Graduate Division Enhanced Mentoring Support Initiative Requirements

Enhanced student mentoring practices and programming, including in support of first-generation, BIPOC, and otherwise minoritized students, are expected to be among the most effective means to increase the retention, graduation, and success of graduate students. Because of this, enhancing graduate student mentorship is a high-priority recommendation from the Final Report of the Implementation Task Force for Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education (2023). The Division of Graduate Studies has focused on developing multiple mentorship initiatives, including developing and providing guidance, Best Practices, and resources to support successful mentorship. The guidance and Best Practices, which were developed in part by Graduate Division and Academic Senate faculty as part of the Implementation Task Force for Excellence in Graduate Education (ITF), and in collaboration with the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), primarily relate to the research mentor relationship, but also includes resources to support other mentorship relationships.

See the Graduate Division website for recommendations and details on mentoring Best Practices resources, as well as this article on mentoring First Generation and Students of Color. Additional information supporting the need for enhanced mentoring practices for graduate students are discussed HERE.

Our hope is that programs will spend spring and summer 2025 discussing these recommendations within their departments and devise a strategy for implementation in academic year 2025-26. All graduate programs that are able to provide the Graduate Division with written documentation of existing and/or newly adopted Mentoring Best Practices using this form by the end of summer 2025 will, pending approval, receive augmentation to their base Block (augmentation not eligible for over-offer ratio multiplier). Programs that adopt the“Highest Priority” best practices will receive up to $3000, while programs that additionally adopt the remaining best practices will receive up to $4500.

Graduate Division Enhanced Mentoring Support Initiative Requirements

Mentoring Best Practices to adopt: Recommended graduate student mentoring practices should be appropriate for the discipline and may include, but are not limited to, the list below. Programs that adopt the “Highest Priority” Best Practices 1 – 4 below can receive $750 per Best Practice, while programs that adopt the remaining Best Practices 5 – 7 below will receive $500 per Best Practice.

Holistic Mentoring and Student Success (Highest-Priority)
1. Department / Program-level support of holistic mentoring and student success through intentional efforts to create a shared culture of positive mentoring experiences, and an investment in effective and evidence-based mentoring practices. These efforts can be done at the curricular or policy level, including the following recommendations and examples from our campus:
  - Regular (at least annually) department orientations and/or colloquium sessions to discuss practices, policies, and expectations around graduate student milestones, professional development, and mentoring.
  - Courses or mini-courses embedded in the graduate curriculum (with or without academic credit) that guide graduate students through successful academic and professional development practices.
2. Regular (at least annually) department events that promote graduate student community-building, faculty-graduate student interaction, and sense of belonging.
3. Comprehensive, holistic policies and practices that are clearly articulated in the departmental Graduate Student Handbook, that at the least describe:
  - The Department’s / Program’s commitment to the academic success, professional development, and well-being of their graduate students.
  - Program requirements, milestones, and timelines, including expectations for students to make satisfactory academic progress and remain in good academic standing.
  - Processes for ensuring responsibilities and accountabilities in the mentor-mentee relationship, including a strong recommendation that all mentors and mentees complete a Mentor-Mentee Agreement that describes these responsibilities.
  - Measures to support and incentivize, to the extent feasible, community building, belonging, and graduate student peer-to-peer mentorship.
  - Clearly stated policy and process for academic notice.
  - Policy and adjudication process to guide graduate students and mentors in the event that the mentor-mentee relationship breaks down.
  - Other general policies relevant to mentorship of graduate students and the graduate program.
Faculty Mentorship Development (Highest-Priority)
Departmental support of faculty mentorship development, especially in mentoring graduate students from historically marginalized communities, through TLC workshops and mentoring resources, and/or mentoring development communities.
Written Agreements (Highest-Priority)
Written Mentor – Mentee Agreements (MMA) that establish mutual expectations and responsibilities, meeting frequency and meeting preparation expectations, communication practices, academic and professional development goals and expectations, annual or quarterly academic/research versus employment expectations, etc. Agreements are most successful when revisited with some consistency, such as through annual (or more frequent) updates.
- Example Mentor-Mentee Agreement (MMA) templates can be found on the Teaching and Learning Center’s Faculty Toolkit for Graduate Student Mentoring.
Mentorship Feedback (Highest-Priority)
Departmental practices that invite opportunities for graduate students to provide anonymous feedback on the mentorship they receive from faculty, and for faculty mentors to reflect on their own mentoring practices and goals. These practices and processes might include department structures for students to meet with a third-party faculty or staff in the department; department development of surveys or adaptation of existing research-tested instruments; or utilization of the semi-annual IRAPS survey for graduate students.
- Example: Mentoring Competency Assessment (University of Wisconsin-Madison): A self-reflection survey developed by the Center for Improved Mentoring Experiences in Research (CIMER) for mentors. Provides mentors with a framework for identifying specific skills and practices they want to grow in their mentoring relationships.
Development Plan
Individual Development Plan (IDP) wherein the mentee, with mentor input and discussion, completes a structured development plan document in the first year of their graduate program, and revisits/updates annually or quarterly as appropriate.
- The Teaching & Learning Center has developed a sample (adaptable) IDP in collaboration with the Center for Reimagining Leadership and with feedback from faculty in multiple disciplines at UC Santa Cruz.
- Additional examples of Individual Development Plan (IDP) templates can be found on the Teaching and Learning Center’s Faculty Toolkit for Graduate Student Mentoring.
Equitable Workload
Departmental policies to ensure equitable mentoring workload and workload credit across faculty, to combat the current disproportionate mentorship load on BIPOC staff and faculty. These policies may be informed by and/or include the recommended conditions for how academic units can promote workload equity listed by O’Meara et al. (2022) in their ACE report:
- Transparency: Departments have widely visible information about faculty work activities available for department members to see.
- Clarity: Departments have clearly identified and well-understood benchmarks for faculty work activities.
- Credit: Departments recognize and reward faculty members who are expending more effort in certain areas.
- Norms: Departments have a commitment to ensuring faculty workload is fair and have put systems in place that reinforce these norms.
- Context: Departments acknowledge that different faculty members have different strengths, interests, and demands that shape their workloads and offer workload flexibility to recognize this context.
- Accountability: Departments have mechanisms in place to ensure that faculty members fulfill their work obligations and receive credit for their labor.
Graduate Network Development
1. Peer-to-peer mentoring programs that are culturally relevant and match advanced graduate students with early-career graduate students. Departments can contact the Graduate Student Commons Peer Mentor Program for support.
2. Encouraging graduate students to develop, with help from their advisors, mentor networks that identify a range of forms of support they can seek for their professional, academic, and personal development.

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