Sandra Daack-Hirsch (86BSN, 88MSN, 07PhD), Lisa Shah (13MSN, 17PhD), and Peter Abad have never all been in the same place at the same time. Yet, they are a close-knit research team that feels like family. This atmosphere is no coincidence – it is a carefully fostered multigenerational mentoring relationship.
For Daack-Hirsch, it began in the lab of Jeff Murray, where she worked from 1991-2007. Murray, a professor emeritus of pediatrics in the Carver College of Medicine, studied the genetics underlying birth defects and prematurity.
In Murray’s lab there were always graduate, undergraduate, and professional students working together in small units. While Murray mentored the PhD students, they in turn were mentoring others. In her research, Daack-Hirsch continues this ‘cascade of mentoring’ model. She has mentored Shah for over a decade, and Abad since 2023, and brings them together to collaborate and learn from each other.
Toni Tripp-Reimer was Daack-Hirsch’s mentor during her PhD program and early career. From her, Daack-Hirsch developed an understanding and appreciation for what it means to be a tenured professor and the life cycle of a faculty member. As a full professor, “I should be focused on mentoring because my goal is to keep the research I started going through the people who are going to come after me,” she explains. “But also, really giving back to the professoriate and the profession so that when you leave, people have a strong foundation to continue the mission forward.”
Daack-Hirsch taught Shah in an online master’s level genetics class and suggested she apply for the PhD program. Shah began the program in 2012, with Daack-Hirsch as her mentor. “I feel like I just put my trust in her from day one and I haven't been let down,” says Shah, who is now an assistant professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing. “For me, the biggest part of the mentoring was the individual care that I felt, and all the opportunities that I got from Sandy.”
Abad was a student in the first cohort of a new genetic counseling master’s program at the University of Philippines in Manila when Daack-Hirsch gave a guest lecture in one of his classes. Nursing roles in the Philippines are very “traditional”, he says, in the sense that a nurse going in to something like genetics was unheard of. Daack-Hirsch and Abad maintained a connection over the years, and she was the one to suggest he pursue a PhD in nursing.
Daack-Hirsch invited Shah to join her work with Abad not just for the good of the research, but as a chance to learn mentoring. For Abad, being a part of the group is a chance to learn by listening and watching. “Seeing Sandy and Lisa throw ideas to each other, developing the grant proposal. That's a real scenario that's happening out there when you do science,” says Abad. The group has also become a safe and comfortable place to exchange ideas and try new things. “Talking and proposing and not being funded and then trying again,” Daack-Hirsch says. “I think we all feel safe to speak up and say, ‘I disagree with that’,” adds Shah. “Or say, ‘I don't get this. This doesn't make sense to me. Back up’.”
Daack-Hirsch recognizes and values that Shah and Abad have other mentors outside of the group. “I think that's an important piece of mentoring, to make sure that you open doors and provide opportunities, and then don’t interfere with those relationships,” she says. “What you really hope that you do,” Daack Hirsch says, “is create a mentoring network and become colleagues. There's not that many of us who do what we do, are interested in clinical genetics, and are nurses. I wanted this network of us to grow so that when I'm not doing this anymore, Peter and Lisa will have each other and they’ll bring people that they are mentoring into this group as well, and we’ll grow into a network of colleagues.”