Acceptance of the Clark P. Read Mentor Award: Mentoring the Mentor

Abstract

Before I begin, I need to tell you a little story of how I got to know Julian. A long time back, when Julian only thought about slapping mosquitoes and not studying them, I met Julian’s father George. We were both serving on a study section for the NIH evaluating the merits of proposals to establish International Centers for Infectious Disease Research. We had what we used to call a knock-down, drag-em-out disagreement over one particular application, but that night in the bar of the Bethesda Holiday Inn, George came up to me and said ‘‘. . . great discussion today, let me buy you a beer.’’ It is so nice to have friends that can truly separate the business of doing science from the business of friendship. As a consequence, our friendship has grown progressively over the years. So, George introduced me to his son, Julian, a long time ago, when I think he was about this high. First, on one of my trips to San Juan, and again a number of years later when our two families went to see a Brewer’s baseball game in Milwaukee in 1991, the year UW–Madison hosted the ASP meetings. He seemed like a nice kid, but I never imagined he would someday walk into my office and ask to do his doctoral studies in my lab. Of course, I said ‘yes’ and did so without any hesitation, but then I started to think about a possible consequence—what if he wasn’t any good? Can any of you here who know George seriously contemplate telling him his son wasn’t good enough? But, as you all know, and as I knew all along, Julian turned out to be a great student and an accomplished scientist. As did the other children of colleagues I was fortunate to have as students, Steve Taft’s son Andy and Barry Beaty’s daughter Lyric Bartholomay—but I take no credit for their success; rather, I am simply more convinced that genetics works. Julian, I know a number of my past students and post-docs helped you in your task of putting my nomination together, but I also know you were the heavy lifter and I thank you very much. I also thank all of you who wrote letters on my behalf, Ben Hanelt and the other members of the Clark P. Read Award selection committee, and my fellow members of the ASP. This is a true honor for which I am very pleased. Standing in front of you now tells me two things. First, you now consider me an old fart and, second, that I have been very lucky to have had the opportunity to interact with some extremely gifted students and post-docs over the course of my career. But, I must tell you up front that I do not have a particular strategy for mentoring, nor can I ever remember thinking about how I should or should not ‘‘train’’ students and post-docs; it has all just sort of happened. I was, of course, influenced to a certain degree by my past mentors, Drs. Calentine, Ulmer, and Rowley, but they never gave me lessons in how to mentor, nor have I done so with my students—we have all just sort of learned together. So, what I am going to do for the next few minutes is to tell you a bit about my experiences in this wonderful world of parasitology research and teaching, try and convince you of a couple of things that I do think are important, and talk about some of the associations and interactions I have had since I accepted my first graduate student 32 years ago. The one thing I know to be true in the world of graduate training is that you can hand-hold a masters student, very briefly, but no hand-holding is allowed in a doctoral program. How does one become an independent investigator if one is not given independence as a graduate student? There are, of course, a few restraints—the area of research endeavor has to fit a bit into the general area for which the lab is receiving research support—but that was never much of a restriction in my lab because the world of vector-borne diseases covers a lot of territory. And, besides, almost all of my students applied to train in my lab because of my general area of research; they really liked vectors and vectorborne parasites. There were a few exceptions along the way, like caryophyllid cestodes and aquatic oligochaetes research for Cheryl Courtney. But, it has always been hard for me to get DOI: 10.1645/GE-2894.1 J. Parasitol., 97(6), 2011, pp. 976–978 F American Society of Parasitologists 2011