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Mentoring Resources

Postdoc as Mentor & Mentee

Being a Mentor

  • Being a mentor can have a profound influence on the relative satisfaction and success of postdoctoral scholars. Postdoctoral mentors can also make enormous contributions to their mentees’ education, personal and professional development, and well-being. To help your mentees get the most out of their mentoring experience, it is helpful to establish good communication, have a plan, and set goals.
  • Communicate well. Mentoring involves the communication of information between people. Mentors can be thought as “guides on the side,” serving to facilitate the mentee’s construction of their own personal and professional development. Getting to know your mentee involves dedicating time to learn more about them by asking questions and practicing active listening.
  • Have a plan! One of the best ways to approach mentoring is to construct a plan in collaboration with your mentees. Mentoring plans are tools to help optimize the mentoring experience by providing a roadmap for both the postdoc mentor and the mentee of the activities that will be undertaken to further the mentee's professional and career development.
  • Set clear goals and expectations. It is important for mentors and mentees to meet regularly to review goals, progress, challenges, and future plans. One aspect of mentoring involves preparing mentees to be competitive for future careers inside and beyond the academy. Putting those goals and expectations in writing can be helpful for anchoring those discussions.

Postdoc as Mentee

As a postdoc, it goes without saying that mentors are critical for your continued development as a professional, as well as your movement into a position beyond training. But there is no such thing as the perfect mentor because everyone’s needs and goals vary widely. Even with a clear view of what you are seeking from mentors, it is critical to keep in mind that it will be less about what your mentor will ‘give’ to you and more about how the two of you can collaborate to meet your mutual needs. Learn more about how to assess your needs as a mentee, enhance your mentoring relationships, and "mentor up" through the NPA Postdoc Guide to Mentorship and the NIH Mentoring Resources page.

Mentoring Training

  • MENTOR Institute Training (University of Arizona): This two-part training builds practical, transferable mentoring skills for both mentors and mentees. Participants learn to work across a range of mentoring structures: one-to-one relationships, peer mentors, and mentoring communities; to use concrete strategies for building trust and communicating effectively; and to set ground rules and strategic goals and revisit them at key points in the relationship.
  • Research Mentor Training (The CIRTL Network): This workshop series offers a community of peers and facilitators to develop and improve mentoring skills. Postdocs develop their personal mentoring philosophy, learn how to articulate that philosophy across a variety of disciplines, and refine strategies for dealing with mentoring challenges. The workshop series is offered in the Spring. Registration usually opens in early January.

Mentoring Toolkits & Resources

 

Readings & Webinars

  • Why Become a Mentor? (2022): National Research Mentoring Network partnered with the Social Scientist community to express the importance of becoming a mentor in the STEMM community. NRMN is excited to share this opportunity with you all to hear from this amazing team of panelists on this important topic.
  • The Impact of Mentorship Throughout Your Professional Journey (2022): In this National Mentoring Month webinar, Dr. Marcela Hernandez discusses the impact and change mentorship can have on many different career paths. Dr. Hernandez also shares her experiences and stories.
  • Inter-institutional Mentorship and Mentor Training (2023): Postdoctoral scholars traditionally receive mentoring from a single research mentor, but research suggests this exacerbates isolation felt by postdocs and that a dyad alone can't meet a postdoc's full mentoring needs. This is particularly worrying for minoritized scholars, who often experience racial/ethnic isolation and increased negative experiences within academic climates. The NSF-funded Promise Academy in the University System of Maryland (USM) has been working to provide multiple mentors in a myriad of formats (staff, peer, sustained and short term) to help postdocs from minoritized backgrounds have more robust academic, professional, and support networks. Inter-institutional collaboration also has led toshort-term collaborative mentor training across participating campuses. Learn more about this initiative in this video.
  • Mentoring Matters, NPAW Keynote Address, Brought to you by Proteintech (2021): Christine Pfund, Ph.D., discusses the science of mentorship, the need for improved mentorship of postdocs, and what institutions and organizations can do to advance mentorship. John Beacom, Ph.D., discusses his experience in mentorship through real-life practice. The webinar concludes with a facilitated Q&A.
  • Mentoring: NIH and the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), (2020): Mentorship has been shown to be critical for the advancement of biomedical researchers. In this session, you will hear about national efforts to advance the science of mentorship. This session will help mentors and mentees improve their practice and expand their mentoring networks to advance their careers.

  • Developing & Optimizing Your Mentoring Relationships (2020): In this session, speakers review the benefits of networking for career development, and strategies for identifying who should be within your developmental network and when, where, and how to identify those individuals. This session highlights important strategies for managing your relationships with mentors and others within your developmental network.

  • Managing Up to Maximize Mentoring Relationships (2022): We all need mentors to support and encourage us throughout our educational and career journeys. In this webinar, Sharon Milgram, PhD, talks about the mentoring relationship in research environments, focusing on improving your relationship with your PI, finding mentors, and improving communication and interpersonal interactions. The webinar helps clarify what you need from your supervisors and mentors and addresses how to get what you need from these important interactions.

  • Sharpening your Mentoring Skills – Part 1 (2020): In this webinar, learn about the main principles of effective mentoring and self-management, and how to set boundaries and goals for the benefit of learning.

  • Sharpening your Mentoring Skills – Part 2 (2020):  In this webinar, learn about the main principles of effective feedback in mentoring and how to navigate the challenges related to it.

  • Research Mentoring: Setting a Framework for Effective Mentoring Relationships (2021): This webinar gives recommendations on building mentoring relationships with PIs.
  • University of Arizona Postdoctoral Mentoring Series:

Landry, A., and Lewiss, R.E., What Efficient Mentorship Looks Like. Harvard Business Review, 2020.

Wengert, E., Mentor as you’d want to be mentored, Science, 2021. 

Phases of the mentoring relationship, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). 

Darling, Lu Ann W. EdD. What To Do About Toxic Mentors. Nurse Educator 11(2):p 29-30, March 1986. 

Beronda Montgomery, Evolving from a focus on mentee to cultivating a mentoring ecosystem, 2019. 

How do I choose a mentor? A postdoc’s guide, The Nerd Coach. 

Masters KS, Kreeger PK. (2017) Ten simple rules for developing a mentor–mentee expectations document. PLoS Comput Biol 13(9): e1005709. 

Lee, A., Dennis, C. & Campbell, P. Nature's guide for mentors. Nature 447, 791–797 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/447791a.

Chopra, V., Edelson, D.P., and Saint, S. (2016). Mentorship malpractice. JAMA, 315 (14), 1453-1454.

Malmgren, R., Ottino, J.M., and Nunes Amaral, L.A. (June 3, 2010). The role of mentorship in protégé performance. Nature (Letters), 465, 622-626.

Vaughn, V., Saint, S., and Chopra, V. (2017). Mentee missteps: Tales from the academic trenches. JAMA, 317 (5), 475-476.
 

Culturally Aware and Responsive Mentoring

Mentoring Statement / Philisophy Resources