Fri, Oct 02
|Brooke Lanier Fine Art
Low-Stakes Book Club: The Shifting Role of Mentorship
We're pairing a couple of quicker reads: a silly short story about mentorship between robots of mismatched skillsets and generations, and "The Science of Mentoring Relationships: What Is Mentorship?" published by National Academies Press
Time & Location
Oct 02, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Brooke Lanier Fine Art, 820 S 4th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147, USA
About the event
I've been thinking a lot about the shifting role of mentorships due to changes in economics, concepts of work/life balance, and institutional reorganization. In looking for literature on the subject that isn't advertisement for coaching services, I mostly found articles on mentorship in STEM, which I found interesting and absurd.
Sometimes, a silly, fun short story can lead to a deeper conversation. "A Guide for Working Breeds" By Vina Jie-Min Prasad is a short story published by Reactor Magazine. It looks far longer than it actually is, since it is formatted as an exchange of brief text messages between a mentor and mentee robot. Let's just say they have very disparate skills and perspectives, and both of them learn from the experience. Hijinks ensue.
I'm also assigning "Section 2:The Science of Mentoring Relationships: What Is Mentorship?"
from The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM, National Academies Press (US); 2019 Oct 30.
Dahlberg ML, Byars-Winston A, editors
I was going to link directly to the pdf, but discovered it was a 306 page granular document with lots of citations. It seems very interesting, but section 2 provides adequate food for thought. It is not a dense and painful piece of overly-academic writing. I wouldn't do that to you.
Enjoy!