Mentorship during the pandemic: Q&A with Assistant Professor Natalie Crown

January is Mentorship Month, a time to celebrate the professional and academic connections that are key to the success of our community. In this Q&A, Natalie Crown, Director, Doctor of Pharmacy Program and Assistant Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, shares the challenges and opportunities the pandemic has presented, and how being both a mentor and mentee has helped her stay motivated.

The pandemic has simultaneously been an incredibly disruptive challenge and an opportunity for pharmacists to play a key part in the healthcare response. How has your understanding of mentorship changed or shifted during this time?

I think the pandemic has made certain aspects of the mentee/mentor relationship more important. For me, an important feature of mentorship is connections. I believe a good mentor truly cares about the success of their mentee and takes meaningful actions to support their success. I’ve also recently heard a mentor role described as a “professional parent role”. While that may not be entirely accurate, I like the idea of someone who gives you unconditional support in a professional environment, guiding you, providing you with feedback, and showing compassion and caring even when you make mistakes. Being compassionate, caring, and showing kindness towards ourselves and others has become even more important to me during the pandemic. 

The power of reflection has also taken on renewed importance for me these past few months. Recently, I was describing a challenging situation to a mentor, and having them guide me in reflection without judgement or without feeling the need to make recommendations, helped me see aspects of the issue that weren’t immediately obvious to me.

How have you and other faculty members worked to keep students motivated?

I think it’s important to start by acknowledging we understand how difficult it can be to stay motivated in deeply challenging times. In developing our guiding principles for course delivery in the PharmD program during the pandemic, we adopted a few design features we thought would help students stay connected during virtual learning. They include suggestions like recording introduction videos and making content available in different formats (live and recorded lectures), building in flexibility where we can, and introducing smaller weighted assessments (like mini quizzes) that give students regular feedback on their performance throughout the term.

I also know many of our faculty, including myself, are incorporating check ins with students, through virtual office hours and using the beginning of lectures. Some of our faculty have been very creative in their approach to online engagement, using techniques like gamification and active learning strategies, like team-based learning.

We’ve also seen the benefits that online lectures offer. Many students who might not usually ask a question in a large lecture hall feel more comfortable participating using the chat function in virtual classes. Our team worked hard to open our study spaces early. We recognize how important it is for students to be able to connect safely in person, as creating community is important to keeping each other motivated.