Rob Deaner
PhD candidate, Biological Anthropology and Anatomy
Listening to Rob Deaner talk about his mentor Carel van Schaik is like hearing him describe his best friend. Rob first met the Duke professor while volunteering at van Schaik’s field site. The two were searching for an orangutan in the depths of the Sumatra forest when Carel began conversing casually with Rob about his tastes in music. “He somehow got around to asking me to name the greatest song of all time,” Rob recalls. “I didn’t hesitate, singing out the chorus to Dylan’s ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. He thought I was psychic, and we’ve been on the same wavelength ever since.” That initial encounter with van Schaik and his research team inspired Rob to come to Duke. Since that time, the camaraderie between the two has continued to grow. “We got along so well in the first year that Carel would joke that something so good couldn’t last,” remarks the Massachusetts native. “But it has.”
Rob attributes his decision to pursue graduate studies in biological anthropology and anatomy to a lifelong fascination with human behavior. This fascination developed into a more focused interest during his undergraduate years at Colgate University. “My junior year I read Sarah Hardy’s classic sociobiology text, The Woman That Never Evolved,” Rob recounts. “After reading that, I knew I wanted to examine behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Studying primates in graduate school became my goal.”
As Rob discusses the rigors of research and paper preparation, it becomes evident how important mentoring has been to his success as a graduate student. “Getting research done and presenting it effectively is a long and trying process,” he says thinking back to his early years. “I can still remember spending over three weeks preparing my first conference poster, re-doing certain parts many times. It was incredibly frustrating, but Carel was always optimistic, repeatedly telling me that with every reworking, my thinking was getting that much better. It turned out to be a small conference, and I got very little feedback, which, of course, was very disappointing. But again, Carel encouraged me that when I finally wrote up the paper, this experience would help.” In the end, all the hard work did indeed pay off for the young researcher. “After dozens of drafts, my paper was finally accepted for publication, and it was infinitely better than when I began,” Rob admits. “It was a great lesson in how to capitalize on all steps of the research process.”
This constant prodding, encouraging, and motivating of students by professors exemplifies what mentoring can and should be. But, as Rob points out, mentoring is not a one-sided process. “The faculty-student mentoring relationship is a partnership,” he insists. “There is a kind of implied contract. If each party knows what the other expects and they both fulfill their end of the bargain, the partnership and the relationship will be great.” For Rob, the mentoring “partnership” is one that evolves in accordance with changing expectations and goals. “In my case, the original plan was that I would study orangutans at Carel’s site,” says Rob. “My interests changed, but this was fine, because I was still pursuing things Carel was interested in. I brought enthusiasm and ideas for various projects and he provided the guidance and constant feedback so that we could make the ideas work. In the end, we both got more out of the partnership (i.e., better research) than either of us could have done alone.” The “partnership” with Carel van Schaik is only one of two incredible mentoring relationships Rob has been fortunate enough to experience. No discussion of his academic accomplishments would be complete, he insists, without mentioning Charlie Nunn, the man who he claims “showed me so much about how to be a scientist I wouldn’t even know where to begin describing it all.” Nunn (now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia) was a second-year graduate student at Duke when he and Rob met in 1995. Rob credits Nunn with advising him to “play with the big boys” by initiating collaborations with outside researchers and publishing in leading journals.
Rob’s dissertation focuses on the comparative neuroanatomical approach to the evolution of primate cognition. “People have been comparing the brain size of various animal species for the past 120 years, all in hopes of learning something about the biological factors involved in the evolution of complex behavior and cognition,” he explains. “My focus is empirically examining the underlying logic and assumptions of this approach: What has it revealed so far? What are its limitations? What work needs to be done in the future?” Rob has presented his research at several national conferences and has numerous publications to his credit, including three first-authored papers.
Though many mentors provide constant intellectual stimulation and feedback, others do even more. In addition to working on specific research projects, Rob and Carel talk regularly about the role of their work in the scientific community at large as well as the steps Rob can take to maximize his chances of landing a tenured position. As he enters the final stages of his graduate career, Rob has some sound advice to share with graduate students seeking mentors. “The single most important thing that seems to distinguish good mentors from bad ones is the willingness to spend time mentoring. At a place like Duke, virtually all of the faculty are extremely knowledgeable in their fields and know what it takes to succeed. But some people truly enjoy regularly sharing their insights, and some don’t. To determine how much time a professor might be willing to commit, talk to other graduate students or just watch the professor in action.” Underlining this last point, Rob cites his own observations of Professor van Schaik. “In our lab, Carel spends at least a third of his day talking with students (his own and others) about their research and giving them pep talks. This is a dead give away that he’s a great advisor.”
Carel van Schaik
Professor, Biological Anthropology and Anatomy
Carel van Schaik finds mentoring graduate students rewarding. For the past six years he has been helping graduate students build their own programs and encouraging them to develop projects which are not only feasible but notable in their fields. “My main role is to stimulate the students’ own initiatives while ensuring that they do not go ‘off the rails,’ ” says van Schaik. For van Schaik this means providing continuous feedback as well as reassurances when things do not seem to come together fast enough.
Professor van Schaik believes that a successful mentoring relationship requires trustworthiness and availability on the part of the mentor, and intellectual curiosity and work ethic on the part of the student. When asked about the importance of mentoring to a graduate student’s success, the professor states, “Some students do quite well on their own, but the majority benefit [from mentoring] because it makes the graduate career a lot more efficient. Why reinvent wheels and fall into traps that are well-known to those who’ve been there before?”
(This profile originally appeared in the Winter 2001 issue of The GRIND.)