Formal Programs Promote The Age-Old Custom Of Mentoring

HELP BEGETS HELP: Florida's David Challoner says the memory of an old mentor now inspires his own mentoring efforts.

The traditional mentor gets a lot from giving. David Challoner, vice president of health affairs at the University of Florida in Gainesville, remembers a personal mentor like that. Challoner, who studied medicine at Harvard Medical School, then trained in endocrinology under Robert Williams at the University of Washington in Seattle, says Williams would follow the graduates of his programs throughout their careers, continuing to give them advice, information, and job referrals. "He would be on the West Coast and I would be in my little lab on the East Coast, and he would enjoy leaving messages on my machine at 7 a.m.," Challoner recalls with a laugh. "It now stimulates me to look after people and see how I can help them."

Such devoted, albeit informal, mentoring goes back centuries...