Advice from Our Advisor: Jesús A. De Loera Consejo de Nuestra Asesor: Jesús A. De Loera

Mentoring and advising is a significant and challenging component of any academic career. We learn successful mentorship techniques from the examples in our own lives, and this article will illustrate the example provided by our (the authors’) PhD advisor, Jesús A. De Loera. If you, like us, already know Jesús A. De Loera, you know that he is very fond of examples and is a great advisor to his students. In this short article, we will show many examples of the ways in which Jesús is an excellent advisor and the strategies he uses to advise his academic “children.”

Jesús A. De Loera was born and raised in Mexico City and received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the National University of Mexico in 1989, an MA in Mathematics from Western Michigan in 1990, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in 1995. He joined the University of California (UC) Davis in 1999, where he is now a professor of mathematics as well as a member of the Graduate groups in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. He is an expert in the field of Computational Discrete Mathematics and his work has been recognized with numerous awards including being made both a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and a fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is also the current vice president of the American Mathematical Society. For his outstanding mentorship and teaching, he has received the UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow Award, the Award for Excellence in Service to Graduate students by the UC Davis Graduate Student Association, the Mathematical Association of America Golden Section Award, and the UC Davis College of Letters and Science Distinguished Teaching Award.

Over Jesús’s career, he has supervised 17 PhD students, 8 postdoctoral scholars, and over 60 undergraduates in a variety of research areas. While there are many things we could say about how Jesús has been so prolific and successful in advising students, we believe that much of this success can be boiled down to only a few principles: (1) Care for your students; (2) Build your students’ academic network; (3) Prepare your students for their future career; and (4) Give your students the time and attention they need to develop.

1. Care for Your Students

As a graduate student, Jamie (Jamie Haddock) religiously played pick-up basketball and would often encounter Jesús at the campus gym during his midday visits. Early in their advisor-advisee relationship, Jesús brought up her gym habit in one of their weekly meetings—“So I see you in the gym a lot…” Jamie feared that she would be chastised for spending so much time away from her studies and research playing basketball. However, as her mind started to scramble and she considered ways she could justify her time in the gym, Jesús quashed her fears and assured her he encouraged this healthy habit! After learning of Jamie’s affinity for basketball, Jesús regularly brought it up in meetings, inviting her to share her interests and experiences with him. When he learned of an opportunity for a summer intership in sports analytics with a professional basketball team, Jesús eagerly shared it with Jamie and encouraged her to apply.

As an advisor, one has a particular significance in an advisee’s life. Jesús is aware of this influence and responsibility for his advisees and strives to support his students in their life and not simply their career. The first of Jesús’s advising pillars we suggest advisors adopt is to Care for your students. The pillars that follow will support this first and foremost goal.

2. Build Your Students’ Academic Network

At a conference Jamie once attended with Jesús, Jesús led her up to an attendee and excitedly introduced him, “This is your academic nephew!” While some advisors joke about or ignore the idea of “academic families,” Jesús leans into the idea. He eagerly introduces members of his academic family and often takes photographs of them at conferences. While this may seem like a funny anecdote, it is actually emblematic of one of Jesús’s great skills—forming an academic network and integrating his students into it. He is excited to meet other people and to help others meet one another, especially when he knows that this will be mathematically stimulating to the involved parties.

As Mohamed Omar, one of Jesús’s former PhD students and now associate professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, notes:

In mathematics, advisors are typically thought of as leaders in mathematics who train students to become experts in subfields of their interests. However, Jesús thinks of advising much more holistically, and trains students to become professionals in their field and career of interest. As an advisor, he puts tremendous effort into the professional development of his students, particularly focusing on important aspects that are often not thought of. A particular example is integrating students into professional research networks. This is not done by simply attending conferences and workshops, but by fostering collaboration with researchers central to a field early on in the student’s grad school years. He does this in a way that enables his students to become central members of an international research field, so that independence as a researcher post-graduation is handled with relative ease.

As Brandon Dutra, one of Jesús’s former PhD students and now software engineer at Google, recalls:

A few times during [class] lectures, Jesús would say “you should never leave home without your polytope” and then pull out a collapsible polytope from his backpack. Jesús knows how to work a room and make everyone feel like they’re friends and keep people engaged.”

This skill of building mathematical friendships and connecting people has not only drawn students and collaborators to Jesús, but has benefitted their future careers and helped them to connect with a broader community. The second of Jesús’s advising pillars we suggest advisors adopt is to Build your students’ academic network.

3. Prepare Your Students for Their Future Career

In those occasional meetings when Jesús was helping Jamie to decide what problems to work on, he would often grab a piece of scratch paper and draw two lines dividing the paper into three parts. He’d be excitedly describing possible directions they could go and sketching images and writing words into each part of the paper. This piece of paper was incomprehensible to anyone other than Jamie and Jesús, but a treasured memento from these meetings. On this paper were the beginning ideas and directions for three projects that Jesús thought Jamie might be interested in. She left these meetings excited to get to work, elated that her advisor was pitching multiple projects he hoped they would work on together, and proud that he trusted her to select their next direction based on her interests.

This concern for selecting student projects aligned with his students interest is reflected in many comments of Jesús’s advisees. In particular, it has been often noted that Jesús has many students who he has successfully guided in highly computational, applied, and industrial work. He has been on the forefront of much of the exciting computational work in discrete mathematics, data science, and machine learning, and has helped ensure his students are also, while respecting his students’ individual interests.

Jacob Miller, one of Jesús’s former PhD students and now data scientist at Meta, recalls:

He supports his students to work towards their goals, not his. Many other students I knew who decided they wanted to go into industry were subtly or explicitly shamed by their advisor. It was made clear to them that wanting to work in industry somehow made them “less than” if they worked in academia. Jesús made it very clear from the beginning that he would support whatever choice I made, and when I decided I wanted to pivot to industry (after a year of studying the very pure subject of matroids), he actively set me up on the right path to get there: connecting me with the right projects, pivoting my research to more applied subjects, making sure I talked to the right people, and pushing me to look for internships.

Jesús has often guided students towards ways that they can successfully incorporate computation into their research (in a broad variety of areas). Many of Jesús’s students have noted the impact that this has had on their career. Before Rudy (Ruriko Yoshida) met Jesús she was very much interested in pure algebra, especially in Galois theory. Jesús strongly encouraged her to take computer science courses. Even in pure algebra Jesús knew computational methods in algebra and combinatorics would be very important and that mathematicians would need computational skills. While Rudy did not recognize how computational skills would help her in her career at the time, she is now a statistician working on machine and statistical learning, and notes that this was some of the best advise Jesús gave to her.

Jesús has had success guiding his students into a variety of areas of interest and careers, and often helped them find unique success in utilizing computation in these careers. The third of Jesús’s advising pillars we suggest advisors adopt is to Prepare your students for their future career.

4. Give Your Students the Time and Attention They Need to Develop

Like most students, Jamie was very nervous during preparation for her advancement to candidacy exam (ACE) and admitted to Jesús that she was anxious about oral exams. Rather than simply pacifying her, Jesús carved an additional meeting each week out of his schedule to dedicate to practicing oral examination. For months, Jesús quizzed Jamie weekly on topics from her syllabus, allowing her to practice thinking and speaking in front of an audience and pushing her to improve while helping her to gain the confidence necessary for such an exam. At the time of Jamie’s ACE preparation, Jesús had four other students—three of whom were writing their dissertations—and Jesús dedicated himself to helping the others in similar ways. Jamie went on to pass the exam, but more importantly, Jesús’s time and patience helped her to gain confidence in front of any audience—whether it be classes or conference audiences.

In Rudy’s experience working with Jesús, she identified some particular strategies for advising that she practices and recommends:

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Time Management: Meet at least twice weekly with time set aside for discussion, and review questions about the student’s progress, discuss next steps, set the next milestone, and discuss the timeline.

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Guided Practice: Develop explicit examples to see how a student’s methods or/and ideas work. Discuss what they did correctly and where they made mistakes. This provides immediate feedback to students and creates an environment where they feel comfortable asking questions.

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Immediate Feedback: Make it clear where students make mistakes and also demonstrate that you understand the students’ thought process in solving the problem. This also provides immediate feedback about your advising, which you can use to improve in the future.

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Learning Along with Students: Create an environment and relationship where the students see that you are all learning together, so that they feel comfortable asking questions. This models good practices for their future collaborations, teaching, and advising.

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Setting Explicit Milestones: Set up explicit and small milestones at each meeting. Each meeting’s progress will accumulate and eventually will come together to solve significant problems.

Furthermore, Jesús always pushes his students to develop good skills that help them become independent and able to “fly outside of the nest.”

Thomas Hogan, one of Jesús’s former PhD students and now senior data scientist at Tatari, recalls advice he received from Jesús:

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Reading papers/books/blogs is extremely helpful when you’re stuck on research. Jesús once said something to the effect of: “You might be a genius and not have to read papers to come up with groundbreaking ideas. You can do research however you want. But I can tell you that I’m not a genius, and I have to read papers to get ideas.” As an author, it’s your responsibility to spend time trying to find other papers on related problems that you should cite.

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Writing your thoughts (even just ideas, aspirations, or plans) is always beneficial—not only does it help you organize and clarify them, it is also an indispensable tool for generating new ideas!

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It’s not enough to do good research, you need to contextualize it properly, communicate well, and market yourself.

These are only a few of the strategies that have made Jesús a successful advisor to numerous students. However, the primary thread amongst these is intentionality and dedication—the last of Jesús’s advising pillars we suggest advisors adopt is to Give your students the time and attention they need to develop.

5. Conclusion

Fundamentally, Jesús has been prolific at attracting and mentoring students because he has succeeded at building a caring and productive community for those students. We hope that the pillars we have highlighted will help others build caring networks and enjoy similar success! If we were to highlight only one principal goal you might set for yourself as an advisor, it is this: Care for your students! The care Jesús has for his students has helped many, including us, to grow as students, flourish in their careers, and become caring and successful mentors themselves.

Jamie Haddock is an assistant professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College. Her email address is jhaddock@g.hmc.edu.

Ruriko Yoshida is a professor at Naval Postgraduate School. Her email address is ryoshida@nps.edu.

Article DOI: 10.1090/noti2754

Credits

Photo of Jamie Haddock is courtesy of Jamie Haddock.

Photo of Ruriko Yoshida is courtesy of Ruriko Yoshida.