Mentorship
Key Concepts:
- What is mentorship?
- “What is mentorship?" Why is mentorship important in
academic research?
Key points to convey: Mentorship is an important part of
career development in many fields. It is particularly
important in academic research, as these careers require
many years of training and progression through specialized
stages of development (e.g., graduate school, postdoc
research, junior faculty position, etc.) that have different
required skills sets, responsibilities, and
expectations. Students should come up with a list of
benefits (and costs?) of mentor-mentee relationships.
- What benefits does mentorship provide the mentee? What
benefits are there for the mentor?
Students should come up with a list of benefits (and costs?)
of mentor-mentee relationships.
- Who should be a mentor?
- What attributes are necessary (or optimal) for a
successful mentor? How do you spot one in the wild?
Student should come up with a list of attributes of a good
mentor. Some might include expertise in their field, a
willingness to share that expertise with others, has the
necessary time to commit long-term effort to enhance the
mentee's development, able to listen to the individual needs
and goals of the mentee, etc.
Discussion questions may include:
Is there a limit to the number of trainees a mentor should have?
What are the pros and cons of choosing a mentor with many mentees?
If the class has read Barre's Neuron essay, perhaps discuss
the idea of the "M-index". Is it useful? How would you
recommend a student find a suitable mentor?
- What is expected of a mentee?
- What attributes are necessary (or optimal) for a
successful mentee?
Students should come up with a list. Possible answers
include, mentee must be a willing participant, must be
involved with setting goals, must be responsible for their
own performance, must be willing to get honest constructive
feedback, must be able to communicate honestly and openly
with their mentor.
Discussion questions may include:
Under what circumstances should a graduate student change
his thesis advisor? A postdoc change his advisor?
Where does one go to for help if there is conflict between
mentor and mentee?
Delivery:
- Emphasize that the course is about, and for, them.
They are embarking on a dynamic research career, and many of them
are intrinsically interested in learning about the course topics
(professionalism, mentoring, authorship/peer-review, and data
management).
- Tailor the course for your students. Professional expectations
regarding data collection, authorship, and collaborations differ
from field to field. Your students will be most interested in
their own research discipline. For instance, when discussing
standards of conduct, share with students guidelines published by
professional societies that they are members of, or from journals
that they are likely to publish in.
- Let your students take over. As facilitators, we want
to accomplish two things: we want to start an appropriate
conversation of the relevant material. Second, we want to guide
the discussion so that it touches on all of the relevant concepts
and points of view. These goals can be accomplished by emphasizing
to students that the course is not about "right" vs "wrong", and
that all points of view will be respectfully discussed. As
facilitator, a key resource you have is silence... your students
will carry on the conversation. Your role is to keep that
conversation on track and on time (i.e., covering the relevant
topics in the allotted amount of time).
- Be creative with discussion points and case studies.
While you are free to use any of the prepared cases from the text
books, or from Ethics
CORE, you can also develop your own discussions around
relevant current events applicable to the course content. For
example, Science magazine had
an article
in March about the NIH’s new focus on unprofessional conduct
during peer review of grants. These types of topical articles can
be effective launching points for relevant discussions of the
course material.
Case studies useful for this topic: