Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students — Aligning Expectations

Date : Thursday, March 11, 2021
Time : 12:30 pm–1:30 pm (EST)
Audience: Instructors, Instructors at Commonwealth Campuses

Presented by: Keep Teaching Faculty Development Group

A shared understanding of what each person expects is critical to establishing effective mentor-mentee relationships. Challenges arise when mentors and mentees have misunderstandings about expectations in the relationship, which naturally changes over time. Join us for a workshop to explore how to communicate and align mentee and mentor expectations.

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Effective mentoring is an invaluable component of graduate students’ success. Strong positive mentoring relationships have been linked to enhanced mentee productivity, self-efficacy, academic success, and lower rates of anxiety and depression. Effective mentoring is even more important and challenging during the pandemic, which has introduced even more complexity into developing and maintaining strong mentoring relationships with our mentees.

Most faculty learn to mentor by experimenting and analyzing success and failure. While many say that the process of developing an effective method of mentoring takes years and is a reflection of the unique qualities, needs, and challenges presented by each mentee, effective mentorship skills can be learned.

We encourage faculty at all levels to join us for an interactive workshop series using case studies to explore challenges in mentoring of graduate students that are exacerbated by the pandemic and current political climate. Each workshop will focus on a different mentoring competency: effective communication, aligning expectations, and addressing equity and inclusion.

Workshops will be held via Zoom on the following dates and are limited to 25 participants. You are invited to register for the whole series or for individual workshops of interest to you. Registration will be available until the day of the workshop or until the workshop is full.

  • Effective Communication, Wednesday, March 3, 12:30–1:30 p.m. (ET)
  • Aligning Expectations, Thursday, March 11, 12:30–1:30 p.m. (ET)
  • Addressing Equity and Inclusion, Thursday, March 25, 12:30–1:30 p.m. (ET)

In addition to the Effective Mentoring Workshops, a panel discussion on working with graduate students experiencing pandemic stress and anxiety with representatives from CAPS, Student Care and Advocacy, Student Disability Resources, and The Graduate School will be held during the week of March 15 and is open to all.