Onto an MSW program after a senior seminar in psychology
Ava Levere UA ’26 and Jim Stellar
AL took my APSY450T class and was an outstanding student. We began to talk about her career and I wrote her a letter of recommendation for our Masters of Social Work program for Fall 2026 here at UAlbany. I am thinking that the relationship of mentor to mentee was valuable in helping her make the decision to apply, just as it was so long ago when a professor took an interest in me as an undergraduate and helped me apply to graduate school.
JS became a mentor and in that relationship I found it was a more insightful way leading me forward compared to the other advice I have gotten from good people like my academic advisors. But the professor type of mentoring was more powerful. Now I can report that I was accepted into that MSW program and we have just agreed to continue this blog and write about the transition between being an undergraduate and becoming a graduate student in this profession.
So this is a moment in AL’s life as a student and a person that is an inflection. As such, we think there can be interesting insights and that is what we want to write about here.
Finding a mentor:
Finding a member of the faculty who is so willing to be a strong resource can be hard in a school with classes filled with hundreds of students. As previously mentioned I was lucky enough to take Professor Stellar’s 450T course where he inspired me to get to work on my plans for after undergrad. It is frequently recommended to students to get to know our professors. As a student who has generally done well I viewed office hours as an opportunity for in class help instead of what it can be most valuably used for, getting to know your professors and forming a student mentee relationship.
Having someone who is well experienced and has your best interest at heart can do wonders when it comes to inspiring you to accomplish things you maybe didn’t believe you were capable of. Social work has always been something that has interested me before I understood the title social work was the answer I had been searching for. In this field it is important to have a strong relationship with supervisors and I feel JS has given me a great foundation on what this should look like. JS helped me with editing my Statement of Background for my application, we worked to tweak and improve my writing.
Finding a mentee:
The same dynamic of developing a connection works in the other direction too. The mentor (in my case a professor) can feel like mentoring is an extension of the teaching in the classroom but at a much more personal level. While it is a joy to deliver a nice lecture to a group of students sitting in nice rows, the immediacy and one-on-one nature or mentoring provides a different and deeper kind of joy to mentor. It is almost like watching your daughter or son (or niece or nephew, if you prefer) succeed, e.g. getting into graduate or medical or law school. You feel a complete kind of pride that comes with that familial connection that simply does not exist when you watch a neighbor have the same success. JS sometimes says to his mentees that he thinks he is “your crazy pretend adopted uncle Jim” to express that feeling.
Finding a career path:
As mentioned AV did the work of evaluating what appealed to her long before JS and she met. It was also the case that JS was not in the direct field of scholarship as AV’s now successful graduate interest in social work. But the fields were close enough that the ability to talk about them existed. And JS was able to provide what he likes to call “a mentors letter” to her program. A mentor’s letter is typically deeper, stronger, and more informative than a classroom-professor’s letter, even if that professor’s field more substantially overlaps with the student’s interest. Why is this? The answer is that the student really does the work of developing themselves for that graduate program. The mentor can do that if they have the expertise, but they can also, importantly, supply the context. JS has been on many graduate admissions committees. That gives him an insight that AV does not have (not yet) and that can be used to develop the candidate’s energy and confidence. One of the better things that a mentor can say based on that context is “If I can do it, you can do it.”
Applying to graduate school can be an intimidating feat, all of the uncertainty and requirements to meet. Sometimes it can be difficult to truly evaluate your own potential when you are in pursuit to always meet the next expectation, or goal you set for yourself as a student. Having a mentor and in my case JS, has helped me to realize and recognize my own accomplishments when I had previously glazed over them as just another mark I needed to meet. Mentors again are someone who is well experienced and can give you that pat on the back for succeeding when you may not have done that for yourself. A strong support system is paramount to succeed in any part of your life, and having a mentor like JS I can confidently say has helped me to do so academically.
