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Case 8b :

Not Yet Fully Fledged

James knew how lucky he was to have had such a great MPhil supervisor. He felt that even more so now. Professor Masters had invested heavily in James, who was the last MPhil student of his long career. Together, they published two papers and James won a very competitive fellowship to study his PhD. This morning, James met with his new supervisor, Professor Gupta, who opened the conversation by stating,

"James, we are all very excited to have you here. Ian Masters was a great friend of my own supervisor and I had the great fortune to work once with Ian on the new micro-finance investment simulation models that we have now been working on for years. Ian's ability to put together elegant equations was legendary. We hope that you are coming with some of his insights and can help us with a new project on modeling risk in micro-finance. We have a great team of sociologists of finance working in Dhaka who are pointing out risk parameters we have not begun to pull into the equations. Your first project with us will be to read through the reports of these sociologists—they use such flowery language, why can't they just use numbers?!—and draw a few ideal equations for the modeling team. You will meet the whole modeling team tomorrow and when the sociologists come back from their fieldwork in 3 months, you will meet them, too. I am counting on you to have developed a few models before they get here. Any questions?"

Professor Gupta picked up a stack of four large ring binders off of the floor behind her desk and handed them to James with a smile. James felt his pulse quicken and his brow begin to sweat. He replied easily and quickly,

"No, Professor Gupta, I should read all of this new material before I come to you with questions. I am excited to be here and hope to perform well in this group."

With that, James lifted the heavy binders and walked slowly back to his office.

Professor Masters had been the modeling guru behind the work they did together. James was, as Professor Masters always told him, the "idea guy". Sure, he could write the models, but he doubted he was as brilliant as Professor Gupta wished him to be. James felt that it was over his head to do what was asked. James thought to himself, 'Sure Professor Masters is "retired", but maybe I can ask him for help here. I cannot do this by myself'.

James thought hard on the question,

"What are the obligations of a mentor in one degree to help students in their next degree?"

• What are the problems here?
• What should James do now?
• How would you answer the question James posed to himself?