Collective Mentoring of Doctoral Students

In an effort to encourage mentoring of doctoral students, beyond the specific students assigned to each faculty member as an advisee, our school's doctoral program established a collective mentoring initiative. Each student is asked to write a brief synopsis of their research and teaching interest areas, career plans, and mentoring needs.  These synopses are shared with faculty involved in the doctoral program so that they can all be on the lookout for opportunities for all of our students.  In turn, a synopsis of each faculty member's research and teaching areas, professional networks, and professional experiences is developed that provides more nuanced detail than what is typically evident on a university bio page or even a CV.  This faculty booklet is shared with students and students are encouraged to reach out to faculty, beyond their assigned advisor, if they have mentoring needs that one or more faculty may be able to provide.

This resource provides the instructions for collecting such information from both doctoral students and faculty, including a survey that was designed for faculty to elicit the types of information students have expressed an interest in learning about.

This particular resource is focused on mentoring, as opposed to advising--the latter I am considering a more formal, assigned arrangement that often involves supervising research or teaching assistants.  When a student is an assigned advisee and/or paid RA or TA, it is important to have additional discussions about the expectations of the position. I have provided a "See also" link to resources that offer discussion points for faculty and students to review in the context of these more formalized relationships.