Acceptance of the Clark P. Read Mentor Award: Mentor and Mentee–A Lasting Relationship

Thank you very much Dr. Patrick Hanington for your kind introduction. Thank you, Dr. Al Shostak, for putting the nomination package together, and undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and colleagues who wrote letters of support on my behalf. Many thanks to the Awards Committee and all of you for this prestigious award. I joined the American Society of Parasitologists (ASP) more than 30 years ago as a graduate student and presented my first paper during the ASP annual meeting in Minneapolis back in 1978. I always felt truly at home in this vibrant society. This afternoon, I would like to share with you some ideas (and suggestions) for establishing a lasting relationship between a mentor and mentee. I think that these relationships are essential for promotion and maintenance of parasitology as a discipline. As we have heard earlier today, a shining example of a lasting and obviously successful mentor:mentee relationship is between this year’s Henry Baldwin Ward Medalist, Dr. Kevin Lafferty, and his mentor Dr. Armand Kuris. Both Kevin and Armand have contributed and continue to work on this relationship that provides support not only to the mentee but also the mentor. Indeed, the most successful relationships between mentors and mentees require lasting and continuous effort on the part of both parties. It is a marriage contract where strengths and weaknesses of ‘‘spouses’’ are frequently exposed and, hopefully, resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the partners. Mentor and mentee must commit to build a lasting relationship, and they are required to ‘‘bring to the table’’ appropriate building blocks for the maintenance of such a relationship. The building blocks that the mentor should provide include: (1) unlimited access for the mentee, (2) leading by example, (3) committing to the mentee’s career path, (4) generating adequate research funds to support the mentee’s project, (5) monitoring progress, and (6) promoting and providing lasting career support for the mentee. In turn, the mentees must: (1) articulate their desired career path to the mentor, (2) commit to co-workers in the laboratory, (3) strive for academic excellence, (4) commit to research, (5) work towards research productivity, and (6) complete their thesis in a timely manner. Similarly, development of mentor:mentee relationships between senior and junior colleagues requires specific building blocks. The mentor must be prepared to: (1) articulate appropriate funding opportunities, (2) help the mentee develop competent research proposals, (3) advise the mentee on different teaching strategies, (4) advise on graduate student supervision, and (5) advise on university affairs. In turn, the mentee must: (1) commit to an academic career, (2) develop competent teaching skills, (3) develop and maintain a fundable research program, (4) develop research collaborations, and (5) recruit quality graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Clearly, additional building blocks may be required for establishment of lasting relationship between mentor and mentee. The ones indicated above, in my opinion, are essential and are derived from successful relationships that I had with an outstanding group of mentors. I was introduced to parasitology as an undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba, where I took courses in Introductory Parasitology from Dr. Lane Graham and Experimental Parasitology from Dr. Terry Dick. I was very fascinated by host–parasite relationships and enrolled in the M.Sc. studies under the supervision of Dr. Dick. Terry was hard working and infectiously enthusiastic about parasitology and had a ‘‘door always open’’ policy for his graduate students. My project in Terry’s lab was on the biological comparison of different isolates (now species) of Trichinella spiralis. Towards the end of my M.Sc. project, I read a paper by Ian Robert-Thomson and colleagues that described a Giardia murismouse model. I became convinced that this would be an ideal model to characterize the mechanisms of mucosal host defense, and I approached Dr. Geatan Faubert from the Institute of Parasitology, McGill University, who enthusiastically agreed for me to bring Giardia muris to his lab—despite the fact that, at the time, he studied the immunobiology of T. spiralis. Gaetan was very committed to my research project and, in a relatively short time, we generated significant research funding to support my research. During my doctoral studies, I was also very fortunate to meet Dr. Emil Skamene from McGill University, a worldrenowned geneticist and immunologist, who developed several recombinant inbred mouse strains because he was interested in characterizing genes that influenced host resistance to parasites. Emil unselfishly provided access to his lab and to the unique recombinant inbred mouse strains that, at the time, were an incredible resource, allowing me to examine mechanisms of host resistance to G. muris. Sharing research resources in science opens many doors; a lesson learned! Toward the end of my doctoral studies, I refined my career path and decided that studying human protozoan pathogens, particularly those that are highly prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, would be fascinating and worthwhile. I was DOI: 10.1645/GE-2326.1 J. Parasitol., 95(6), 2009, pp. 1273–1274 F American Society of Parasitologists 2009

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