Jack Tan Mentors and Mentees

abstract

Mentoring relationships in a Residential College: a case of musical

collaboration

This paper situates mentoring within the context of the Australian university
residential college. The author, a college Residential tutor and Dean of
Studies, explores mentoring in the college setting as unique in that the mentor
and mentee share a vision of the common good for their institution. This kind
of mentoring, fostered by the mentor and mentee living alongside each other,
allows for constant role modelling, co-operation and mutual learning, both
formally and informally. Mentoring in a collegial setting can occur in the
unlikeliest of places, such as over the Dining Hall table, along the common
corridors or through a cultural activity. This paper will discuss in particular,
the activity of musical collaboration, which the author, as a frequent piano
accompanist for his music students, has found to be a special form of
mentoring. This kind of musical partnership is characterized by mutual
commitment to the music, with a lot of give-and-take involved. The power
relation between mentor-mentee is dissolved and refined as they strive for the
common good of musical excellence. Martin Katz, in The Complete Collaborator:
The Pianist as Partner, describes the goal of music collaborators as to “guard
and maintain the composer’s wishes” as well as their “partners’ emotional
and physical needs”. Mark B. Ryan, in A Collegiate Way of Living, asserts that
the university college allows “the meeting of two ideational worlds: of
intellectual tradition and refined concepts on the one hand, and the feelings,
concerns, moods…of undergraduates on the other”. This paper will also draw
upon anecdotes, interviews and transcripts of the author’s musical
collaborations to discuss this unique form of mentoring, where the mentor
forges a bond with his mentees through the pursuit of the common good of
music-making while supporting each other’s needs.

Jack Tan is Dean of Studies at Whitley College at the University of Melbourne.

He has worked and lived in four residential colleges in the past seven years,
serving as an administrator as well as mentor to students. A very rewarding
aspect of his work is to play as a collaborative pianist with student musicians.
In this role, he has performed with singers, instrumentalists and as piano
accompanist for the Janet Clarke Hall choir. Jack is also completing a thesis on
Charles Dickens and nostalgia.

Jack Tan
Dean of Studies, Whitley College
0421461466
jacktan@whitley.unimelb.edu.au
 Jack Tan Mentors and Mentees
abstract

IT/powerpoint and internet required for presentation.