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Advocate Online
Thriving in Academe
In Praise of Positive Role Models
Faculty must move beyond content and get to know their students.
By Melinda Barlow, University of Colorado at Boulder
To succeed in what they are told is a "post-feminist" world, young women need strong female mentors now more than ever.
No, you don’t have to be perfect. But to be a good mentor and positive role model for younger women you do need to be strong, smart, confident, articulate, fair, open-minded, empathic, enthusiastic, challenging, encouraging, and genuinely interested in how your students think, what they have to say, and how they are progressing. Exuding your own form of personal authority is a must; managing to be tough without becoming flustered is a plus. Honing your interpersonal skills is essential to this process. And having a sense of humor can really see you through.
Sound like a tall order? No wonder the positive female role model has been such an elusive feminist ideal for so long. As any film teacher knows, finding one who lives until the end of a film without being "punished" for her intelligence or success is a nearly impossible task. Having such a woman as a mentor in real life is a rare and beautiful thing. In a political climate too frequently called "post-feminist," young women need strong female mentors more than ever. Effective role modeling empowers both mentor and mentee: it lets young women see what they want to be, while giving female mentors a chance to embody realistic, rather than impossible, ideals.
 Meet Melinda Barlow
Melinda Barlow is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she received the Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence in Teaching Award and the Dorothy Martin Woman Faculty Award. The editor of Mary Lucier: Art and Performance (Johns Hopkins, 2000), Professor Barlow researches living women film and video artists and teaches Women and Film and various "decade" courses in American film history. The faculty mentor for the Pre-Prof Program at CU, she gives talks and workshops at her school and at other institutions on the art of mentoring women. She loves her job and accepts her imperfections. Melinda may be reached at Melinda.Barlow@Colorado.Edu.
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