Mentoring Resources for Professional Development
The Graduate School encourages active involvement in mentoring relationships as those relationships offer important personal and professional benefits. Part of engaging in effective mentoring as a graduate student is understanding how to plan for and navigate relationships with mentors.
Beyond the supervisory relationships between faculty and graduate students, mentoring can take many other forms. Graduate students may find themselves at various times serving as both mentors and mentees to others within their network. The resources on this page are here to support graduate students with mentorship processes and to help enhance their mentorship skills.
Great Mentoring in Graduate School
An overview provided by the Council of Graduate Schools to introduce graduate students to key mentoring concepts and strategies.
Resources from the Council of Graduate Schools
Graduate Student Mentoring Guide
Strategies for engaging in mentoring relationships with faculty members as a graduate student, provided by the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School.
Individual Development Plans
There are numerous free resources that you can use to facilitate career planning and exploration. Examples include ImaginePhD and MyIDP. These sites will allow students to create an individual development plan (IDP) – a tailored professional development itinerary for your graduate career based on skills, interests, and goals.
Students and faculty interested in structured mentoring conversations may consider using Individual Development Plans (IDPs) as a way of guiding interactions with their mentor/mentee.
Click here to submit the IDP and here to submit the MMC.
Mentor-Mentee Compacts for Academia
Graduate students and faculty members may find it beneficial to use mentorship compacts to communicate goals and expectations for working together. The Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) maintains a list of example mentor-mentee compacts that can be adapted for use in graduate mentoring relationships.
UGA Mentor Program
A comprehensive mentoring program based within the UGA Career Center. Graduate students may register to be paired with alumni mentors, or may sign up to serve as a mentor to younger students.
Step-by-step discussion guides, conversation starters, developmental outlines, and other resources for mentors and mentees compiled by the UGA Mentor Program.
