Role
- Provide the best mentoring advice possible to your mentee(s)
Responsibilities
- Attend a mentor training session during your first year of participation in the program (Schedule)
- Confirm or reconfirm mentoring team annually with mentee and Department Head
- Attend two training workshops with your mentee during the first year and one per year thereafter (Schedule)
- Meet with your mentee individually or as a team at least three times per year to discuss:
- Annual goals
- Faculty Information Record (FIR) in Works
- Goal evaluation and discussion of feedback (e.g. Form 25, Peer Evaluation of Teaching, advice from Department Head, Dean or other formal or informal mentors)
Studies have shown the following guidelines are associated with positive experiences for mentees:
Moral support
- Give moral support to help mentee cope with the stresses
- Help build motivation
- Track personal issues of the mentee, making links over time
- Help mentee balance and cope with career demands and personal responsibilities
Self-awareness
- Give positive feedback and constructive criticism
- Help uncover mentee's underlying assumptions through careful probing
- Help mentee to identify areas for further performance improvement
- Guide mentee in decision-making
- Foster self-reflection
Vision-building and goal-setting
- Appreciate the mentee's abilities, goals and interests
- Encourage mentee to remain open-minded by supporting their interests while also promoting flexibility
- Help mentee to articulate vision for his/her future and clarify his/her goals
- Encourage higher-order goals beyond mentee's initial conception
- Challenge mentee to expand his/her goals
Career monitoring
- Advise on career progress, including achievement of appropriate career milestones and time management
- Provide advice on grants, manuscripts, and presentations
Navigating the institution
- Provide information about the processes and procedures
- Teach mentee to promote themselves
- Provide guidance on "navigating university bureaucracy" and dealing with difficult situations
- Teach mentee “the rules of the game” of academic politics and networking
Emotions
- Share feelings honestly
- Help mentee to clarify feelings
- Permit vulnerability
- Encourage discussion of the personal meaning of the topic or experience
Connections and networking
- Describe available resources (secretarial, teaching, and research support)
- Help mentee gain access to otherwise closed academic circles
- Help mentee establish connections with potential research collaborators
- Provide networking opportunities
- Promote mentee in the department and in the academic community at large while protecting him/her from the sometimes harsh interactions in academe
- Advocate for the mentee