TILT Graduate Student Mentoring
Graduate Student Mentoring at TILT
Are you a graduate student who works with undergraduate students and/or other graduate students? If so, you may benefit from increasing your skills in mentoring. Much like teaching, mentoring is a practice you will likely engage in frequently throughout your career, and intentionally developing your mentorship skills can enhance your professional interactions. This page has some basic information and resources specifically geared towards graduate student mentors.
Who can be a mentor and what do they do?
You have likely had several mentors in your life already; from instructors to guidance counselors to bosses, many people in our lives can serve as mentors who help us grow personally and professionally. As a graduate student, you can use your own experiences and skills to serve as a mentor to newer graduate students and undergraduate students. While sharing content knowledge and skills is an important part of mentoring, mentors can also provide psychosocial support, career guidance, and serve as role models for their mentees (Dahlberg & Byars-Winston, 2020).
Image from Deng et al., (2024) – DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.3c00500
Why should I become a mentor?
Research has shown that both mentors and mentees benefit from participating in a mentoring relationship. For mentors, some of the primary professional benefits include an increased depth of disciplinary understanding, professional development as a teacher, and a contribution to a more inclusive and diverse population in the field (Reddick et al., 2012). Mentors also noted an increase in acknowledgment and respect within the field, access to additional resources, and internal satisfaction (Allen et al., 1997; Kram, 1988). Regardless of your career path, mentoring helps you develop professional skills that you will apply long after your time at CSU. In turn, an effective mentor can have a significant, long-lasting impact on a mentee. What you do as a mentor matters!
What are some best practices for mentoring?
Like teaching, certain mentoring practices are more effective than others. Adopting an inclusive, culturally responsive approach to mentoring is more likely to support mentees with a greater range of identities and experiences. Being an effective mentor is a skill that can be learned and refined over time (Dahlberg & Byars-Winston, 2020).
One useful activity to engage in early on is setting expectations. Articulating your expectations for your relationship with your mentee and giving them a chance to share their own expectations of you sets the stage for a more successful mentoring relationship. One way to do this is to develop and share a mentor-mentee compact, where you establish guidelines for working together. Check out this example mentor-mentee compact.
As you consider the expectations you have for your mentor-mentee relationship, take time to reflect on your own experiences and how they might influence your relationship. What identities, biases, and assumptions are you bringing to this relationship? How might they influence how you interact with your mentee, in both positive and negative ways? Spending time in self-reflection is a very useful practice for mentors and has a positive effect on individual growth (cite the reflection article). A structured way to engage in this practice is to review CSU’s Principles of Community and write down some specific ways you will uphold these principles as you work with your mentee.
Take at least one of the following BPiT Courses:
- Inclusive Pedagogy
- Classroom Climate
- Student Motivation
Take at least one of the following BPiT Courses:
- Critical Thinking
- Active Learning
Identify and use classroom strategies that cultivate an effective, engaging, and productive learning environment
Take at least one of the following BPiT courses:
- Planning an Effective Class Session
- First Four Weeks
Take the following workshop:
- Classroom Strategies – Optimize Your Time and Increase Student Engagement
Create a teaching philosophy and diversity statement informed by research-based practices from the Teaching Effectiveness Framework
Take all of the following workshops:
- Create a Teaching Philosophy workshop
- Create a Diversity Statement workshop
- Create a Teaching Persona workshop
This outcome is accomplished through successful completion of BPiT course Practice and Reflect assignments, participation in Teaching Squares, or a similar experience offered by your department.
*BPiT courses and TILT-sponsored workshops are offered throughout the year. TILT recommends that you check the TILT professional development calendar and create a learning plan for yourself.
Please note: The Graduate Student Teaching Certificate of Completion Program is not a teacher certification or licensure program. The Certificate is available to all CSU graduate students who successfully fulfill the program requirements. Upon completion, participants receive a Certificate of Completion and can add the Certificate to their cv/resume.
Mentoring Resources at CSU
- The Research Mentoring to Advance Inclusivity in STEM project provides professional development modules and other resources related to inclusive mentoring. The modules were developed by and for graduate students.
- Institutional Reporting (IR) provides data on CSU undergraduate students and look at metrics related to student success. Utilize these reports to learn more about the general undergraduate population.
- This Competencies Road Map identifies six main competencies for graduate students to develop and activities to support this growth. They have a list of many resources that can support effective mentoring.
- Utilize the Planning for Mentoring outline to organize your thoughts and plans for your mentor-mentee relationship. There are resources, exercises, and suggestions for setting up your mentor-mentee relationship for success.
Mentoring pre/post survey
Faculty and staff, partner with us to collect data on a mentor training or experience you are providing for your graduate students! We can help you administer and analyze data to evaluate the impact of your program. Click here to see the survey items and email Courtney Ngai to receive a copy in Qualtrics that you can use to collect pre/post data.
Graduate student mentoring certificate
We are developing professional development workshops and asynchronous training for graduate students interested in increasing their mentoring skills. Check this page for updates or contact Courtney Ngai (Courtney.Ngai@colostate.edu) for more details. In the meantime, check out the Graduate Student Teaching Certificate of Completion, which supports graduate students in developing their instructional practices!
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