Mentoring at Columbia University is a privilege.

New Self-Paced Course: Building Effective Mentoring Relationships

Building Effective Mentoring Relationships is a new self-paced course in CourseWorks that offers a framework to create effective mentoring relationships that are focused on learning. This course, for faculty and research officer mentors of graduate students and postdocs at Columbia, is organized around four modules that should take 90-minutes to complete. The modules draw on the mentoring cycle from Fain and Zachary (The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships, 2022) and include:

• Module 1: Preparing to Mentor
• Module 2: Co-Constructing a Mentoring Plan
• Module 3: Enabling Growth through Feedback
• Module 4: Reviewing Your Mentoring Relationship

Each module encourages you to reflect on your mentoring practices and plan for conversations with your mentees. Find tips at the end of each module and complete the downloadable worksheet to prepare for discussions with your mentees. 

Questions about the course? Contact us at ctlfaculty@columbia.edu.

Upcoming Events

Do you want to enhance how you communicate in your mentoring relationships? Do you wonder how your colleagues maintain productive communication with their mentees? Join fellow research mentors for a conversation on ways to maintain effective communication, led by CTL facilitators trained by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER).

Effective communication is a key element of any relationship, and a mentoring relationship is no exception. Through facilitated discussions and case studies, we will collectively identify characteristics of effective communication, discuss how to communicate with mentees from diverse backgrounds, and explore practices for maintaining productive communication in your mentoring relationships.

In this session, research mentors will explore how to:

1. Use multiple strategies to communicate effectively

2. Engage in constructive conversations with mentees

Do you wonder how your colleagues establish shared expectations with their mentees? Do you want strategies for keeping these expectations aligned, especially as they naturally change over time? Join fellow research mentors for a conversation on ways to communicate and reach consensus on expectations in your mentoring relationships, led by CTL facilitators trained by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER).

Having a shared understanding of expectations is critical to establishing effective mentor-mentee relationships. Through facilitated discussions and activities, we will share strategies that you can integrate into your mentorship practice to maintain positive and productive mentor-mentee relationships.

In this session, research mentors will explore how to:

1. Effectively establish and align mentee and mentor expectations for the mentoring relationship.
2. Consider how personal and professional differences may influence expectations, including differences across disciplines when working in multidisciplinary teams.

Are you looking for ways to create a diverse and equitable research group? Join fellow research mentors for a conversation on ways to cultivate an environment of inclusion among your research mentees, led by CTL facilitators trained by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Research Experiences (CIMER).

Research groups composed of people with diverse cultures and experiences tend to be more creative and innovative when every member of the research team feels they can share their unique perspectives. In this session you will examine how you can unlock the benefits of a culturally diverse research group using inclusive practices and examine the ways the policies, expectations, and behaviors in your lab can promote an inclusive culture. Through facilitated discussions and case studies, you will explore strategies you can use to engage in conversations about diversity with mentees and foster a sense of belonging.

In this session research mentors will:

1. Examine the potential impact that assumptions, preconceptions, biases, and prejudices bring to the mentor-mentee relationship.
2. Explore concrete strategies for recognizing, and addressing issues of equity and inclusion in order to foster a sense of belonging.

Are you searching for effective ways to foster independence in your research mentees? Are you trying to determine what an independent graduate student or postdoctoral mentee should know and can do at different stages of their academic careers? Join fellow research mentors for a conversation on what independence is or should be in research in Science and Engineering, led by CTL facilitators trained by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Research Experiences (CIMER).

An important goal in any mentoring relationship is helping the mentee become independent, yet clearly articulating what an independent mentee knows and can do and defining a path to independence can be challenging. Through facilitated discussions and a case study, we will collectively surface strategies that you can integrate into your mentorship practice to build mentee confidence, establish trust, and foster their independence.

In this session, research mentors will explore how to:

1. Define independence, its core elements, and how those elements change over the course of a mentoring relationship.
2. Employ various strategies to build their mentee confidence, establish trust, and foster independence.

Are you searching for ways to assess how well your mentees are understanding the core concepts and processes of your discipline? Do you want to learn strategies to assess and address any lack of understanding your colleagues have used with mentees that have worked well? Join fellow research mentors for a conversation on ways to assess your mentee’s understanding of the discipline, especially of core research concepts, led by CTL facilitators trained by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER).

Determining whether our mentees understand the content and processes of our disciplines is not easy, yet doing so is critical for a productive mentoring relationship. Through facilitated discussions and case studies, we will collectively surface multiple strategies that you can use to identify potential causes for when mentees struggle with understanding and how to address them accordingly.

In this session, research mentors will explore how to:

1. Assess their mentees’ understanding of core concepts and processes, including possible reasons for a lack of understanding.
2. Use multiple strategies to enhance mentee understanding.

Past Events

The Office of the Provost and the Center for Teaching and Learning invited Columbia faculty to events on mentoring of graduate students and postdocs. Read more below and access resources from past events.

Resources

Explore external resources on mentoring

Watch the webinar: Mentorship: Efficient and Effective Practices (Landry, 2022) from the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity. To access the recording, activate your Columbia sponsored membership.

Listen to The Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) podcast series from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (and download the free PDF by the same title). The series highlights evidence-based mentorship practices and features personal mentorship stories of leaders in academia, business, and the media. 

Check out the resources compiled on the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) website.