The 2024 Winner of the Mentorship Award: Robert Liden
Robert Liden exemplifies what he studies: servant leadership. Quoting from the cover letter from 10 of his mentees: “Bob always has time for his students, giving needed advice, but also giving room for students to develop in their own right (intellectual support). Bob encourages his students to form professional relationships with top scholars, often inviting them to campus, and seeks opportunities in earnest to include students on projects with scholars outside of UIC (social support). Bob is always kind, thoughtful, and encouraging, even in the most difficult of times and maintains these relationships long past graduation (moral support). Bob has a way of making research fun, even in the darkest and most frustrating of times.” In their personal recommendations, his mentees wrote of how Bob supported them even when no one (including themselves) believed in them, of Bob treating them as true colleagues rather than simply as students, of Bob helping them find promising research sites, of Bob going to great efforts to endorse them for academic positions, conferences, editorial boards, and awards, and of his exacting ethical and research standards. Perhaps this is why Bob has served on 75 dissertation committees, chairing or co-chairing 29 of them, why he is the Associate Dean for Doctoral Programs at UIC, and why, incredibly, 76 of his 112 refereed publications are with current or former students. As one mentee summed it up, “He is a dedicated scientist and he loves what he does, and watching him work, it is impossible not to want to walk the same path. His mentoring changed my life.”