?
I want to talk a little bit about that in a few minutes.
It has been great to find people who have compassion,
caring, and nurturing.
I look for those characteristics and our mentors when I can't
find a person from the same culture.
Finding someone who is Japanese became a challenge at EIU.
Sorry Mihoko, then I went to Mihoko and said, Mihoko,
this is a challenge but I promise you you're going
to love her.
[laughter].
And she did.
So I want to talk a little bit about matching
and how we match mentors.
So because I believe those characteristics are more
important quite honestly.
So I'm going to talk a little bit and we have some statistics
from our past two years about our matching which are great.
Then I have Dr. Lee who is going to talk about mentoring
from a student perspective.
Student mentoring.
Dr. Jin-Hee Lee.
I don't know how to begin.
I'm Jin-Hee.
Hi, welcome.
When I first got here, this is my third year and I brought
one year from Kansas where I taught before previously
on a tenured track job so this was my second state university
to work with.
I clearly remember in my faculty orientation program,
probably my first day or first session, they were emphasizing
that people are great here.
So I was like, I didn't want to take it at face value because
I mean you have nothing else.
That's why you emphasize the people.
[laughter].
[unclear audio].
You just have people smiling at you, trying to keep you.
[unclear audio].
But it turned out to be that that really meant something.
Before I go onto the student mentoring, I would like
to emphasize that what I found here just confirmed me that
the effectiveness of relationship driven mentoring
both among faculty members and also with your students.
As you know, we are here in the middle of nowhere so all we have
is one another for your academic situation and also in other
aspects of your personal committment.
When Mihoko came, I realized that she's almost
the only Japanese faculty member on our campus, now we have two.
I'm Korean by ethnicity and so I felt, I know exactly what she
felt but then I realized that there are people who are
specifically looking for a person like you too.
For example, I'm heading the Asian Studies minor program
and we do need a faculty member who knows about Asian cultures,
history and look into developing courses on those more
global aspects in their own discipline.
So I was looking for a person like Mihoko and here she is,
we are able to get connected through various outside
departmental events which include some of the faculty
development programs and I remember how I met her first.
It was through one of the faculty development program
where VPAA was fitting about something.
So I would really like to encourage you to find people
and try to get connected with them more proactively because
we are not the only one.
You might think that you have a unique background,
unique concern, unique problem, but most of them,
some people already had it.
So not just, do not confine yourself within one-to-one,
the mentor-mentee relationship that is setup but just look
around and try to network with outside department people
because there are questions that you definately want
to ask someone who is outside of your department.
You don't want to ask some questions to your personnel
committee in your own department for example or something about
your salary and all of those things.
So you might want to branch out a little bit and network
with other departmental people by becoming apart of the events
that are already offered through office like faculty development
or you can also create your own supportive communities for your
research and teaching and other aspects that you
are interested in.
For example, the Asian Studies minor program I organize
a [unclear audio] among faculty members who get together coming
from all different backgrounds who share some interest
in something that you are interested in.
Also, [unclear audio], Asian film series, there I get
to connect with many other faculty members, old and new.
So, I would like to really encourage you to look for
the opportunity to develop a relationship driven mentoring
and a wholistic approach not just confine yourself within
your discipline, within your department, within your college,
or within the one-to-one mentor-mentee relationship.
I can say this because I was sort of a lost child before this
mentor-mentee program because my supposed to be mentor had some
family or health emergency.
So the first time I got to the EIU campus, I didn't have that
luxury of having that wonderful mentor from the beginning
but then I realized that people were actually very generous
with their time.
I guess that's one of the advantages that we have compared
to like Harvard and Stanford that people are relatively
generous for their time to build a healthy balance
of relationships and create a nurturing environment
which I really treasure and value very much at EIU.