Just curious what you found as best practices thus far? I often tell young people to find a mentor, simply because people either learn from mistakes or from a mentor. It's easier and less painful to learn from a mentor, but like you, I learned from a lot of mistakes and it built character. Doesn't mean that young people but walk around with scars in order to build character but they must taste failure at some point in their lives. So as an adult, how do you enjoy mentorship? I can see adults telling each other thier lifetime goals and being held accountable when they start to chase rabbits down a trail that is far from their goals.

It would be really helpful if we could really *talk* about mentoring in a way that promotes, well, mentorship--sharing experiences in spaces of trust and friendship to help one another develop into better individuals, better scholars, better administrators. On that note...

Several of us nominated Jim for the NCA Teacher's on Teaching Series, and he was selected. When we wrote of our experiences with Jim, and why he deserved to be recognized this time (and every time), we wrestled with how to adequately express Jim's compassionate mentorship. Here is what we wrote:

Adria Battaglia, who completed her M.A. under Jim and then benefited from his continued mentorship on her dissertation committee at a different institution, remembers a quote from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which Jim introduced her to when she was an undergraduate student: “Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” She explains,

"From the outside looking in, this quote seems to summarize Jim’s teaching philosophy, which in turn has shaped mine: the role of a teacher is to learn as much as it is to teach.

Jim taught me that there are endless possibilities for growth when we surrender some of our control in a classroom and empower students to become their own teachers. By mediating thoughtful discussion in every class period, principal agency in education and creative possibility become located within the student. It was through observing and experiencing Jim’s classrooms that led me to develop the foundation for my voice as a teacher: his approach to education reminds me to give both my students and myself the room to embrace all of the possibilities that accompany learning. I feel that the reason I am the developing teacher I am today is because Jim taught me through example after example that education should be less about telling and more about guiding.

Moreover, I learned that a teacher’s guiding does not stop when the semester is over. During my doctoral education, I went to Jim with a professional problem I was experiencing. I was incredibly nervous that I was bothering him. He sat across a table and said to me something along the lines of, “You know I have a policy with my advisees: once I am your mentor, I am always your mentor. It’s for life.” I remain forever grateful to Jim for showing me that this career we have chosen is a posture: we are a community, teaching what we know and forever staying open to the possibility of learning more from one another."

Similarly, David Gore, who completed his dissertation under Jim, reflects upon Jim’s influence on his voice as a teacher:

"The Talmud enjoins every man and woman to seek two things in life: a teacher and a friend. I was fortunate enough to find both of these in my relationship with Jim Aune.

Even before I knew Jim, I was impressed by his articulate precision. I was an undergraduate attending an honors conference in St. Louis when I first heard Jim speak. He was on a couple of panels about rhetoric and the law. I don't remember any of the specifics of what he said, but I do remember thinking as I walked out of the hotel conference room - I want to be able to speak like that! It was a major turning point in the course of my career and my life because before that I just wasn't sure I knew what I wanted to do or be in my professional life. After that, I could at least point to a model even if I would forever fall short.

In the years that followed I had the privilege of studying closely with Jim. In addition to learning some of his articulate precision, perhaps the most valuable thing Jim taught me was about how to teach others to find their voice and speak with persuasive power. I do not know of another professor who works as hard as Jim does (or as successfully) to teach his students how to become teachers of rhetoric. It is not merely that he does a superb job assisting his own students to find their voice - that would be a great accomplishment in its own right and one for which Jim deserves just praise. But he has also assisted a host of his students to become teachers that have, in turn, repeated the process - and this must be regarded as one mark of a superior scholar and teacher."

Jeremiah Hickey, who completed his dissertation under Jim, focuses on Jim’s voice, and why it matters. He writes,

"It would be easy to speak of James Arnt Aune’s vast, encyclopedia knowledge in a variety of subject areas in addition to his primary field; it would be easy to discuss his publishing record and his exemplary habits to achieve that level of success; while it would be easy to discuss his dedication to the field of rhetorical studies and his iconic status in that field; it would easy to discuss his warmth for his family, friends, and colleagues. Instead, I would like to focus on one aspect of Jim’s career, his voice. More specifically, I would like to address his vehemence and passion for his teaching and scholarship.

In Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres, Blair discusses a concept of style that seems as if were written for Jim Aune himself. Blair writes that the vehement style always “implies strength; and is not, by any means, inconsistent with simplicity…. It is a glowing style; the language of a man, whose imagination and passions are heated, and strongly affected by what he writes; who is therefore negligent of lesser graces, but pours himself forth with the rapidity and fullness of torrent. It belongs to the higher kinds of oratory; and indeed is rather expected from a man who is speaking, than from one is writing in his closet,” (213).

I quote this passage at length because it reflects Jim’s approach to teaching and scholarship, and to his personal and professional relationships. It is apparent from knowing Jim that “voice” matters, as his teaching and scholarship allows his students a means in which they can find their own voice. There are numerous ways in which Jim facilitates his students search for their voice. Jim works in both tradition and nontraditional settings. He spends hours working with students on developing their scholarship, mentoring them inside the classroom, and speaking to them outside of the classroom. Furthermore, he spends hours conversing with his students outside in the classroom and his office, whether it is at conferences or on the back steps of Bolton Hall. In either scenario, the outcome remains the same: speaking with Jim, and having Jim challenge them, students become more comfortable with who they are and who they should be professionally.

However, finding the voice is not enough since voice requires passion. Jim challenges his students to find passion— to find vehemence— in their teaching and scholarship. Maybe it is from his own experiences as a teacher and writer. Maybe it is due to his family experiences, whether it is from growing up in rural Minnesota or, more recently, living in rural Texas. Regardless of the reason, Jim’s teaching and research reveal to his students that ideas matter, choices matter. And through his teaching and research, Jim acts as an advocate for his ideas and choices, an advocate whose “imagination and passions are heated, and strongly affected by what he writes.” If you have ever sat in one of Jim’s lectures or read a piece of scholarship or an entry on the Blogora, you can see the degree to which ideas, choices, and policies matter to Jim, whether it is a discussion of Cicero, a stirring defense of freedom of speech, or a call to defend those in society who need help the most. And, more importantly, you can feel the passion with which Jim discusses the subject and shows why that subject should matter to you as a student, a colleague, or a citizen.

As I plan each course for a semester or think about each piece of scholarship or research topic, I recall the vehemence with which Jim approaches a topic. Before each semester begins, I think to myself, why does this topic matter and why should it matter to my students? Because of Jim Aune’s mentoring, before beginning each lecture or piece of scholarship, I ask myself what does it mean to have a voice on this issue and how can I reveal the vehemence behind that voice? And the lesson I tell myself, and my students, that if you do not develop your voice and, more importantly, the imagination and passion that drives that voice, then another will speak for you in a way that would conflict with your own voice."

John McKenzie, who completed his M.A. under Jim, writes of Jim’s ability to engage students by contextualizing communication theory in larger historical, socioeconomic and political conditions:

"Jim Aune has been a teacher and mentor to me for nine years now; by the time the NCA 2011 convention rolls around, it’ll be just shy of an even decade. When I initially began pursuing my bachelor’s degree in speech communication at Texas A&M University, I had chosen the major
for the same reason I’m sure many of us in the field did. I had been involved in competitive speech and debate in high school, and thought that my knack for it meant it would be an appropriate major for me. However, it was taking Jim’s course called Rhetoric in Western Thought that changed my life and made me begin conceptualizing speech and rhetoric as central
vessels in the long arc of history, and made me decide to pursue an academic career in communication.

Throughout the eighteen hours of coursework I’ve taken with Jim, as well as his mentorship on my master’s thesis and now his serving on my committee for my doctoral dissertation, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to recognize some underlying approaches and styles important to how Jim teaches. I think if I could sum up Jim’s approach to teaching, I would call it “contextualization via cultivated curiosity.” What I mean is, I have never experienced Jim simply explaining an idea or theory in a classroom. Instead, when he is introducing his students to a new concept, Jim always includes the historical, social, or political contexts from which that concept emerged, and in the process helps his students to gain a deeper understanding not just of what the important ideas are, but what makes them important and how they became that way. Jim has a natural curiosity about him, and by teaching in this way he imparts that same curiosity to his students. Now that I have begun teaching my own courses, I constantly find myself striving to follow his example. I do not claim to know how much of Jim’s teaching style is by his design and how much is a happenstance consequence of his own brilliance as a critic, scholar, and person, but I do know that it has changed me for the better, and is helping me to change others."

Yogita Sharma, who is currently completing her dissertation under Jim, attributes her voice and identity as an emerging scholar to Jim’s mentorship. She explains,

"Sometimes the questions that we seek to answer as students in doctoral programs are not very clear to us. This may not be true for everyone but it certainly was for me. As a mentor and friend, Jim Aune helped me articulate the research question that I am currently pursuing. In hindsight, he did this by being a teacher when I needed to rigorously learn and understand the tradition which defined the contours of my research, and by being a patient friend and counsel when I struggled with finding a voice or learning to write from within that tradition.

I encountered Marxism by way of an undergraduate lecture on English literature at Delhi University. From the outset, historical materialism did not sit very well next to the Hindu ethos that I had grown up with. That discordance was still brewing inside me when I joined the doctoral program at Texas A & M where I met Jim Aune. I knew that I wanted to study women's politics in India and even had a few drifting ideas about the projects that would help me do so. However, Jim's mentorship help to broaden as well as narrow the scope of my curiosity.

With me, Jim's strategy of mentorship was very intuitive from the get go. He would take interest in my ideas and suggest books in the short breaks when I would catch him for a smoke or walk with him to the library. I would state two discordant ideas and he would see a connection between them and reinforce my belief in my own thought process. He would also not fail from correcting me if I diluted an argument or misinterpreted a scholar. He would ask numerous questions about India - its customs, history, and literature - and applaud the conviction with which I answered them even though I was no authority on any of them. However, his subsequent questions would make me rethink the answers I had previously offered so convincingly. This describes the nature of the conversations through which Jim shaped and nurtured my curiosity. Whenever Jim mentioned an argument or a book, even if it was in passing, I looked it up and, most of the times, read it. Often, the argument or the book helped me see connections between my seemingly discordant, flashes of intuition. In this manner, Jim introduced me to a body of ideas I am calling a tradition.

At present, I am finishing my doctoral research on a working class women's organization in India. While I may not have answered the question that guides my inquiry, I can probably define the contours of knowledge within which it rests and towards which I hope to make a contribution someday. I may even be so bold as to describe myself as a comparative historian who attempts to understand the disparate yet interconnected trajectories of modernity in the West and in India. I would not have been able to describe myself in these terms without Jim Aune."

Finally, Paul Stob, who completed his M.A. thesis under Jim, writes,

"I consider Professor James Aune as an exemplary teacher because he helped me find my voice in a literal sense. Perhaps “voice” is not the right word, but “speech” certainly is. One of the best indicators of an influential teacher comes when a student begins to mimic, often unconsciously, a teacher’s pattern of speech. This is one of the biggest ways Jim Aune has influenced me. Like most teachers, Jim had certain phrases, or ways of framing an issue, that he used repeatedly in class. One that sticks out in my mind revolves around something being “unclear.” Jim would often say things like, “It’s unclear whether . . .” and “. . . for reasons that are unclear to me.” He used these phrases in a variety of situations—when talking about current events, when talking about rhetorical theorists of the past, when talking about rhetors of the present day, and when talking about many other topics. For whatever reason, this pattern of speech stuck with me, and nowadays I find myself using it with my own students on a fairly regular basis.

What took me a while to realize, however, was that speech about something being “unclear” is far more than a throwaway reference. It represents an attitude toward the world and toward learning. To say that something “remains unclear” means that further research is required. It means that the world is and will remain a fairly ambiguous place, but also that part of life is learning to live with ambiguity. In an ambiguous world, further inquiry may be required, but until then, we ought to postpone judgment. We shouldn’t leap to conclusions.

So the more I think about it, the more I realize that Jim Aune taught me an invaluable lesson through his pattern of speech: Learning to live in and cope with ambiguity is a basic part of scholarly life."

In the space of a letter, we cannot do justice to the depth of influence Jim’s compassionate mentorship has had on each of us and hundreds of others. But for the rest of our lives, we will try to do justice to our mentor’s teaching philosophy in our classrooms with our own voices.

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I share this because we will share it publicly with those at the panel this coming week at NCA, when Jim is awarded for his mentorship. I share this because I think it demonstrates that we ALL wrestle to DEFINE what exactly this thing called mentorship is---we can describe it when we feel it, but how do we judge a good mentor? Perhaps that answer is best left to the students.

The important thing here, I think, is that Jim is constantly carving out a space for just that---for people from all different walks of life and different philosophies to ask hard questions and wrestle with answers that SHOULD shift and evolve over time. He helps people find voice by letting them wrestle with the right questions, as opposed to asking them to fit a pre-determined mold.

I'm going to teach my first graduate seminar this coming Spring. I think my idea of mentorship will definitely evolve as I grow as a teacher and scholar, but one thing I'm learning right now from this conversation is that being a mentor also means that some people just won't want to learn, but there are so many that do--so just keep asking the tough questions.

Embarrassed that I thought of this first, not the Odyssey:

I'm probably the only one?

This is a vital and important question. My assigned mentors as junior faculty were only good for affirming that my bad decisions were truly bad. With their guidance, I would have been affirmed all the way into a career in retail. But the "found" or "discovered" mentors are the reason I am still here.

Who can get us started?

Chair in charge of senior hire admits publicly that he doesn't understand one of the key terms of the job ad. Inevitably, several finalists don't get hired (because there can be only one). Cue lawsuit.