Mentoring

Many programs have mentoring opportunities housed in their departments. Reach out to your professors and department heads to ask about these opportunities and express your interest in mentorship! 

Graduate school provides you with the professional training to learn the knowledge and skills you need to be successful in your chosen discipline. You come to graduate school with your own unique research and career interests, and multiple individuals will need to support you in achieving your scholarly goals. Faculty play a critical role in your graduate education, and they will serve in a range of roles to support you along the way. 

This Mentoring Guide (pdf) will provide you with tips on finding multiple mentors, developing clear expectations, selecting and working with a dissertation chair, and more. 

Activate your FREE NCFDD membership and access the webinar “Cultivating Your Network of Mentors, Sponsors, and Collaborators” as well as the Mentor Map template. This template will help you identify who makes up your network and brainstorm possible additions. 

In this free course, scientists from different backgrounds give concrete steps to building a mentoring network so you can be a more confident researcher and feel supported by your graduate school research community. You'll develop a detailed plan to complete your degree and meet your career goals. You’ll also learn evidence-based techniques and strategies for finding and building productive relationships with your primary research advisor(s), thesis committee, and other mentors during graduate school. By the time you're finished, you'll have completed a plan to build a research home to help you succeed in graduate school and beyond.

For more information, visit the iBiology: Build Your Research Community Course.

Cientifico Latino runs the Graduate School Mentorship Initiative (GSMI) program with the mission to help graduate school applicants from minoritized backgrounds by pairing them with STEM professionals in their respective STEM disciplines.  They provide applicants with graduate school preparation material, one-on-one guidance from a mentor in their STEM field, financial assistance in the form of fee waivers, feedback on written materials, access to webinars, mock interviews, and access to a broader community of peers and mentors.

For more information, visit the Graduate Student Mentorship Initiative webpage.

In 2008, Professor Emeritus Dr. Kenneth Ghee and Assistant Dean of Retention in the College of Arts and Sciences Carol Tonge Mack founded the PR1ZE program (Putting Retention 1st in the Zest for Excellence) to foster and promote retention and graduation for under-served students. PR1ZE is open to all undergraduate and graduate students, primarily focusing on students of color and first-generation students.

For more information, visit the UC PR1ZE webpage.

There are so many aspects to graduate school to successfully navigate and going through them in isolation only compounds the stress. For students who are interested, Grad Resources offers coach connections.

How It Works:

• Register. By filling out the Coach Request form.
• Partner. They partner you with a trained coach.
• Connect. You are invited to participate in speaker events and EQ skills seminars.
• Reach out if you want to connect with a local community group.

The one-year career mentoring program pairs ethnically diverse students (Undergraduate Juniors & Seniors, Baccalaureate, Master or Ph.D. & Post-doc) and early career researchers with industry mentors who work at companies in the medical technology, biotechnology and consumer healthcare industries. With their mentors, Scholars attend a 5-day training session to learn about career opportunities in industry and receive career development coaching. They also attend a major industry conference.

Visit the International Center for Professional Development’s webpage on the Scientist Mentoring & Diversity Program for more information.

The PRISM Mentorship program is designed to connect and pair Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, A/sexual/romantic & allies (LGBTQIA+) first year and new transfer students with student mentors from across campus.

For more information, visit the PRISM Mentorship Program webpage. 

The Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program is one of the grant-funded Federal TRIO Programs designed to assist high-achieving undergraduate students that are first-generation college students, who are Pell eligible and/or members of an under-represented ethnic group in the quest to obtain a graduate degree, ultimately the PhD. This program pairs senior McNair Scholars with graduate students to assist with the graduate school application process and learn first-hand about graduate school. Graduate student mentors offer a unique "insider's" perspective on what it's like to apply to and attend graduate school.

If you are interested in becoming a McNair graduate mentor, please visit the McNair Scholars Program website, scroll down to “Graduate Student Mentor Program,” and complete the online form.  

Connections is a mentoring program that pairs students with College of Allied Health Sciences (CAHS) alumni, community professionals and graduate students working in an aligned allied health field, to help develop relationships that make an impact. The program primarily serves the following populations of students:

• Underrepresented minority
• First-Generation
• Lower socioeconomic
• Limited access to higher education
• Summer bridge participants
• Self-identify or are identified by faculty for mentoring

Visit the CAHS Connections webpage for more information.