Mentorship that matters

It’s not uncommon to be paired with a mentor or ambassador when you start a new job – someone who will help you with the ins and outs of a particular organization and answer questions as they arise. However, NCSA takes the standard and sets the bar higher with a proactive approach that employs intentional planning and strategies. Luigi Marini, lead research software engineer, and the Software and Applications Data Laboratory team have been prototyping a powerful initiative pairing staff with more experienced mentors through an informal mentoring program.

When Marini first started thinking about mentoring with NCSA’s Software Directorate, he wondered if current efforts could use a boost. Marini is deeply passionate about mentoring. “In my 25 years at NCSA, I have received mentoring in many different ways, both formal and informal. I have found the knowledge I gained through these relationships highly valuable in learning how to navigate the highly dynamic environment in which we work. I have always felt you shouldn’t limit mentorship to your direct supervisor.”

Marini set about experimenting with how his team approached mentoring. He wanted an approach with a strong structure so mentees would all have the same high-quality mentoring, no matter who they were paired with. He also wanted to make mentoring more proactive rather than reactive. He didn’t want the mentors to simply solve the problems mentees have but rather to create a forum where both can have open discussions about what’s important, including how mentors can support mentees’ growth in their roles. Instead of simply being there in case a new employee had something they needed help with, Marini wanted a more actionable plan, where mentoring was a more organic part of the work day, with planned touchpoints and projects designed for mentors and mentees to work on together.

Before he implemented his plan, Marini knew he would need his own training to learn about current best practices and approaches. He took MGRdev in 2022, a manager development program started by the University of Illinois (U. of I.) Engineering IT department. One of the current facilitators for the program is NCSA’s Associate Director of Research Consulting, Laura Herriott. MGRdev has a strong focus on coaching and hands-on experience that supplement topical training workshops.

After completing his session, Marini continued to support the program as a volunteer coach. Fresh out of training, Marini set about making his plan a reality. Initially, he felt the perfect time to coach his employees was during their regular one-on-one meetings. There was one catch – he had a team of seven, and there never seemed enough time to discuss both project work and professional development. Knowing that without assistance, people wouldn’t get the quality mentorship they deserved, Marini tapped two of his senior research engineers to help ease the workload, Chen Wang and Max Burnette.

“Chen and Max are incredible at what they do and have been at NCSA for a while,” said Marini. “I thought that not only could the rest of the team learn from them, but they could also use this experience to practice a new set of skills.”

Mentors can help staff develop a number of generally applicable skills that will help them achieve their career goals, like assisting new employees as they learn about the relevant technology to NCSA. Similarly, mentors can help navigate working with stakeholders who might have specific needs a new employee is unfamiliar with.

NCSA mentors also coach employees on how to manage their time effectively, a key skill when staff typically support multiple projects simultaneously. One particular facet of working for NCSA that may be new to software engineers is the need to write effectively for an academic audience. A research software engineer job at NCSA is more than just coding; they need to be able to understand research in their field, write proposals, publish papers and communicate with the academic community in a clear and concise way. They also may need to present a compelling poster session or write an abstract, and mentors can provide experience with all these various tasks.

One of the benefits of having more mentors is each person comes with their own approach and style to mentoring, even within the structure of Marini’s plan. Wang and Burnette have their own experiences with mentoring that helped shape how they approach the work.

When Wang first started at NCSA as a research software engineer (RSE), she didn’t have the typical educational background that programmers often do. NCSA mentoring was instrumental to her success on the team. “When I first joined NCSA, I didn’t have a formal computer science background,” she said, “so the mentorship I received from Luigi and many others was invaluable. My mentors not only showed me the ropes – introducing best research software engineering practices – but also demonstrated what it means to be an RSE and how to grow in this career path. Now, as a mentor myself, I see it as a way to give back to the community – helping others navigate the challenges I once faced and fostering the same supportive environment that helped me greatly.” 

Wang has two other background experiences that help her as a coach. She’s also an international employee, which means she is well-suited to assist and answer questions about this specific situation.

“As an international employee,” Wang explained, “I understand the challenges of navigating the workplace in another country. While I can’t provide legal advice, I always encourage others to stay informed about work visas, key deadlines and document requirements. I’ve also helped connect mentees to the right resources and offices for assistance with taxes, health insurance for foreigners and residency status, ensuring they get the proper guidance from the appropriate experts. Having someone who has been through the process can make a big difference, and I’m always happy to share my experiences and direct others to the right personnel or information.”

She’s also able to approach topics that concern women in tech. Having someone to talk to who has a common experience, such as being in the minority in a chosen career field, means Wang’s mentoring is more impactful. She understands the challenges other women may face in the field because she’s faced them herself.

“Early in my career, I didn’t think much about being a minority woman in tech – I focused on proving my abilities, almost afraid that being labeled would overshadow my achievements,” said Wang. “But as I’ve gained experience and perspective, I’ve come to appreciate this aspect of my identity and how it helps me connect with and support fellow women in the field. Having strong female colleagues and mentors makes a difference, and I want to foster that sense of community – embracing our strengths, supporting each other and navigating challenges together.”

Burnette says the mentoring program is mutually beneficial. He hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know many of the people at NCSA, but through mentoring, he’s been able to meet more of his colleagues.

“As I’ve become engaged in larger projects with more people and responsibilities,” he said, “it gets difficult to keep up with colleagues assigned to different projects and teams. In particular, I might not cross paths with our newer team members outside of activities like mentoring. It becomes a way to connect with them and find common areas of interest even when our work groups don’t overlap. That makes it easier for them to reach out if they need advice or guidance.”

Burnette and Wang each take half of the team under their wing. Burnette’s teaching style is more fluid – he doesn’t have an agenda when he meets with his charge, choosing to have topics to discuss if the mentee doesn’t have any specific questions. He creates a space where the mentee feels comfortable chatting without a formal structure. He also finds his style makes him more approachable than speaking to a manager.

“The topics that come up naturally in these conversations can cover a lot of ground, from technical topics to time management to handling tricky conversations with collaborators,” said Burnette. “Since I’m offering input as an advisor rather than a supervisor, we have productive conversations and brainstorm different ideas without the mentee feeling like I am dictating their approach.”

One of the more common skills Burnette assists his mentees with is career advancement. He gets a lot of questions about how he eventually became a lead on the team and how a new employee can make strides toward a promotion. He helps by sharing what worked for him and what strategies were most effective.

“I try to help them understand how the expectations for different positions are defined and evaluated and how their current project experience might fit into those expectations,” he said. “Maybe they are strong with certain criteria but their project portfolio hasn’t given them a chance to demonstrate others – what are ways they might address that?”

He still has some challenges in his role as a mentor, particularly with scheduling time with his mentees. Burnette works to prioritize the coaching sessions, but his role on projects and other work was making it difficult to keep up with his coaching. Fortunately, Burnette can still turn to his own mentor whenever he faces challenges. With Marini’s guidance, Burnette learned how best to delegate when he needs to free up some time, which has helped him find more space for mentoring in his schedule.

“Luigi leads by example,” said Burnette. “He’s generous with his time and understands that people get different things from talking with different people, and he’s encouraged me to find time for these activities as a way to improve the overall team. It would be easy to dismiss the time commitment of mentoring when I’m looking at my project workload, but Luigi’s mentoring over the last several years has been invaluable to me, and he had the same conundrum, so it only seems right to pay it forward.”

While mentoring might seem like it mostly benefits new employees, Marini’s team has found the process to have a number of perks for senior staff as well. The Software Directorate works on a large number of projects, and there are many project teams that don’t overlap. Through the mentorship program, members get to know each other better, which supports overall knowledge sharing across individual project teams. 

“In our current highly hybrid work environment, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with peers. Any additional way we can bring staff together is hopefully beneficial to the overall culture of the Center. The NCSA Software Directorate operates as a matrixed organization, with staff belonging to teams and working on projects across teams and the center. While this is a great way to work with colleagues from other teams, interactions are primarily focused on project requirements and deadlines. This mentoring effort provides an extra opportunity to encourage staff to have individual meetings with colleagues and connect with each other in a less structured way – hopefully providing a supportive, relaxed setting for growing together.”

ABOUT NCSA

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provides supercomputing, expertise and advanced digital resources for the nation’s science enterprise. At NCSA, University of Illinois faculty, staff, students and collaborators from around the globe use innovative resources to address research challenges for the benefit of science and society. NCSA has been assisting many of the world’s industry giants for over 35 years by bringing industry, researchers and students together to solve grand challenges at rapid speed and scale.