Our Research Mentoring Program

Modern mass education has produced many remarkable opportunities for competent persons to elevate their intellectual understanding, obtain professionalized training, and equip future teachers and researchers in many areas related to modern life. Nevertheless, due to the numbers of students that partake in these institutions, teachers are often constrained by time, the numbers of students, the lack of opportunity for more personal dialogues, and their own professional development (including research, writing, publication, and lecturing). As a consequence, many capable persons receive much information about a particular area of interest from mostly monologic lectures, but do not have opportunities to explore those matters in a more critically justified and thoroughly reflective manner under the tutelage of an experienced researcher and published author. Even at graduate levels of learning, where a thesis or dissertation is required, after required class work has been completed, a research student may be asked to produce a research proposal without any further aid, or will be told what their research project should be by an assigned faculty member. Once that proposal is accepted, a student is often left pretty much alone to pursue their research, only being able to see their teacher or supervisor once some initial writing has been completed. Due to limits of time, many supervisors may give some important basic responses, but cannot go into any depth with regard to various ways of resolving interpretive problems, addressing questions that arise because a student’s readings in standard or original sources are problematic (particularly if they are in languages foreign to the student), and projecting a practical set of plans to take the next steps in their research. Frankly, most teachers and supervisors simply do not have the time to do so, and may have many other graduate students who would also want to have their guidance on their own projects. This pattern of minimal engagement for academic development in research-level work occurs not only at the MA and PhD levels, but also at post-doc and faculty levels of research and writing. There are times when a very capable person has no one to talk to about their research project and their own ideas, much less the methods of research they should employ, and so be able to sharpen the focus of their research projects in order to make them both feasible and valuable. Nevertheless, it can be the case that in graduate-level research, when one finds it difficult to write about what one is researching, it may become a depressing situation that will lead to quitting a particular program for a degree. Once beyond a PhD, academics and researchers face a “publish or perish” threat that is sometimes quite a draconian damper on their own creativity. Under these sadly difficult conditions, many are able still to succeed, and others wither. Having a senior mentor walk the path with a burgeoning researcher often makes the difference, and may add a new level of self-awareness, the discovery of various weaknesses and ways to overcome them, and the joy of creative discoveries that encourage one to proceed further into the rich rewards of theoretical breakthrough and deeply justified insights. The HMAA Mentoring Programs are created precisely with these purposes, and with the sincere hope that transformative changes in the person of the researcher will accompany the self-awareness, discoveries, and joys that the mentored research project brings to light.