Resources for Mentors

How to Use These Resources

Faculty mentors guide graduate students on their academic and professional growth and support them in finding resources to meet their personal needs and goals. An investment in mentoring enhances graduate student retention and well-being, allowing graduate students to successfully navigate and thrive in graduate programs. Below are tools and resources to assist faculty in their own development as mentors.

Overview
Mentoring Guides

UC Davis Graduate Council Mentoring Guidelines: Graduate Council recognizes that the mentoring of graduate students by faculty is an integral part of the graduate experience for both. The responsibilities of the faculty mentor are broad and diverse. They include, but are not limited to serving as a role model, advising a student as to course work requirements, and providing formal instruction in a given discipline as well as helping students identify and achieve their individual short and long-term educational goals.

How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty: A guide from University of Michigan's Rackham Graduate School that provides an extensive overview of mentoring and general guidelines.

The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM: An online guide from The National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine.

Nature's Guide for Mentors: This article outlines the qualities of good mentors and tips for creating a successful relationship with your mentee.

Rethinking Mentoring: This article provides an overview of mentoring, mentoring structures, benefits, and how to set up a successful relationship.
Assess Yourself
Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA): The MCA is a validated and widely-used instrument for mentors to assess their own mentoring. This 26-item instrument is designed to evaluate six core mentoring competencies such as communication, aligning expectations, addressing differences, and fostering independence. Research shows it has good psychometric properties and has been used in multiple mentor training evaluations and studies across institutions. This page is hosted by the University of Madison, but you can also download a pdf version.
Webinars
Sharpening Your Mentoring Skills: Led by Sharon Milgram of the NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education (NIH-OITE), this workshop provides best practices in mentorship including topics such as setting expectations, stereotype threat, and imposter syndrome. Participants in this online workshop gain insight into developing relationships for productive mentoring of undergraduate researchers. The focus will be on life science research, but the information may benefit mentors from all disciplines.

Tips for Effective Conversations with Trainees: Led by Sharon Milgram of the NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education, this workshop discusses best practices for communication with mentees.
Communication and Relationship Building
The key to a successful mentoring relationship is to establish expectations early, communicate regularly, and address any conflicts swiftly. We have resources and tools in the following areas to help mentors:

Setting Expectations and Tools

Developing Shared Expectations: A tool from Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan that provides suggested topics to discuss with mentees.

Types of Expectations: A list of potential expectations to discuss with mentees or include in a mentoring compact, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

Advice for Structuring the Mentoring Process: This document from the Office of Health Education at the University of Minnesota outlines how to manage expectations differently for each phase of the mentoring relationship.

Student Progress Assessment: The Student Progress Assessment (SPA) system for UC Davis graduate students allows major professors and/or graduate advisors to evaluate a graduate student's progress and provide future goals and expectations.

Questionnaire for Aligning Expectations in Research Mentoring Relationships: This tool has been designed as a discussion starter for use by research mentors and student mentees.

Mentorship Agreement Template: A sample template for a simple mentorship agreement to outline expectations between a mentor and mentee, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

Mentoring Agreement Examples: Faculty mentors share examples of their mentoring compacts (also sometimes called a "welcome letter"). Faculty may want to consider developing a mentoring compact, which is similar to a syllabus that lays out the expectations and goals for both the mentor and mentee.

299 Syllabus Template: Faculty and students can align expectations for research units and how to earn a Satisfactory grade for the quarter.
Supervising Graduate Employees
Academic Personnel: Information and links to resources for employing postdoctoral scholars and graduate students as Teaching Assistants, Associate In_, Readers and Tutors; and Graduate Student Researchers.

You’re the Boss: Managing Your Team: This slide deck from the Academic Affairs Brown Bag Series provides advice on supervising teaching assistants and graduate student researchers.

Ten Simple Rules for Building an Anti-Racist Lab: This article provides tips on creating an anti-racist team.

CLEAR Lab: An example of an anti-racist lab manual, from Edmonton, Canada.

The Supervisory Role of Life Science Research Faculty: The Missing Link to Diversifying the Academic Workforce?: This article discusses the role of faculty mentors as supervisors and best practices for running a lab.
Communication & Conflict Management
Office of the Ombuds: The UC Davis Ombuds Office is a confidential, independent, impartial, and informal problem-solving and conflict management resource for all members of the UC Davis and UC Davis Health campus communities.

5:15 Tool: What's a 5:15 update? It's a 1:1 meeting that should take a student roughly 15 minutes to prepare, and 5 minutes for the mentor to read prior to the meeting, a helpful management tool designed to facilitate communication, goal-setting, and progress tracking.

Conflict Styles Assessment: Do you know your conflict style? Are you a competer, proble solver, compromiser, avoider, or accommodator? This assessment from the US Institute of Peace helps mentors identify how they respond to conflict and how to be more aware of the implications of each style.

Mind Matters: Managing Conflict in the Lab: This Science article provide strategies to minimize conflicts in a lab environment, but the strategies are helpful for other working environments as well.

Recognizing and Responding to Bullying and Abrasive Behaviors: This presentation offered through the Academic Affairs Brown Bag Series provides an overview on bullying and how to respond.

Policies and Guidance Related to Bullying and Faculty Behavior: This document compiles the current policies and UC guidance on bullying.
Academic Success and Professional Development
Mentors provide invaluable guidance and feedback on a student’s writing, research, professional development, and teaching. We have resources and tools in the following areas to help mentors.

Mentoring Researchers

Responsible Conduct of Research Program: The Office of Research offers a Responsible Conduct of Research program that covers information, training, and tools to address the increasingly complex issues.

Fieldwork Safety Program: UC Davis resources for fieldwork safety.

Travel Security and Resources: UC Davis resources for safety during international travel.

Mentoring Writers

Guidelines for Facilitating Publication of Graduate Student Work: UC Davis guidelines regarding authorship and publication.

Conventions of Scientific Authorship: A Science article about author attribution and what to consider.

Working with Graduate Student Writers Faculty Guide: Created by Purdue University, this resource guides faculty on how to better support graduate students with their writing.

Mentoring Research Writers: A guide from University of Wisconsin-Madison with strategies on how to mentor trainees with their writing, including tips on the drafting and revision phases of writing.

UC Davis Writing Center Graduate and Professional Support: UC Davis resources and services to support graduate student writing.

Preventing Plagiarism : Strategies for preventing and detecting plagiarism in student work.

Mentoring Professionals

The Mentor Mirror: Created by Vice Chancellor for Inclusive Excellence, Renetta Tull, the mentor mirror outlines a reverse IDP for mentors to plan how they will promote professional development in their mentees.

Individual Development Plan: Fill out an IDP with your mentee to assist them in formulating goals and timelines that best meet their professional and career development needs.

CV of Failures: This articles shares how one Princeton professor created a document of his so-called failures to normalize rejection and failure for his students.

Mentoring Teachers

Center for Educational Effectiveness: The CEE offers faculty workshops on promoting and supporting effective learning for all students. The CEE offers TA training and resources for graduate student teaching.
Awareness and Support
The resources below can help mentors provide support to their mentees in an individualized manner.

Graduate and Professional Student Mentorship Program: Organized by the Cross-Cultural Center, this 2-quarter long program pairs a faculty mentor with a graduate student. Through faculty mentorship and other programming, the Mentoring Program holistically supports its graduate student participants as they navigate the rigors of graduate school. Contact the Cross Cultural Center for more information.

Graduate Inclusive Excellence at UC Davis: Learn more about the initiatives and resources, as well as scholarship on mentoring and diversity, put together by Graduate Studies Inclusive Excellence.

Responses for Distressed and Distressing Students: A handout that helps faculty know when and where to escalate issues when interacting with students in distress or cause distress to others.

Case Management Student Support Referral: UC Davis non-clinical Case Managers, based in the Office of Student Support, are here to provide support and assistance to students in need. Anyone can contact a case manager when they are concerned about a student. The student may be in distress due to emotional issues, health, family or personal relationships, grades, academic standing, or other problems.
Graduate Student Mentors Mentoring Undergraduate Students
The resource is a free digital toolbox for graduate students and postdocs who are mentoring undergraduate students. Includes email templates, record-keeping templates, worksheets, step-by-step guides, overviews, helpful tips, and more!

We are excited to share with you a new, free digital toolbox for graduate students and postdocs who are mentoring undergraduate students! We have created MINT- the Mentorship Internet Toolbox.

This toolbox may be useful for a variety of the mentoring initiatives you oversee, particularly programs where graduate students are mentoring undergraduate students! These resources are also helpful for graduate students interested in seeking mentorship opportunities and wanting to learn more about being a good mentor, regardless of previous or current experience.

MINT includes email templates, record-keeping templates, worksheets, step-by-step guides, overviews, helpful tips, and more!
MINT covers topics such as:
Aligning expectations when mentoring undergraduates
How to develop your mentorship style
Basics of mentorship including handling conflict and setting boundaries
And how to incorporate mentorship into application materials such as teaching statements

MINT currently exists in several formats, all of which are intended to be downloadable and easy to customize for your use.

To access the complete Google Drive version of this toolbox: CLICK HERE
In this Google Drive folder, you will find both PDF and Google Doc versions of each resource, along with a complete PDF of the entire resource.
To go directly to the complete MINT pdf: CLICK HERE