It’s not unusual to see Dr. William (Bill) Smith walking down the halls of the Harry Reid Center at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas with an entourage of students by his side. In fact, if you met him at any state or national conference, he would be surrounded by students from diverse disciplines. Bill has a unique understanding of how to engage students and foster team cooperation. His interaction is supportive, transcending cultures, languages, and customs to inspire young scientists to reach beyond formal scientific training and engage cross-disciplinary skills. From his early years as a young professor, Bill understood that to be a good instructor, you must invest in each student’s success. “For me, everything involving some form of mentoring is rewarding. The best advice I have for colleagues is to let others shine. Make someone else look good, it’s rewarding to both individuals.”
Mentoring is more than inspiring others to do their best, it is about instilling a sense of community and building a foundation of support for the work they do. “You build communities by taking the well being of those you are mentoring as a personal commitment. They will recognize that, and that builds a culture of individuals helping each other through their academic journeys,” Bill commented. He emphasizes the importance of building a foundation from the beginning. As a youth, Bill’s family was involved in construction. “In construction each layer is built out piece by piece to form a secure foundation. Mentoring is the same, building each layer of knowledge, critical thinking skills, and collaboration takes time, yet necessary to create a secure foundation for scientific analysis and interdisciplinary skills. Then, you just step back and watch how each individual develops.”
Team building is equally important; a good team improves performance for each individual and for the team. Students in Bill’s lab work together, fostering collaboration as part of their education and making the working environment much more pleasant. Each has different skill sets that can be used to support each other’s work. Although they are still highly competitive, they each have diverse areas of expertise and are willing to help each other. It’s innovative and builds on cross-training skills to enhance scientific and social skills.
Graduate Assistant Ross Guida stated, “I specifically applied at UNLV to work with Bill based on the work he did on water resources. Bill’s knowledge, guidance, and support in finding resources allowed me to create my own work structure to develop my research. Bill opens the doors for his students through the resources available to him.”
Choosing students to mentor requires both analytical and instinctive processes. A good mentor chooses students who have the ability to be mentored. They must show resilience, sharpness, skill sets, be tough-minded, disciplined, driven, and have a full set of humanistic characteristics. Not only is raw intelligence needed, but wisdom and the ability to learn, to be trained. “I find that those students who are idealistic are the best candidates. It’s important to have idealism and to understand the contributions that they are making with their work,” explains Bill. “This is one reason I chose Ahmad Safi as a student. Ahmad is idealistic, his own personal history and work in his home in the Gaza Strip motivated his work here with tribal communities. Others tried to dissuade him from pursuing this research because of the complexities, time, and energy required to build trust with the tribes. I counted on my early work with international students in the Federated States of Micronesia focusing on watersheds and coastal land use to help Ahmad to reach out to the tribes. Ahmad proved that he could break through those barriers by building relationships with the tribes and proposing projects to improve their lives. Now they have asked us to come back and continue working in other areas. This opened the door for us to reach out to more rural communities in Nevada.” commented Bill.
Mentoring is a joint effort between the mentor and the student. It’s clear today that most environmental issues are too complex and multifaceted to address through a single researcher or discipline. It is through a multidisciplinary approach that these issues can be analyzed using representation from several disciplines. “Our students have worked in multiple scenarios, investigated geovisualization technology, modeled climate change scenarios, helped lead workshops, worked in the field in remarkable places, and had the opportunity of working with excellent mentors such as: Dr. Derek Kauneckis, Dr. Karletta Chief, Dr. Mahesh Gautam, Dr. Robert Futrell, Dr. Haroon Stephen, Dr. Scott Abella, and Dr. Zhongwei Liu. I also appreciate the years of work Dr. Tom Piechota has put into our projects.” concluded Bill.
Inspiring and building a sense of community through a multidisciplinary approach.
