Mentorship Toolkit

SBM Webinar: Enhancing the Mentorship Experience -- Perspectives from Mentors and Mentees

This webinar will present informational resources, along with personal experiences, on making the most of a mentoring relationship. Common issues for both mentors and mentees will be addressed, including choosing your mentor/mentee, best practices for engaging your mentor/mentee, and defining your relationship and expectations with a mentor/mentee. We will also spend time addressing challenges that may arise in the transition from “mentee” to “mentor” including ways to build mentoring skills in the early stages of one’s career.

Best Practices for Effective Mentors

In the Winter 2022 edition of Outlook, members of the Palliative Care SIG shared helpful tips about finding and working with an academic mentor. Here, we focus on tips for being an effective mentor. Many mentors do not have formalized training in mentorship, and yet post-training, they find themselves becoming mentors almost immediately.

Why Mentorship Relationships Fail

While much has been written about the qualities of an ideal mentor or mentee, little attention has been given to explaining why mentor-mentee relationships sometimes fail. In my 25 years as a mentee in academia and 10 years of mentoring as faculty, I have learned firsthand from dozens of mentor-mentee relationships, workshops, seminars, and casual conversations.

• USC’s Equity Minded Mentoring Toolkit
• Rackham Graduate School’s guide for graduate students and for faculty who mentor graduate students.
• Columbia University’s Guide to Best Practices in Faculty Mentoring
• Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, Brown University’s Inclusive Mentoring: Effective Graduate Student Mentoring Practices
• The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM National Academies, 2019.
• Moving It Forward: The Power of Mentoring, and How Universities Can Confront Institutional Barriers Facing Junior Researchers of Color from the William T Grant Foundation.
• Duke University's Mentoring Toolkit.
• University of Washington’s Mentor Guide.

Sherri N Sheinfeld Gorin, Rebecca E Lee, Sara J Knight, Group mentoring and leadership growth in behavioral medicine, Translational Behavioral Medicine, Volume 10, Issue 4, August 2020, Pages 873–876, https://doi.org/10.1093/tbm/ibaa067

SBM’s Mid-Career Leadership Institute

As a mid-career professional who works within an academic institution, health care organization, foundation, government entity, or other setting, you likely fulfill research, clinical practice, teaching, or administrative roles. Increasingly, these roles require leadership specific skills and qualities. Stepping into leadership roles with training and guidance can strengthen your confidence and performance—and SBM can help.

Monica Baskin Diversity Institute for Emerging Leaders

Early-career professionals, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, may not have the opportunity to think deeply about issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how these concepts can be integrated into their career and leadership journey.The purpose of the SBM Monica Baskin Diversity Institute for Emerging Leaders is to help early-career SBM members from diverse backgrounds or those who are working with those from underrepresented populations develop into equitable and thoughtful leaders by fostering a deep understanding of the principles of diversity and inclusion.

SBM Webinar: How to make the most of your mentoring relationships

Mentorship is key to success in many behavioral medicine career paths. This webinar will discuss practical strategies to develop and maintain good mentoring relationships. The presenters will share their experiences and lessons learned from the perspective of being a mentee and a mentor. We will discuss ideas for different roles and functions mentors can serve across your career trajectory, how to establish a strong mentorship relationship, when (and why) to seek more than one mentor, how to navigate mentoring disappointments, and how to be an effective mentee. Questions and comments from attendees are encouraged.
 

SBM Webinar: Protective Advocacy Efforts for Students Experiencing Abuse from a Mentor

Mentee abuse is widespread in academia and presents challenges to student mental health and academic success. Mentee abuse can come in many forms such as sexual abuse/harassment, discrimination, bullying, emotional/verbal abuse and manipulation, bullying, and gaslighting. It is sometimes hard to recognize and even harder to escape. Academic systems often do not have a confidential way for students to report misconduct, and even in the case when they do, many grievances go unaddressed. Thus, the abuse continues without consequence or accountability for the mentor. The purpose of this webinar is to hold a safe space for students or trainees who have experienced abuse from a mentor. The presenters will share their experiences with abusive mentors including how they recognized it and barriers/successes in navigating their situations. They will also provide general guidance on problem recognition and options for protections that students may seek. The session will close with a confidential Q&A session where students/trainees will be given the opportunity to ask questions around navigating their own challenging mentor/mentee relationships.
 

SBM Webinar: Enhancing the Mentorship Experience -- Perspectives from Mentors and Mentees

This webinar will present informational resources, along with personal experiences, on making the most of a mentoring relationship. Common issues for both mentors and mentees will be addressed, including choosing your mentor/mentee, best practices for engaging your mentor/mentee, and defining your relationship and expectations with a mentor/mentee. We will also spend time addressing challenges that may arise in the transition from “mentee” to “mentor” including ways to build mentoring skills in the early stages of one’s career.

Tips for Finding and Working with a Mentor as a Trainee and Early Career Researcher

Finding and establishing a relationship with a good mentor is an important aspect of our professional and career development; however, this can be a long and difficult process at times. In this article, we compiled our top tips for finding, establishing, and maintaining successful mentorship relationships.

Launch of SBM’s Early Career Mentoring Program

In 2021, the Student SIG and the ETCD Council in collaboration with the Health Equity SIG established the Early Career Researcher Mentoring Program. The program is open to graduate students and postdocs and has among its goals: Promoting exchange and networking between early career researchers and experts in the field of behavioral medicine, providing expert and peer support for mentees' career development objectives, facilitating discussion around topics in behavioral medicine, and building one’s mentoring team.

Early Career Researcher Mentoring Program

The ECR Mentoring Program is an exciting opportunity for SBM´s early career researchers to receive mentoring from a SBM expert and to connect with other early career researchers in behavioral medicine. The program consists of both an expert- and peer-mentoring component. Throughout the year, mentors meet with a group of 2-3 early career researchers every 2 months online for approximately 1-1.5 hours. In the months that the mentor does not meet with the mentees, they would meet with each other for peer-mentoring.

• Op-ED: It’s time to put an end to mentee abuse in academia

• X/Twitter Thread on Red Flags When Selecting a Grad program

• Info on how to report PIs to NIH for misconduct

• The role of the University Ombudsperson