Meet Your Mentor

By Michelle Avritt

Making the right connection can make a big difference in college — even help your career.

Take a moment and think of the people who have most influenced your life and the choices you have made. Are they relatives? Role models? In my case, I was lucky enough to meet my mentor during my first semester at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
   I became acquainted with Dr. Shiela Browne through Sistahs in Science, a student group that she helped found for minority women in the sciences. Mentors have always had a large role to play in academia and science, shaping intellectual interests and even careers.
   In my case, I had wanted to attend the annual American Indian Science and Engineering Society's (AISES) national conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, during my first semester. I had approached Dr. Browne, a Mount Holyoke chemistry professor and a fellow Native American woman in the sciences. She agreed to sponsor me through a grant she received because she wanted me to make useful contacts there and share them with her. Little did I realize at the time, though, how Dr. Browne and this one conference would influence my career paths.
   For starters, I stayed at Mount Holyoke past my first year in large part because of Dr. Browne's investment in me. It was difficult going to school so far away from my home in Boulder, Colo., and I was homesick. Plus, I felt Native American students didn't have much support on campus. But Dr. Browne's faith in me made me stay. I felt obligated to her because she had put so much effort into helping me.
   The next year Dr. Browne sent me to the AISES conference again, but this time on the condition that I find a speaker to bring back to campus. I think she expected me to find just one speaker, but instead I was able to book enough events to last an entire month. This was my introduction to leadership and acting as an organization's chair. In fact, by the time I graduated, I had taken on the position of chairwoman for three different clubs, including Sistahs in Science. And this all came about with just a little prod from Dr. Browne.
   My self-confidence quickly gre w, and Dr. Browne kept pushing me to really apply myself. She urged me to declare a major. She knew I was interested in biology; and because of her passion for organic chemistry, I declared my major in biochemistry. Dr. Browne also urged me to apply for many summer internships; even though I didn't think I had a chance of being accepted. Although many programs required sophomore or junior standing (I was a freshman at the time), Dr. Browne told me to apply anyway and wrote me letters of recommendation.
   Needless to say, I received plenty of rejection letters. But I did land an internship with the National Cancer Institute as an AISES intern, in large part because I had the opportunity to attend the earlier AISES conference. The next two summers I worked for the Mayo Clinic. This was made possible because I had met the Mayo Clinic's program director at my second AISES conference.
   In science, mentors play a big part in research. I have had various mentors in the different labs I worked at during the summers. My final year at M.H.C., when I studied slime molds in Dr. Frank DeToma's lab, he helped come up with a plan of attack when I was stuck on a problem. His confidence inspired further effort on my part when I was ready to quit.
   A mentor can point you in the right direction. Since graduating in May, I have started working for the National Institutes of Health in Washington, and I don't think I could have gotten here without the guidance of Dr. Browne. She helped me shape my ideas about how to practice science and where I can go with it. She will always be a woman I can look up to.

Michelle Avritt is from Jemez/San Felipe Pueblos (the Sando & Padilla families) and is a pre-IRTA fellow at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.

Reprinted with permission of Time-Life Syndication.