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Enhancing Your Inner Mentor

Most faculty learn to mentor by experimenting, then analyzing successes and failures. The Enhancing Your Inner Mentor series allows faculty to instead learn and use research-backed methods to improve mentor-mentee engagement.

There are two workshop series in this program — one for mentors and one for mentees. Each year, we offer one series in spring and one in fall.

For mentors: Entering Mentoring

For mentees: Mentoring Up

For mentors: Entering Mentoring

The Entering Mentoring series addresses unique experiences one might encounter when mentoring research scientists.

What you can expect

The series provides mentors with:

  • An intellectual framework for developing a mentoring philosophy
  • An opportunity to experiment with various mentoring methods
  • A forum in which to discuss mentoring challenges with peers and colleagues

Who should attend

The workshop series is aimed at those who, regardless of level of expertise, are engaged in mentoring students, postdoctoral fellows or starting research faculty.

Program structure

Four, 90-minute sessions combine case studies with group discussion addressing issues critical to effective mentoring within the academic research enterprise.

Session topics

  • Maintaining Effective Communication
  • Aligning Expectations and Assessing Understanding
  • Enhancing Work-life Integration and Promoting Mentee Research Self-Efficacy
  • Achieving Independence and Promoting Professional Development

For mentees: Mentoring Up

This series is an active-learning approach to mentoring for postdoctoral scholars and early-career faculty.

What you can expect

Mentoring Up is designed to support the development of skills necessary to successfully navigate the research training environment and proactively manage your mentoring relationships. As an early-stage investigator, you can learn to better understand your needs and effectively navigate relationships and climates to ensure those needs are met.

Who should attend

The workshop series is designed for postdoctoral scholars and early-career faculty, although anyone navigating a mentoring relationship is welcome to attend.

Program structure

Four, 90-minute sessions combine case studies with group discussion addressing issues critical to effective mentoring within the academic research enterprise.

Sessions address important topics and concepts in research mentoring and training and include activities, assignments, case studies and facilitated discussions to solve mentoring dilemmas and share successful mentoring-up strategies.

Session topics

  • Maintaining Effective Communication
  • Aligning Expectations
  • Enhancing Work-life Integration* and Building Research Self-Efficacy
  • Achieving Independence and Seeking Professional Development

* Unique to junior faculty

Upcoming Events

About the curricula

Enhancing Your Inner Mentor is led by National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) trained facilitators who assist research mentors in developing strengths, overcoming weaknesses and maximizing chances of success to promote research practices.

The series follows the Mentoring Up and Entering Mentoring curricula offered by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER).

The series addresses guidelines set by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the NRMN.

NIGMS is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the primary funder of NRMN.