GSPIA Professor Louise Comfort wins
2008 Provost's Award for Excellence in Mentoring
Now in its third year, the Provost's Award for Excellence in Mentoring is given to University of Pittsburgh faculty members in recognition of their efforts in mentoring doctoral students. Faculty and doctoral students from across the university submitted nominations, and GSPIA Professor Louise Comfort was one of only four honorees.
Comfort has chaired 16 doctoral dissertations, served on 22 doctoral dissertation committees, and is advising 11 current doctoral students. Many of the students she has mentored have gone on to successful and diverse careers, spanning academics, research, and public service.
She considers five basic principles essential to an effective and supportive faculty-student mentor relationship:
- Trust
- Responsibility
- Communication
- Feedback
- Commitment to learning
In addition to the above five elements, Comfort has also learned that respect is a necessary component, and notes that "an effective mentoring process is genuinely one in which students and professors learn together in a process of shared inquiry."
Comfort's approach has developed more as a result of experience than comprehensive design. "I find that setting a framework for students' work, but letting them fill in the content, helps to structure their learning process." She will often pair less experienced students with more experienced students, and creates a research group that at the same time serves as a means by which students provide feedback to, and learn from, each other.
She considers it a great honor and responsibility to mentor the next generation of teachers, researchers, and scholars. Comfort says that "teaching and research are social activities, and students learn best by example and by engagement." Looking back on her own graduate study, she recalls the many ways in which her professors helped her grow professionally. Wondering how she could repay the time, encouragement, and guidance, her mentor told her she would get the opportunity to pass along the same skills to her own students one day.
She says that "more than any particular skill, I would hope to pass this love of learning on to my students, so that they in turn, may pass it on to theirs."
Comfort will be honored at an April 15 reception in the William Pitt Union along with the other three awardees, Donald DeFranco, professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine; Leon Gleser, professor of statistics in the School of Arts and Sciences; and Kenneth Jordan, Distinguished Professor of computational chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences. Each winner will receive a $2,500 cash prize.
For additional coverage, please see:
University Times
News from Pitt
For more information on Louise Comfort, please visit her faculty bio page.
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