Mentoring in Research |  | Determine what her options are... |
|  |  | There are approaches that the faculty member can take in proceeding with her grant proposal: If the graduate student agrees to repeat the critical experiments, she can include them in the proposal, rather than the earlier ones he conducted. Of course, there is the possibility that the data from these repeated studies will not support her hypotheses. She can complete the grant proposal without these data, realizing that it may lessen her chances of receiving funding. She can include the original data from the graduate student's studies, noting that they are preliminary and need to be repeated with greater stringency on the experimental design. She can decide to delay submission of the proposal until the next submission deadline and work with the graduate student to develop a strong data set for the proposal. She can propose that the two of them work on the critical experiments together. The graduate student can help set up the experiments and the faculty member, with assistance from her technician, can complete them. In this way the graduate student will be able to attend his family reunion and the faculty member will have the needed data for her grant proposal. The last approach has the possibility of satisfying both the faculty member and the graduate student. It also exemplifies good mentoring. By working together the faculty member will actively demonstrate the importance of this work. By assuming some of the responsibility for conducting the experiments she will show the graduate student that she values his personal as well as professional life. In each of the remaining approaches the faculty member will need to make concessions—in her relationship with the graduate student, in the rigor of her grant proposal, or in the time before the grant, if funded, is available to her. The best resolution to this dilemma, of course, is to avoid it. Open communication with her graduate student, clarifying the complex nature of research in an academic setting to the student, and regular review of both the experimental design and the raw data collected by the student will help in avoiding the situation the faculty member faced in this case study.