A Pioneering Researcher Who Knows the Value of a Mentor Firsthand
A pioneer in the study of fragile families, Dr. Ronald B. Mincy may understand better than most scholars the importance of having a mentor. Dr. Mincy, the Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice, says his relationships with students honor the important role of mentors in his own career.
Mentoring, he says, has been a way to “return some serious favors from people who helped me.”
A former Ford Foundation program officer who joined the CUSSW faculty in 2001, Dr. Mincy is best known for his groundbreaking research on disadvantaged families with low-income fathers, including ex-offenders and non-custodial fathers.
He is the director of the School’s Center for Research on Fathers, Children and Family Well-Being. The Center’s mission is to expand knowledge on the role of fathers and father figures in the lives of disadvantaged children and the processes by which nonresident fathers affect child development and family well-being.
Dr. Mincy’s work with students grew out of the important role of mentorship in his own career.
His approach to mentoring his students is, “I will provide you with evidence that I respect you and care about you and I’m concerned about your professional development,” he says. And he expects his students to extend the same courtesy to him.
Dr. Mincy, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a PhD at MIT, recalls what it was like to make his way in academia without such mentoring.
“I know what it felt like being a student very interested in the work I was doing, but not getting the same quality or depth of guidance as student peers who were relatively priveleged,” he says.
Now 58, he says he hopes to train a new generation of social scientists who will carry on his vital research in the area of responsible fatherhood.
“In my heart of hearts, I’m looking at the resources that fathers represent as really being wasted and thinking, this is not a good thing for our society or for these individuals and their children,” he says.