Mentors are advisers on both a professional and personal stage. They develop relationships with mentees, in this situation CWRU students, over a period of time. The mentoring fellowship program was designed to help faculty facilitate this as a synergistic relationship.
"Mentors are advisors, people with career experience willing to share their knowledge; supporters, people who give emotional and moral encouragement; tutors, people who give specific feedback on one's performance; masters, in the sense of employers to whom one is apprenticed; sponsors, sources of information about and aid in obtaining opportunities; models, of identity, of the kind of person one should be to be an academic." - according to Morris Zelditch as quoted in Adviser, Teacher, Model, Friend.
CWRU promotes and recognizes good mentoring practices. CWRU's Graduate Student Senate (GSS) offers a resource page about mentoring relationships. They have also created a Mentoring Guidebook for Faculty and a Mentee Guidebook for Students.
There is also a nice checklist for self-evaluation of the kinds of skills that mentors need to have.
Building a network of mentoring relationships is beneficial for everyone, faculty and graduate students alike, and this workbook describes how to set about doing so.