Why we wrote an e-mentoring book

I met Cristina virtually, when she was a prospective doctoral applicant to my program with a few questions. Naturally, I wanted to give her an honest, fair appraisal of the program, its strengths and weaknesses as I saw them, so she could decide whether we were equipped to support her goals. Cristina seemed glad I’d used the word “goals,” because she started sharing some of hers with me. That first video chat was probably October or November of 2019, so pre-COVID, but we were both already comfortable in remote spaces. I honestly never gave it a second thought that, from a single virtual meeting, I’d been drafted into the master plan of one of the most industrious students, and people, I’ve ever known. She had a good plan, and I wanted to help her see it through.

Over the next few years and dozens of virtual meetings (and exactly one in-person chat), Dr. Cristina Baciu introduced herself to the academy. Even now, Cristina and I don’t make much of an effort to meet in person, and our collaboration has never suffered for it. And because of the humor we struck up as scholarly penpals, trading emails and Google Doc comments, we found our way to Beyond the Campus: a place to share stories and advice about mentoring in a world that is increasingly global and digital. And yes, we also wanted to offer hope to mentees looking for mentors regardless of proximity. We both have more to say on why that is, but we’ll save it for the follow-up book.

We wrote this book because e-mentoring shares most of the principles and goals of traditional mentoring, but the differences are rarely acknowledged in practice. We offer our advice on how to lean into what e-mentoring makes possible, instead of simply accepting its limitations.

We know this model can work. After all, we wrote a whole book about it and have been in the same room exactly once.

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