Mentor Profiles

My capstone idea is to make a documentary about a friend of mine who is a current student about to graduate from Herronw with a degree in painting. Though the documentary will focus on this one person, it will (hopefully) serve as a sort of meta-discussion about Herron, art education, art itself, and so on.

I actually already chose a mentor at the end of last semester, and the things I was looking for in a mentor (ranked roughly in order of importance) were/are:

1. Technical knowledge/experience. I wanted someone who could help me with the nuts and bolts of making a documentary. I have some experience with it, but I've never done it completely by myself, so I wanted a mentor who could answer any questions I have and give me advice on that side of things.
2. Knowledge of the subject. I wanted someone who knew about art or art education. I really don't know much about Herron, or art schools in general, or even traditional art, except what I've learned from my friend who is the subject of the documentary, so I figured someone with some knowledge of this could be very valuable.
3. Availability. Even though it possibly could go without saying, I wanted someone who would have time and be able to meet with me to help with the project. I didn't want someone to just fill the mentor requirement and maybe meet a few times, I wanted someone I could meet with on a regular basis and who would be available as I needed him/her.
4. Willingness to help. Not only did I want someone able to help me, I wanted someone who would really want to. Ideally, this would be someone who would really get behind the project and want to see me complete it.

I had these in mind last semester when I chose a mentor, but I also kept them in mind recently as I selected and interviewed a few faculty members.  I wanted to get their responses without being clouded by the specifics of my idea, so I asked them the questions without telling them what my idea was. Only my actual mentor, who is one of the ones I interviewed, knew the details. Rather than copying and pasting their responses to the questions here, I'll mention each one, why I thought of them, and a brief summary of what their responses tells me about their potential as mentors for my particular project.

• Susan Tennant - Susan is my current mentor. I chose her because she has knowledge of documentaries and, as a former art student herself, knows about that end of things as well. She seemed and still seems to be the best choice given the criteria I had. When interviewed, she did say she preferred documentaries, which is a plus considering that that's what my project is.
• C. Thomas Lewis - I've had a few classes with Lewis already, and I considered him when choosing a mentor. I ultimately decided that he wasn't the best choice, and his interview confirmed this. He mentioned that he wants his capstone students to do very conceptually challenging, innovative pieces. Knowing what I do of his style, I take that to mean he expects experimental, somewhat unconventional projects. While I do want to push some boundaries and be somewhat experimental in my project, in the end it is something relatively conventional. He also said that his availability for mentoring is limited.
• Steve Mannheimer - After the other two, I honestly didn't know who else to look to. I couldn't find and didn't know of anyone else in video, and that's the main thing I wanted out of a mentor. So, failing that, I looked at the faculty list with my second criteria in mind. This led me to Mannheimer, because he has experience with art. However, the interview confirmed that he would not be a good choice for my project. He said that he could mostly help with idea conceptualizing, and my idea is already pretty flushed out so, while it will almost certainly evolve, that isn't the main thing I'm looking for.

P.S. Sorry for the long post. I wanted to answer each question in the assignment moderately thoroughly and didn't want to just copy and paste the answers to the questions but rather actually discuss them.