The Role of the Graduate Student Mentee
A Graduate Student Mentee is:
- A person whose welfare, training, and career are advanced by an influential person
- Committed to her own education and career
- Interested in the projects, ideas, and abilities of her mentor
Because mentoring is a two-way relationship, a faculty mentor can expect a graduate student mentee to be:
- Aware of their own expectations
- Committed to the mentoring relationship
- Reliable
- Responsible
- Desiring of advancing in her career and making an effort to do so
- Individual recognition, encouragement, and support Increased self-esteem and confidence when dealing with professionals
- Confidence to challenge oneself to achieve new goals and explore alternatives
- A realistic perspective of the workplace or academia
- Advice on how to balance work and other responsibilities and set priorities
- Knowledge of workplace "do's and don'ts"
- Experience in networking
Faculty mentors can teach their mentees aspects of academic life that are not offered in any class or textbook. These aspects include:
- Who are the powerful and important people in the department, the institution, and the discipline worldwide
- Which sub-fields are expanding or contracting
- Which professors have contacts with faculty at other institutions
- How people in the field find out about, get nominated for and win assistantships, fellowships, grants, awards and prizes
- Which journals lead the field; who can bring a submission to the attention of the editors
- How to get feedback on a paper
- How to handle co-authorship
- Which organizations are important to join; what is the structure of the organization; what roles should the student seek to fill in the structure
- Which conferences are important to attend; how to play a role in the conference
- How people in the department find out about job openings in academia, private industry and government; what an effective vita should say; what the job search is like; how to negotiate a contract
- How to appropriately raise concerns, issues and problems and with whom
- How to build a tenure portfolio
If you are a STEM graduate student interested in participating in one of our mentoring programs, please fill out the Graduate Student Mentee Application, complete it, and email, mail or fax it back to CWD. On the application, you will need to indicate which mentoring program you are applying to. We strongly encourage women and individuals of color to participate.