Mentoring
Successful Mentorship Practices
Recommended graduate student mentoring practices should be appropriate for the discipline and may include, but are not limited to, the following list.
Holistic Mentoring and Student Success
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:
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Regular (at least annually) department orientations and/or colloquium sessions to discuss practices, policies, and expectations around graduate student milestones, professional development, and mentoring.
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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.
Example: Independent Study Syllabus
Read the Syllabus for First-Year Ph.D. by Instructor Miriam Greenberg
Example: LALS Colloquium Syllabus
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Regular (at least annually) department events that promote graduate student community-building, faculty-graduate student interaction, and sense of belonging.practices.
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Peer-to-peer mentoring programs that are culturally relevant and match advanced graduate students with early-career graduate students. Departments can contact the Graduate Division for support.
Example: GSC Peer Mentoring Program
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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.
Example: Mentoring Map
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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.
Example: BSOE CM Handbook
Faculty Mentorship Development
Departmental support of faculty mentorship development, especially in mentoring graduate students from historically marginalized communities, through TLC workshops and/or mentoring development communities.
- The Teaching & Learning Center has a set of workshops to support faculty mentorship development.
- The Teaching & Learning Center provides cohort-based professional development programs in Equity-Minded Mentoring for both STEM graduate students and STEM postdocs.
- UCSC SSRC-DPD Program
Written Agreements
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.
Examples: Specific responsibilities of the Mentor *
- Respecting the mentee and being willing to engage with difference, including the student’s identity including race, ethnicity, gender and gender expression, age, visible and non-visible disability, nationality, sexual orientation, citizenship status, veteran status, religious/non-religious, spiritual, or political beliefs, socio-economic class, status within or outside the university, or any of the other differences among people.
- Seeking assistance from multiple individuals/organizations to fulfill their mentoring roles, because one faculty member should not be expected to satisfy all of a student’s mentoring needs.
- Being a student’s advocate and assisting the student in a timely manner in finding sources to support dissertation research (teaching assistantships, research assistantships, fellowships, research needs and required resources, including desk and/or laboratory space).
- Assisting students in the identification of support networks (people who can help the student for different aspects of their tenure at UCSC and beyond). Understanding that one is embedded in a larger community of support is especially important for system-impacted students and students navigating more institutional barriers.
- Formally checking on student progress on a regular basis (at least quarterly, but more frequently if feasible and appropriate for the discipline).
- Addressing problems or challenges that could affect academic progress and completion of the degree as soon as they become aware of them.
- Tailoring, modifying or adjusting the mentor’s mentoring style, to a reasonable extent, to the needs of the graduate student.
- Encouraging open professional communication, including an open exchange of ideas.
- Encouraging and giving effective feedback on written work, oral presentations and experimental work in a timely manner within a mutually agreed upon time frame. (Consider feedback structures that actively support graduate students to build self-efficacy.)
- Providing and discussing clear criteria for authorship of collaborative research, consistent with professionally-recognized guidelines when available.
- Providing support for mentee navigation of publishing processes and opportunities, including article preparation, for both co-authored and single-authored works.
- Encouraging participation in professional meetings and facilitating interactions and networking with other scholars, on campus and within the wider professional community.
- Helping the student in identifying appropriate resources for career guidance, providing help with preparations of CV and job interviews, as well as writing letters of recommendation in a timely manner.
- Empowering and encouraging the student in seeking their own career paths and supporting the student independent of the chosen career paths they identify.
- Participating regularly in mentorship training, including mentorship training specific to mentoring marginalized or system-impacted students.
- Demystifying graduate school (uncover the implicit norms/unwritten rules and clarify expectations).
- Supporting professional development of the graduate student beyond supporting research (this is for the professoriate and beyond).
- Supporting mental health and wellbeing, as in noticing how students are doing and referring them to resources/normalizing help-seeking.
* adapted from UC Davis
Examples: Specific responsibilities of the Mentee *
- Respecting their mentor, including their mentor’s identity including race, ethnicity, gender and gender expression, age, visible and non-visible disability, nationality, sexual orientation, citizenship status, veteran status, religious/non-religious, spiritual, or political beliefs, socio-economic class, status within or outside the university, or any of the other differences among people.
- Seeking assistance from multiple individuals/organizations to fulfill the mentoring roles described above, because one faculty member should not be expected to satisfy all of a student’s mentoring needs.
- Understanding and clearly articulating to their mentors their own mentoring needs and how they change through their graduate tenure.
- Respecting their mentor’s other responsibilities and time commitments.
- Communicating regularly (e.g., quarterly, but at least annually) with their mentors, especially their primary advisor, including updates on progress, challenges, needs, goals and expected completion timelines.
- Completing tasks in a timely fashion and following mutually agreed upon timelines and informing mentors about expected absences and delays before they occur.
- Participating in departmental and graduate program/group community including attending activities, seminars, and events.
- Seeking information, exploring career options and developing clear career goals.
- Participating regularly in mentee-ship training.
* adapted from UC Davis
Example Mentor-Mentee Agreement (MMA) templates can be found on the Teaching and Learning Center’s Faculty Toolkit for Graduate Student Mentoring.
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.
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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.
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Additional examples of Individual Development Plan (IDP) templates can be found on the Teaching and Learning Center’s Faculty Toolkit for Graduate Student Mentoring.
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Some free and commonly used online tools include myIDP (https://myidp.sciencecareers.org/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1) and Imagine PhD (https://www.imaginephd.com/).
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.
Mentorship Feedback
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.
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In addition to department-level anonymous feedback avenues, individual faculty mentors can create a culture of feedback in their one-on-one and group mentoring settings, such as through using existing instruments related to reflecting on and mentoring competencies and practices. Many of these existing instruments promote reflection from both mentor and mentee, and help both parties align expectations and discover areas for growth and additional support.
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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.
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