Title: Experiences with research mentoring: why it's important and how it has shaped my own career 

Abstract:

Nico Habermann, former Head and first Dean of CMU's School of Computer 
Science who was widely recognized as a great research mentor, said: 
"Focus on the students, since graduating great students means you'll 
produce great research, while focusing on the research may or may not 
produce great students."* 

I believe that strong research mentoring, from undergraduate through 
postdoctoral and junior faculty levels, is particularly important at 
this time in Computer Science for several reasons.  For example, 
research mentoring can provide guidance and reassuring perspective in 
the face of setbacks such as unhelpful paper reviews from conferences 
with very low acceptance rates.  Research mentoring can also offset 
feelings of isolation or of not belonging in our field.  In this 
informal talk I'll describe some of my own experiences with research 
mentoring and will invite those present to share thoughts on best 
practices and ways to promote a strong mentoring culture in computer science. 

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* Communicated by David Notkin, one of Nico's students.