Student training promotes mentoring awareness and action.

Student training is a critical but often overlooked aspect of the mentoring process. Composite mentoring, involving the strategic selection of a diverse set of mentors, is proposed to guide students to take a more active role in their own mentoring experiences. A mentoring program with composite mentoring as a guiding framework was designed and implemented for college women pursuing science careers. The effectiveness of the program is illustrated, and students reported enhanced mentoring and career-related experiences. Implications for advising, career counseling, and mentoring program design are discussed.

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It would help if the mentor was the type of person who you wanted to become. The university does have a lot of mentoring programs where they pair people up. But I wouldn't identify very well with a 50-year-old single woman who's never been married. I need to find somebody who is in their mid-3 Os, had a family, took time off to be with her family, went back, and explain all that.

Nicole, former chemistry student

I don't have just one mentor. My mother is a woman and has a family and a job. But, I don't want to be a Spanish teacher. On the other hand, my boss is a doctor. I want to be a doctor. But, there arc very many ways in which he's different from me. I think you really have to select the ways in which you say--due is what I want to be.

Selina, current premedical student

A mentor is traditionally defined as an older, more experienced person who acts as a guide, advocate, and teacher to a younger, less experienced person (Casey & Shore, 2000). Mentors can provide career, academic, psychosocial, and role modeling functions both within and outside of a school setting (Donaldson, Ensher, & Grant-Vallone, 2000). There are many benefits that students receive from mentoring during the college years and beyond. Mentoring can positively influence the career choices students make (Simpson, 1996), their persistence in pursuing their educational goals (Gloria, Robinson Kurpius, Hamilton, & Willson, 1999), and their success in higher education (Blake-Beard, 1999).

When considering the personal and career development of women, mentoring relationships are regarded as critical, yet highly complex (Blake-Beard, 1999; Hubbard & Robinson, 1998; Sosik & Godshalk, 2000). Women may try to seek mentors who can shed light on combining their personal and professional lives (Gilbert & Rossman, 1992), an issue that often discourages college women from persisting in fields that are non-traditional ones for women, such as science (e.g., Seymour & Hewitt, 1997). However, they may not experience mentoring that adequately addresses their concerns (Frestedt, 1995). Also, women may perceive (Ragins & Cotton, 1991) and experience greater barriers to establishing mentoring relationships than do men (Noe) 1988).

Because role modeling is considered an important component of the mentoring process (Donaldson et al., 2000), it is natural that college students might search, albeit unsuccessfully, for one mentor who resembles the person they want to become. How can career development counselors and faculty advisers help students, especially women and other students who are likely to encounter barriers to mentoring, to identify and to access the mentoring experience that is available to them? In this article, I suggest that student training is a critical but often overlooked aspect of the mentoring process. Whether in the context of a formal program or an informal advisory relationship, students can learn to take a more active role in their mentoring experience, creatively meeting their desire to find mentors who match their hoped-for future selves. These ideas are reflected in the description and evaluation of the current mentoring program I designed and implemented, and they have implications for college-level advising, c areer counseling, and design of future mentoring programs.

Conceptual Framework and Intervention Design

Self-Concept and Career Development

Possible selves is a psychological theory that offers a way of understanding how a multifaceted self-concept can guide career behavior and motivation. According to Markus and Nurius (1986), possible selves are images of what people hope to become, expect to become, and fear becoming. These images motivate behavior as people work to pursue the selves they hope to become and attempt to avoid the selves they fear becoming. Oyserman, Gant, and Ager (1995) suggested that certain possible selves are perceived by young people to be more plausible than others. The models that are available in their social environment imply which selves are really possible. In this way, self-concept is contextualized, and possible selves are readily influenced by relationships in one's social environment (Blustein, 1994). Given this framework, it logically follows that mentoring programs have been recommended as a way to foster students' persistence to achieve desired career choices (e.g., Bird & Didion, 1992; Muller, 2000), because m entors can validate career-related possible selves both through feedback and their own example.

Using a possible selves perspective in the career counseling process can be productive because counselors can help participants to imagine possible alternative occupations (Hill & Spokane, 1995). Specifically, visualization techniques can assist the students' transition toward realizing possible selves; students envision themselves in future scenarios, and mentors help through discussion and feedback (Fletcher, 2000). Imagining positive future images and exploring careers with the aid of mentors have been combined successfully in programs designed for girls and women (Bartholomew, 1995; Rea-Poteat & Martin; 1991).

Using Composite Mentors to Guide Career Development

Because possible selves are multifaceted in nature, the type of mentoring designed to support those possible selves can also be envisioned as multifaceted. Because a single analogy cannot adequately explain complex functionality, Spiro's theory of cognitive flexibility (Spiro, Feltovich, Coulson, & Anderson, 1989; Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1992) was initially used as a basis to support the benefits of using multiple analogies (i.e., a composite analogy set) to teach students about complex phenomena. As an extension of the cognitive flexibility theory, the advantages of multiple role models have been promoted; for example, preservice teachers require exposure to multiple models so they do not rely on one exemplar for how to teach (Hughes, Packard, & Pearson, 2000; Shulman, 1992). Composite mentoring can be thought of as the strategic selection of a diverse set of mentors, each mentor offering one aspect of the desired mentoring experience. In other words, rather than finding one mentor who can be emulated completely (Ibarra, 1999), female students can use their possible selves to guide the selection of a strategic set of mentors that can support their aspirations. Composite mentoring builds on the ideas that White men can be effective mentors to women from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Atkinson, Neville, & Casas, 1991; Sosik & Godshalk, 2000) and that networking with multiple mentors is more advantageous than relying on one mentor (Bird & Didion, 1992; Burlew, 1991; Nolinske, 1995).

Students have an important role in this process of selecting and gathering the group of people who represent their composite mentor. Smoot (1996) found that women who saw themselves as "constructivists" of knowledge were more likely to make use of informal mentoring opportunities and gain access to multiple mentors than were students who did not see themselves as such actors. Similarly, Turban and Dougherty (1994) found that protege initiation (i.e., the individual seeking mentoring initiates the relationship) led to mentoring experiences for both men and women. Furthermore, students can be seen as co-learners in the mentoring process, working together with mentors, instead of acting as passive recipients (Runions & Smyth, 1985). For example, students could become familiar with a mentor's work schedule and find ways to adjust their own schedule in order to maximize possible contact hours with their mentor. In addition, students could come better prepared for meetings with mentors by brainstorming on their own before seeking feedback from mentors. Students should be encouraged to reflect on and determine their own goals (Murphy & Ensher, 2001), seeking mentors who can assist them rather than completely take over the process for them. These kinds of student behaviors may not come naturally; mentors and proteges alike need guidance to establish mentoring expectations (Burlew, 1991; Gaskill, 1993; Schwiebert, Deck, Bradshaw, Scott, & Harper, 1999).

Description of Current Mentoring Intervention

Participants

The program I developed was a mentoring workshop series for 30 women (two groups, each with 15 female college students), who met for six dinnertime sessions during a 12-week period. The college students, who were primarily in their 3rd year, were drawn from a large pool of students who had expressed interest in attending the workshop series because of their heightened concerns about choosing a career in the sciences (e.g., combining family/career), their difficulty with identifying mentors in their environments, and concerns that lcd them to consider switching out of science. The group was diverse: 9 (30%) students were ethnic minorities (2 Hispanic American, 5 African American, and 2 Asian American students participated) and 11 students (36.7%) were the first generation to attend college.

Session Details