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Mentorship Series: Rebeckah Fussell and Natasha Holmes

February 7, 2025

Natasha Holmes and Rebeckah Fussell work on a blackboard
Professor Natasha Holmes and doctoral candidate Rebeckah Fussell

As a graduate student, having a positive relationship with your mentor is the linchpin of your success, but how do you build these crucial ties and get the mentoring you need?

This academic year, we’re interviewing faculty-graduate student pairs about what makes their mentoring relationships work. From practical tips to broader perspectives, these Q&As will equip you with ideas and tactics for improving your own mentoring relationships.

This week, we’re speaking with Rebeckah Fussell, a Ph.D. candidate in physics, and Natasha Holmes, Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor of physics.

At-a-Glance

For Mentees:

  • Make sure that big-picture discussions are part of your mentoring relationship, not just discussions about your research.
  • Try looking at your experiences from both your perspective and your advisor’s perspective for a more balanced understanding.
  • Prioritize frequent and good communication, establish a foundation of mutual trust and understanding, and be reliable and trustworthy.

For Mentors:

  • Find a balance between giving students independence and being available for guidance.
  • Tailor your mentoring approach to individual students and where they are in their degree program rather than using a one-size-fits all strategy.
  • Discuss both short-term and long-term goals, agree upon strategies to support the relationship, and keep lines of communication open.

Rebeckah Fussell, Ph.D. Candidate in Physics

How did you identify your mentoring needs and how has that self-understanding helped shape your approach to find, foster, and engage in mentoring relationships?

I don’t think I knew how to do this very well when I started grad school. It’s hard to identify your needs when you don’t even know what kinds of things people might need or might get if they ask. My advisor gave us a self-reflection worksheet with questions about our professional and personal goals for the upcoming semester, what went well last semester, long-term goals, and what she could do to support us. She met with us once a semester to discuss. Identifying my mentoring needs became easier through this repetition. It’s good she prioritizes these conversations because it’s so easy to just talk about research all the time and forget to talk about the bigger picture.

How do you collaboratively identify and establish mutual expectations around communication, conflict resolution, and other key areas to best work and grow together?

It’s rather implicit when things are working well. I guess it’s important to remember that going to grad school is something you do for yourself, so any expectations your advisor places on you need to be something you are okay with you deep down, and only you can say what that means. At the same time, your advisor has more experience in your field, more experience working collaboratively on research, so if you disagree with what she says you need to be willing to try it anyway. A scientific outlook can help here: If you both believe in changing your mind in light of new information, and you’re both listening, in time you will get on the same page.

What is your best advice for students looking to create and maintain a positive relationship with a mentor?

Imagine how you would make decisions in their shoes. As a Ph.D. student there are many decisions your mentor makes that impact you: research direction, lab policies, funding choices, mentorship choices. It’s easy to sit around griping about your mentor’s choices. But it doesn’t help you get what you need, and it poisons your relationship. It’s harder, but much more effective, to think about what you would do in her position, given the constraints she faces and the opportunities available to her.  Being a research professor is famously complex and difficult. Sometimes this exercise makes you realize the choice she made was the best one available. Sometimes you go through the exercise and still want a different choice, but this is instructive: What is the gap between what you know and what your advisor knows that would cause you to make two different decisions from that same position? Whether you need to tell her something or ask her something, you now have a better sense of what to do to help your advisor maintain a more positive relationship with you.

What does it mean to you personally to be a good mentee and partner in a mentor-mentee relationship?

It’s like how you show up in other relationships in your life. The content of your conversations and level of professionalism is different than it is with a family member or friend. But having good communication, establishing a foundation of mutual respect and understanding, being reliable and building trust – these are the same skills that are beneficial for all relationships.

What do you believe is the key to success in a productive mentor-mentee relationship?

Frequent communication without micromanagement. It’s so important for your advisor to be up to date on what you are working on and why, and to have input. But you also need independence. My advisor strikes a sustainable balance by meeting with us regularly, holding us to expectations during those times, but giving us lots of space in between meetings to work in the way that works best for us.

Natasha Holmes, Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor of Physics

What positive or negative experiences inform your approach to mentorship or help shape your philosophy?

I have had a range of mentorship experiences and they all work together to shape my philosophy. My Ph.D. advisor was department chair and running two different research programs the whole time I was a student so he was incredibly busy. On the positive side, this meant I had a lot of independence and ownership over my work.  On the other hand, he was very hard to get ahold of when I hit roadblocks. From that experience, I try to give students similar space but also make sure I’m available when they need me and that they have other folks around that they can get help from. I also saw that all my advisors mentored different group members differently. Things often unraveled if a mentor tried to apply the same strategies to very different mentees. I also had mentors who, appropriately, assumed that no news was good news and I didn’t want to bother them with small things so we rarely saw each other. So I encourage my students to reach out as needed, I make sure I have scheduled face time with everyone, and I check in once a semester for big picture conversations. I think this range takes the best of all my mentorship experiences and provides flexibility for each of my mentees.

What makes mentoring important to you?

Mentoring is everything! I would not be where I am today without mentors. From my first year physics professor who encouraged me to follow my passions and become a physics major, to all my formal research mentors, to the informal mentorship that takes place over coffee or a meal at a conference. Advice and perspective from anyone more senior or in a different position can help shape how you’re seeing your work or your field, provide networking opportunities, or spark new ideas. It’s everything!

How do you collaboratively identify and establish mutual expectations around communication, conflict resolution, and other key areas to best work and grow together?

I provide students with a goals worksheet that we go over once a semester, especially in the early years of a mentoring relationship. We discuss short-term and long-term goals and discuss strategies for each of us to support the relationship. Conflict resolution is always the hardest but having open lines of communication helps make it such that the resolution is mutual!

What is your process to review and refine your mentoring agreement to ensure it is timely and contextually relevant based upon the mentee’s academic and professional standing and progress? For example, needs for a pre A-exam student will be different from those of a doctoral candidate on the job market.

The goals worksheet really works for this personalization. It means that the mentoring discussion is really driven by the student and their needs at that time. I also am fairly explicit with students about the meta-level of my mentorship – that is, I will often try to indicate why I’m doing what I’m doing or what I’m thinking about how we’re communicating, especially in the later stages of grad school. For example, I will tell a student finishing up their Ph.D. that I’m talking to them now more as a colleague and then may be a bit less guarded about a challenge or community norm. I will also tell a new grad student that I’m going to provide a bit more guidance on a project as they’re getting their feet wet, but ensure them that it’s going to change over time.

What do you believe is the key to success in a productive mentor-mentee relationship?

Communication! Open lines of communication are huge. To do this,  I have to make myself available – both literally (in terms of them being able to talk to me or reach me through Slack or email) and emotionally (in terms of them knowing who I am as a person and what I’m working on or grappling with). And that availability has to go both ways! And with communication comes flexibility. Communication isn’t just about telling – it’s about listening and responding to what you’re hearing, which can sometimes mean being flexible with plans and strategies.