Almost everyone here mentors someone. Postdocs and graduate students help mentor the undergraduates, senior students support newer ones, and Christina mentors the whole lab. Good mentoring here means advancing each person’s own goals, normalizing failure as a routine part of research, and helping people grow into independent scientists. This page is how we do it well. It draws on the University of Michigan Rackham guides linked at the bottom and on how the lab already works.
Mentoring is more than advising
An advisor guides academic progress. A mentor takes an interest in the whole person: their goals, their growth, and their next step, which may lead somewhere different from yours. Advance the goals they want, not the ones you would pick, and set goals that respect differences in work styles, backgrounds, and obligations.
Mentoring is a team effort
No single mentor can meet every need. We mentor in layers: an undergraduate has a day-to-day mentor (a grad student or postdoc), who has Christina, and everyone benefits from peers. Help the person you mentor build a small team, and introduce them to others when a question is outside what you can offer.
Start with shared expectations
The strongest mentoring relationships agree on expectations early, before friction sets in. Onboarding already starts this: a step of the start guide is to “Consider your goals and mentoring needs,” and the first meeting with Christina uses those answers to set goals. In your first few meetings together, talk through:
- Meeting cadence. How often you’ll meet, and how to reach you between meetings.
- Communication. Preferred channels and response times; see Communication.
- Goals and mentoring needs. Their long-term direction and what they need from mentoring. This shapes an Individual Development Plan and this quarter’s plan; see Goal setting.
- Feedback. How and when you’ll give it, and what a first draft should look like before it reaches you.
- Authorship and credit. Set expectations up front; see Authorship policy.
The Individual Development Plan is reviewed and updated annually, and quarterly SMART goals are used to assess progress and adjust mentoring needs as people grow.
Give feedback that helps
Be timely, concrete, and constructive. Balance warm and cool: name what worked as well as what to change, and focus on the work, not the person. Hold people to high standards and make clear you believe they can meet them. Our full norms for giving and receiving feedback apply to mentoring too.
Support the whole person
If someone falls behind, don’t assume it means they don’t care. They may be exhausted, stuck, or unsure what to do next. Ask, and keep in regular contact, especially with anyone who goes quiet.
Many new researchers quietly wonder whether they belong. Reassure them, and remember that a bird’s-eye “you’re doing fine” from a mentor carries real weight. Watch for signs someone is struggling. You are not expected to diagnose or treat anything; you are expected to notice, to be kind, and to point them toward support resources.
Normalize failure. Encourage people to share challenges as openly as successes. Talking about what went wrong helps destigmatize failure, a necessary practice in research, and it often surfaces better ideas. Help them recognize their wins too, and look back at how far they’ve come since joining. This is a core aim of mentoring here, not a side note. The same openness is expected in lab meetings.
Model what you expect
The clearest thing you teach is how you behave. Handle data honestly (see Data management), credit work fairly, cite carefully, and admit your own mistakes. People remember how they were treated far longer than any single piece of advice.
Mentoring across different backgrounds
You can be an excellent mentor to someone whose background differs from yours. What you share, a commitment to the work and a desire to see them succeed, matters more than what differs. Discuss differences openly rather than ignoring them, and no one should be asked to speak for a whole group. See our discussion guidelines.
Know your limits
You don’t have to offer everything. Be clear about what you can and can’t give, and refer people to another mentor, to Christina, or to campus resources when that serves them better. Knowing when to hand off is part of mentoring well.
Resources
- How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty (University of Michigan Rackham). There is a companion volume for students on getting the mentoring they want.
- UC Davis GradPathways Institute runs mentoring workshops for students and mentors: see their mentoring page and resources for mentors.
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