Here's a pop quiz for you. Where does the word "mentor" come from?

Answer: from Homer's Odyssey. Mentor was the name of Odysseus' trusted friend. When he went off to the Trojan War, Odysseus entrusted his son Telemachus to the care of Mentor, who would oversee his growth, learning, and development. You get extra credit on this pop quiz if you also remembered that the goddess Athena appeared in disguise when Odysseus returned home, to help him figure out how to handle his return—and she appeared in the guise of Mentor. So in its original sense, a mentor was a trusted friend, a wise educator, and a divine advisor.

Eric Booth.

Does that make a mentor seem like an old-fashioned concept? Not at Juilliard. This year we launch a new kind of mentor program—the first of its kind among American conservatories. Each first-year student will be paired with a mentor (a faculty member from an arts discipline different from that of the student) and start meeting one-on-one in January, in a learning relationship that will extend over years. Life at Juilliard, as well as a life in the arts after Juilliard, presents increasingly complex challenges. A mentor listens, asks and answers provocative questions, sets an example of the benefits of a life in the arts, and sparks the necessary curiosity and courage to explore the wealth of resources within Juilliard and throughout New York City.

In May 2002 the mentor program was announced to the faculty, and Dean Clapp asked faculty members to let him know if they were interested in participating. The supervising committee had expected about 15 of our busy faculty members might express an interest in becoming a mentor—which means going another extra mile to build relationships with individual students. We were overwhelmed by positive response—more than 100 faculty members expressed an interest. Derek Mithaug and Bärli Nugent (the director of career development and administrative director of chamber music, respectively), who lead this program with me, realized that we had tapped a vein of personal care for young artists. Again and again faculty members said, "What fun, and what a golden opportunity—for both mentor and student!" We consistently heard another response from the faculty, as well as from envious professionals in the performing arts who heard about the program: "Why didn't I have a mentor like that in my training?" All were excited by the cross-disciplinary nature of the relationship. They were as eager to learn from the students about their art forms as they were to guide students toward events and experiences that would answer their artistic curiosities.

In conversations with those interested teachers, we came to appreciate just how much mentoring—formal and informal—already happens within departments. Mentoring holds a historic position in artist development, as one of the most ancient, effective, and profound ways to bring forth emerging talent. The mentor program builds on that tradition of personal attention. By pairing a young artist from one discipline with a widely-experienced, passionate teacher from another discipline, we hope to ignite discoveries that might not happen otherwise. We hope to support students to think more broadly, reflect in greater depth, and discover ways to grow in their chosen fields.

The mentor program is one part of the June Noble Larkin Program for the Humanities (funded by visionary supporter and chair emerita June Noble Larkin and the Edward John Noble Foundation), which will introduce several initiatives to broaden the repertoire of personal skills developed at Juilliard. The arts world has changed, demanding a wider range of abilities in a young artist. When President Polisi brought me into the project, he spoke of being troubled that too many music students were graduating without seeing dance or drama performances, that drama and dance students never attended the New York Philharmonic or Metropolitan Opera in their four years here. These were symptoms of concern—students were not as fully rounded in their exploration and preparation as they needed to be to create a rewarding and responsive life in the arts.

A well-prepared artist needs more than the technical skills to get the notes, the lines, or the moves right—he or she needs boundless curiosity, a reflective and inquisitive mind, and an adventurous spirit. The artists who will succeed in the challenging environment of the 21st century are the ones with the creative flexibility to discover their own voice, to sustain their own creative passions, and to explore the resources that abound to find their place within them.

With the mentor program, Juilliard sets an example for all conservatories and for the arts in America. We believe that the extraordinary skills developed in conservatory training can be enhanced, expanded, enriched, and enlivened by an artistic inquisitiveness that begins at Juilliard and stretches over a lifetime.