The mentor who has made the biggest impact in my life is Shawn Smallman, Vice Provost for Instruction and Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Portland State University (PSU). Earlier in my life, I’d had other good mentors, but none more memorable than Shawn. Although I am a few years older than he, I look up to Shawn—one of Ontario’s finest—with admiration and respect. We first met at a 2003 job interview in the International Studies program at PSU in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I was looking to return to the workforce after staying home for eight years to raise children, newly single at the time and worried about finding my place in the professional world. I had been searching for employment for several months when Shawn called me the day after our interview to offer me the job as his program assistant. He was willing to take a chance on me and I was determined to ensure he not regret it. He had faith in my abilities and charged me with important and meaningful tasks, sometimes more confident in me than I was in myself. He had completed much more schooling than I, yet always engaged me in conversation as his intellectual equal. After a few months I confided in Shawn that I was going through a very difficult divorce, and I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive supervisor. Shawn and his wife had two young daughters and he had always made it clear that family was a priority. He immediately offered me a flexible work schedule which allowed for any necessary juggling of court dates and parental obligations. Most importantly, Shawn suggested I enroll in a graduate program. It had been 14 years since I’d graduated from college and I didn’t think I had it in me to manage the class schedule and hours of studying, but with his gentle nudging and ongoing encouragement, I enrolled in one single class. Eventually I hoped to qualify for a better job, but just being in a graduate program also did wonders for my self esteem. It took nearly four years to finish the program, one class at a time, with a perfect 4.0 GPA. When I walked across the platform at commencement in 2008, I made a beeline for Shawn—a member of PSU’s platform party donning his Yale PhD. regalia—to give him a hug of joyous gratitude. His kind mentoring means more to me than he will ever know.
Mentor – this short little piece ‘won’ at University of Waterloo
February 23, 2010 by hudspa
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