Faculty Mentoring Program Checklist

Faculty Mentoring Program Checklist
2024-2025 Academic Year

Compiled by Nora Shipp, Gourav Khullar, Emily Gilbert, Ross Cawthon, Jason Poh, Phil Mansfield
Updated and edited by Ryn Grutkoski, Suyash Kumar, Hannah McCall, Pierre Thibodeaux

What is the role of a faculty mentor?

Mentorship is incredibly important for students to progress and develop further skills. Thank you for agreeing to serve in this important role! We recognize that there may be some questions regarding the differences between a faculty mentor and a research advisor. To help, we invite you to read over this brief list of differences between mentor/mentee relationships and advisor/advisee relationships:

Scope: Mentorship is broader than, complementary to, and independent of the advisor relationship – conversation topics should cover more than research.

• Focus is not specifically on research progression, but also includes general academic progress, career and professional development, and psychosocial needs.

• Because the scope is broad, it is important that mentors are familiar with all the requirements of the Astronomy and Astrophysics’ PhD program, including course requirements as well as the candidacy process and requirements.

Stability: While a student may not have a research advisor when starting the program, every student will have a faculty mentor to help them navigate things, which will continue throughout the graduate career regardless of research situation.

Separation: Because a mentor is not directly involved with the student’s research progress, funding, or other interests, the mentor is a wonderful resource when a student is having struggles they don’t feel comfortable bringing up to their advisor.

• Mentors can serve as a point of contact for discussing concerns or issues the mentee is having with their advisor.

• Mentors can check in on academic progress that might be sensitive to discuss with advisor.

Support: The support provided by a mentor to a mentee is expansive. The most important thing to keep in mind is the focus of mentoring should be on ensuring the student feels empowered to stay in the field/program.

General Guidelines

• Mentors should contact mentees - don’t count on students reaching out!
• Mentoring pairs should meet at least once per quarter during the 1st and 2nd years, twice per year during 3rd+ years.
• Look out for discriminatory and/or uncomfortable interactions experienced by your mentee, which may include (but are not limited to) sexism, racism, classism, transphobia, homophobia, microaggressions, xenophobia, anti-immigrant or anti-religious comments, belittling of one’s scientific opinions, not giving one a platform to share their views, and speaking over others. 
• Remember that students may not volunteer information (especially about struggles they are facing) without being asked directly. Ask specific questions (see ideas below) across all topics! However, if a student does not want to talk about a particular topic, do not pressure them to do so.
• Below is a list of topics that we feel are important to discuss. We think that it is important to ask how students feel about each of these subjects, e.g. “How do you feel about your research topic?” rather than “What is your research topic?” Some ways to start discussing these topics include “How do you feel about X?”, “How has Y [classes, settling in, establishing community] been going for you?”, “Is there anything about Z that you would want to see changed?”. 

Suggested Conversation Topics

Additional Resources

Mentoring Graduate Students Toolkit

Office of the Provost Faculty Development Program: Mentoring

Astronomy and Astrophysics Graduate Student Handbook