If we are willing to admit it, we have all benefited from some form of mentoring, either informal or formal mentoring. I was reminded this summer of the joy I receive from mentoring at very little cost to myself. My story of mentoring is focused on Ronald Moore, a former summer undergraduate research student in my lab, who is now a current Ph.D. student at Emory in the Computer Science department working this summer as an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Applied Science Intern.
A Vision to Help Others Through Tech
I had met Ronald when he was probably in elementary school and reconnected with him during a summer while he was finishing his degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had played at least one season on the football team. He didn’t have anything planned for the summer. I encouraged him to consider working in my research lab, the Humanoid Engineering and Intelligent Robotics (HEIR) Lab, at Marquette University in 2015. He hadn’t really had much programming experience, so I started him on a project to build small robot kits using Intel’s version of an Arduino, that could be used to teach middle school girls from underrepresented backgrounds how to build and program robots. It was a learning experience for Ronald. But he also learned the lesson that he could use technology to help others engage in and benefit from computing and engineering.
Expecting Success Even through Failure from Your Mentee
It’s important to raise the expectations of my mentees for what I expect from them. But more importantly, what they expect from themselves. My approach to mentorship is to be available for advice and guidance but to put the bulk of what needs to be discovered and done on the student I am mentoring. I find that my students can quickly come up to speed on subjects and often surpass what I know if they are given an engaging project and plenty of focused time to work. That summer seemed to spark Ronald’s interest even more in robotics. He had a few setbacks and sometimes progress was slow but he was encouraged to persist.
Resources and Relationships to Grow
Mentors realize that they don’t have all the knowledge and experience to effectively develop the mentee. I encouraged Ronald to go to graduate school. I think he took some time working with friends that had a startup but then decided to pursue a master’s in computer science, somewhat of a big change from pure electrical engineering. Ronald followed me to the University of Kansas and began his master’s research in human-robot interaction with me as his advisor. I taught him his first artificial intelligence class as well as an HRI class. It was exciting to see him progress. He also became involved in our IHAWKe (Indigenous, Hispanic, African-American, Women KU engineering) program, as a graduate student leader. He later applied to become a GEM Fellow (which I suggested to him), was selected, and eventually interned with IBM. I was a GEM Fellow myself, and so it was rewarding to see him apply and become a GEM Fellow as well.
A Belief Instilled and Pursued
As he discussed his future, I was able to share the pros and cons of pursuing a Ph.D. He applied and was selected into the Ph.D. program at Emory University in Computer Science with IBM as his sponsor. I could tell that, like myself, it was a challenge starting his program. What I really give him credit for was how he would contact me at least monthly to set up times that we could Zoom and ask any question he wanted. We often found some of that time either cheering or lamenting the KU Jayhawks or the KC Chiefs. Ron, to this day, continues to do his part as a mentee to initiate times when he wants to talk for advice or be a sounding board. I have benefited because he shares his research, but more importantly, I have the joy of seeing him grow as a young man and as an AI researcher.
A Goal: Going Beyond the Mentor
He saw my involvement with AWS through various educational projects and programs. This summer he decided to apply to become an intern at AWS. I’m proud to say that he was hired as an Applied Science Intern with AWS. He’a using his expertise but also expanding his research knowledge and space. Ron’s Ph.D. research at Emory is centered around developing methods that reduce bias in clinical risk prediction and treatment effect estimation algorithms. You can only imagine what he’s working on now. Let me just say, he’s going way beyond what I’ve done or know.
V.E.R.B. is an Action Word for Mentorship
So here’s how I help lead, inspire, and mentor others: V.E.R.B., an acronym that I developed and have used over the years.
VISION – help them see the possible and dream of the unseen in their own lives and the lives of others.
EXPECTATION – give them reasonably high expectations for them and positive expectations of success, even if there are slight setbacks along the way.
RESOURCES/RELATIONSHIPS – provide them with the resources they need to succeed and connect them with others who will help build up their experiences and expertise.
BELIEF/BELONGING -believe in them before they even believe in themselves, know that they belong in their chosen field, and continue to cultivate their own belief in their capabilities, potential, and possibilities.
To all my past and current mentors, I continue to dedicate myself to mentoring others. And those who want to be mentored by me only need to contact me and show the type of commitment to learning and growth that Ronald continues to show. Ronald is using his research abilities to help others avoid problems with machine learning bias and to benefit from how ML can be used to help clinicians and nurses heal others more effectively. And that’s a mentoring V.E.R.B. worth acting on.
Picture: Ronald Moore in front of his research poster at the 2019 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in Daegu, South Korea, as a student of mine in the Humanoid Engineering and Intelligent Robotics (HEIR) Lab at the University of Kansas.
© 2023 Andrew B. Williams
About the Author: Andrew B. Williams is Dean of Engineering and Louis S. LeTellier Chair for The Citadel School of Engineering. He was recently named on of Business Insider’s Cloudverse 100 and humbly holds the designation of AWS Education Champion. He sits on the AWS Machine Learning Advisory Board and is a certified AWS Cloud Practitioner. He is proud to have recently received a Generative AI for Large Language Models certification from DeepLearning.AI and AWS. Andrew has also held positions at Spelman College, University of Kansas, University of Iowa, Marquette University, Apple, GE, and Allied Signal Aerospace Company. He is author of the book, Out of the Box: Building Robots, Transforming Lives.
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