John Aldrich
Pfizer-Pratt University Professor of Political Science
Even after mentoring more than 100 dissertation students over his 30-year teaching career, John Aldrich said he still enjoys guiding, advising, and encouraging his aspiring scholars as they develop into academics themselves. “I have always loved working with graduate students,” said the 56-year-old Aldrich. “It's intellectually rewarding and socially rewarding. I learn a lot, too. I learn a lot from everybody.”
The feeling is mutual. Aldrich, a political science professor at Duke since 1987 and the former head of the department, is one of three university faculty members to receive the Graduate School's first awards for excellence in mentoring.
Aldrich said he treats his graduate students with respect. “One of the things that separates good graduate programs from less than good is whether they treat graduate students as older undergraduates or younger colleagues,” he said. “I treat them as adults.”
In fact, Aldrich collaborates with many of his doctoral students, promotes their work, and finds money for them to attend academic conferences in their field. Students who have worked with him say he also publicizes their skills by granting them co-authorship of joint projects and letting them present collaborative research at conferences. “John definitely works to connect his students to other scholars in the discipline,” wrote one former graduate student in nominating Aldrich for the mentoring award. “The networking opportunities that John facilitated were instrumental to my success as a graduate student and in the job market.”
Aldrich can cite innovative research carried out by many of his younger charges over the years. He quickly reels off papers and books written by his graduate students, including two separate studies of the 2000 U.S. presidential race by Jennifer Merolla and Renan Levine last year. The former looked at the role of campaign ads in the race; the latter examined the impact of Ralph Nader's candidacy on Al Gore's vote tallies. “I like being around people when they're making original discoveries and findings and realizing that they're becoming research scholars,” Aldrich said. “They're going about the business of getting started in their careers..It's really a pleasure to watch.”
Aldrich is also proud of how well many of his graduate students have done since leaving Duke. Members of his cadre have gone on to positions at the University of Chicago, Stanford, Caltech, and the National Science Foundation, among other institutions. “A very high percentage of them have gone into academic teaching, mostly at research universities,” he said. “They've become academic geeks, just like me.”
A prominent scholar known for his studies of American electoral politics, Aldrich has written numerous articles and books and conducted leading research on voting behavior, political parties, and social science methodology. He has also served as a co-editor of the American Journal of Political Science , a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and past president of the Southern Political Science Association.
Aldrich's graduate students describe him as a calm and personable individual, who is available to hear them out, read their latest drafts, provide feedback, and offer encouragement. “One of John Aldrich's strengths was his ability to engage in non-judgmental monitoring and knowing when to offer constructive feedback,” wrote a former graduate student in her nomination letter. “In seven years, I was never nagged and I never felt a need to 'hide' when I felt like I had not been as productive as he or I might have hoped. Instead, John was the person I could go to no matter how few tangible results I had that month or how little time I had spent on a joint project.”
Aldrich goes out of his way to foster regular contact with them, his students say. “One of my favorite memories from graduate school is John stopping by the cluster of desks his graduate students occupied,” another former student wrote in her nomination letter. “He would just 'pop in' to say hello..While working on my dissertation and other research projects with John, I spoke with him by phone, stopped by his house to drop off a paper, met John for coffee at our neighborhood café, went to lunch with John and other graduate students, and-most of all-stopped by to talk to John in his office at work.”
Such accessibility, Aldrich said, is a key to being a good mentor. “Work in the office so that they know where you are all the time and can come to you,” he said. “If you're going to share in the creative process, you've also got to share in the time.”
-Alan Breznick
Reprinted from Dialogue (April 30, 2004) with permission from Duke News Service.