TY - JOUR T1 - Statements of Mentorship JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0411-18.2018 VL - 5 IS - 6 SP - ENEURO.0411-18.2018 AU - Daniel A. Colón-Ramos Y1 - 2018/11/01 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/5/6/ENEURO.0411-18.2018.abstract N2 - The Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship was created in 2018 by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to recognize that “mentorship and training are critical to the development of exceptional future scientists” and to honor the legacy of former NINDS Director Story Landis, PhD, in mentoring generations of neuroscientists. I was honored to be nominated by my mentees and then selected by the committee as part of the inaugural group that received the award. While profoundly touched by the recognition, I am the first to admit that in mentoring, my aspirations exceed my capacities or training (and anybody who has worked in my lab will be the second to admit that). My mentorship skills are a work in progress.Yet unlike scientific ideas, which are also “works in progress” that benefit from the critiques of our peers, mentoring approaches seldom benefit from the comments and wisdom of our colleagues and mentees. For example, I must have written, in the 10 years I have been faculty member, dozens of research statements and plans, progress reports, and grants that have all benefited from the collective wisdom of my colleagues and mentees. My science is better for it. Yet, when it comes to one of the most important activities I do, the training of mentees, it was in preparing for the Landis Award that I wrote my very first Statement of Mentorship.To be sure, one could argue that writing a Statement of Mentorship is not necessary or even important to being a good mentor. That the tasks necessary for being a good mentor are self-evident. Some might even argue that the best way to be a good mentor is to focus solely on the scientific ideas, not so much on the individual mentee. Yet I would argue that the … ER -