ROLE OF INFORMAL MENTORS: Informal mentors aim to provide a supportive environment for graduate students and postdocs and are available for informal discussions on professional development (e.g., feedback on applications for jobs, observing time, grants; bouncing research ideas; guidance for giving good talks and being effective teachers); perspectives on different career paths; advice on work-family-life balance; and help in overcoming diverse challenges. Students or postdocs considering jobs in specific cities, countries, and institutions may also find it useful to chat with mentors who have worked there.

In our model, a graduate student or postdoc is not rigidly asssigned to one specific mentor, but has access to the whole pool of mentors shown in the table below.

Informal mentors complement, rather than replace, the more formal research-centered advising channels for graduate students (e.g. the graduate advisor, the research supervisor, the research committee for the second year project, and the thesis committee).

EXAMPLE OF MENTORING ACTIVITIES

1. Semester mentoring lunch: Each Fall and Spring semester, the Chair's office will fund one mentoring lunch for graduate students and one for postdocs, where students/postdocs invite a group of mentors to lunch (or vice-versa). The graduate student and postdoc representatives should coordinate with the Chair's office at least 2 weeks prior to the lunch so that we can get CNS approval on expense accounts.
2. One-on-one mentoring: Each mentor is available ~1 hour each month (at times/location in table below) to discuss informally with any graduate student or postdoc who drops by.
3. Attend a research talk together: A mentor can invite a graduate student/postdoc to attend a research seminar or colloquium together and then talk about it briefly afterward. This is a good way to introduce the graduate student or postdoc to broader topics in their discipline and discuss effective strategies to give good talks.
4. Attend a class or discussion session together: A mentor can invite a graduate student/postdoc to attend an undergraduate class by an outstanding teacher or a discussion section directed by an effective TA and talk about it afterwards. This will give a good start to students and postdocs interested in pursuing careers with a teaching component and also help them identify effective teachers and TAs to go to for help when they TA or teach a class for the first time.