Mentors, adapted from the Council of Graduate Schools, are people who fulfill multiple roles:
"Advisors, people with career experience willing to share their knowledge; supporters, people who give emotional and moral encouragement; tutors, people who give specific feedback on one’s performance… sponsors, sources of information about, and aid in obtaining opportunities; models of identity, of the kind of person one might be as an academic or professional."
From the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine Advisor, Teacher, Role Model, Friend
What is a Mentoring Agreement?
A mentoring agreement is a contract between a mentor and a mentee that sets out the objectives and establishes the parameters of their relationship. It outlines the expectations and responsibilities of both parties to achieve their goals in terms that best work for them.
A mentoring agreement can help to:
- Define the roles and responsibilities of the mentor and mentee
- Set clear boundaries for the relationship
- Establish communication and confidentiality protocols and expectations
- Determine the format, structure, and frequency of scheduled meetings
- Outline the goals of the mentorship
- Address any potential conflicts of interest
Click here to preview and download mentoring agreement document templates.
Guidelines for the Mentor-Mentee Relationship
Mentoring is a fundamental part of graduate students' education. Underlying all mentoring relationships are some common-sense guidelines that bear repeating.
- Participating in a mentoring relationship is voluntary on the part of graduate students. Graduate students retain the ability to choose advisors and committee members while making progress to degree. Graduate students should meet, or communicate regularly, with their mentors.
- Either party has the right to withdraw from a mentoring arrangement, if, despite genuine attempts to make it work, the relationship is not satisfactory. If either party feels unclear about the current status of the mentoring, that party should seek to clarify the views and wishes of the other party.
- Mentors should recognize their limitations and avoid working with a student in ways that exceed those limitations.
- Should either party sense there is a conflict of interest between the mentoring and any other role, this should be made known to the other as soon as it is practicable, with decisions made according to campus regulations.
- While a mentor often will have more experience in certain life or work practices, the participants in a graduate mentoring relationship are partners in which the graduate student is ultimately responsible for their education.
- Meetings should be held in an environment (or environments, for example, telephone meetings or Skype/Zoom) where both parties feel comfortable, and feel that they can speak freely without being overheard. Information shared in mentoring meetings is subject to standard rules of professional confidence.
- Meetings should be long enough and paced so as to allow the two people to communicate effectively. Commitments should be honored. If meetings are canceled or delayed, adequate warning of non-availability or delay should be given. A postponed meeting should be re-booked promptly.
- Revisit and revise your mentoring agreements on an annual basis and adjust as necessary.
- The Graduate Council offers this set of priorities and best practices for mentoring of graduate students for the consideration of all faculty, staff, and graduate students. These guidelines are aspirational. They are intended to serve as starting points for discussion as individual departments and programs articulate shared expectations for mentoring appropriate to their disciplines. Importantly, different campus departments and programs will have different conventions regarding who has the responsibility for conveying different types of information (for example, general degree requirements). Through discussion, these responsibilities should be clarified in individual department or program handbooks.
For full version see Graduate Council Practices for Faculty Mentoring of Graduate Students
Interdisciplinary Research In Action
This Grad Div video series features how interdisciplinary collaborations fuel top-tier graduate research and innovation at UC Santa Barbara.
Dr. Robert Heilmayr and Brian Lee
In this episode of our series on how interdisciplinary collaborations fuel top-tier graduate research and innovation at UC Santa Barbara, we feature Dr. Robert Heilmayr and his mentee Brian Lee, a Ph.D. student in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. Heilmary and Lee work in the Environmental Markets Lab (emLab) with a tightly-knit group of scholars who foster a collaborative work environment to unite environmental economists with interdisciplinary experts with the collective goal of solving critical environmental problems Learn more about Lee's research with the emLab and how Heilmayr encourages trust and collaboration on his team.
Dr. John Cottle and Morgan Adamson
In this episode of our series on how interdisciplinary collaborations fuel top-tier graduate research and innovation at UC Santa Barbara, we feature Dr. John Cottle and his mentee Morgan Adamson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth Science. Cottle and Adamson work at the Preston Cloud Lab, a Plasma facility enabling LASS (laser ablation split-stream) analysis: simultaneous geochronology and trace-element geochemistry with 10-50 micron spatial resolution. Find out what it takes to pursue interdisciplinary research on Cottle's team and how Morgan's goals are fueled by curiousity.
Dr. Rebeca Mireles-Rios and Monique Estrada
In this episode of our series on how interdisciplinary collaborations fuel top-tier graduate research and innovation at UC Santa Barbara, we feature Dr. Rebeca Mireles-Rios and her mentee Monique Estrada, a Ph.D. student in the Gevirtz School of Graduate Education. Find out how her advisor's mentorship has powered Monique's motivation to pursue interdisciplinary research at UCSB.
Dr. Ryan Stowers and Daniella Walter
In this episode of our series on how interdisciplinary collaborations fuel top-tier graduate research and innovation at UC Santa Barbara, we feature Dr. Ryan Stowers and his mentee Daniella Walter, a NSF Graduate Research Fellow pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis in Bioengineering. Learn more about how Stowers inspires his students to push frontiers in the exciting multidisciplinary field of mechanobiology..