The Mentoring Project

Research continues to call upon graduate faculty and leadership within programs/departments to move away from traditional dyadic congruence and assimilation approaches and towards new equity-minded methods of mentorship that integrate critical perspectives, employ asset-based (instead of deficit-based) approaches, and center students as co-creators of knowledge.

Such methods acknowledge and then work to address: 1) realities of a dynamic modern world of work, 2) opportunity gaps that persist within graduate education, and 3) inequities within the academy overall. 

This project aims to systematically improve the quality of faculty-student and faculty-postdoc mentoring at UC San Diego. The project will bring together key stakeholders across graduate programs/departments to intentionally discuss the mentoring environment in their academic units and co-create community mentoring standards rooted in equity and culturally relevant frameworks. 

We hope to empower participating programs/departments to alter their mentoring ecosystems in innovative ways by 1) discussing mentorship across peer groups, 2) co-creating mentoring standards, and 3) committing to enacting and revising these standards regularly, so that all students and postdoctoral scholars receive equitable mentorship grounded in culturally relevant practice.

The Mentoring Project One-Pager

This project is supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Grant Number: G-2023-20980) and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (Grant Number: 257403).