What does it take to be an effective advisor to graduate students? Is the student the only one who learns, grows and develops, or does the advisor continue to develop through their experience as well? In order to be contributing members of a field, graduate students need to learn and develop in areas beyond just the core technical competencies of their field. Opportunities for achieving this development exist throughout their graduate studies, but students do not always recognize or understand how to use these opportunities. To productively steer student development, some responsibility falls on the student's academic advisor to guide and support the student growth processes. Traditionally, when considering the relationship between student and advisor, researchers have almost exclusively focused on examining the development of the student or assessing the student's satisfaction with their advisor's mentoring. The recognition that professional development of graduate students is central to the creation of a diverse and flexible workforce has generated several new training frameworks. These programs attempt to enhance the interaction of the advisor with the graduate student, which has the potential to alter long-standing behaviors. This paper focuses on the faculty advisor role in supporting graduate student professional development and examines the perspective and related growth and development that the advisor might also experience through this role.
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