Foundations in Mentorship: Building Mentoring Skills and Organizational Capacity

• Professionals who are mentors in need of effective tools and strategies to ensure success while maintaining balance with their own career advancement

• Experienced mentors who need new and updated strategies to maintain efficient and effective mentoring in an ever-changing and complex work climate

• Leaders and administrators who aim to strengthen existing mentoring programs or build new programs for a diverse student body and workforce

Research shows that professionals who are mentored are more likely to succeed. In recent years, there has been a growth of research on mentoring and mentoring programs. More than ever, students, trainees, staff, and faculty are expecting mentorship as a critical component of their career advancement. Moreover, many research training grants from the NIH require mentorship as a programmatic component. Colleges, universities, clinics, and public health agencies need to train mentors with adequate skills for effective mentorship and build programs that support the growing demand for mentorship.

This course approaches mentorship from multiple levels of influence using the social-ecological model as a guiding framework. Throughout the course, there is a focus on improving and supporting equitable mentorship for diverse mentees.

• The course begins by exploring the recent science on mentorship and focusing on individual and relationship-level skills. This includes topics such as matching mentors and mentees, communication and feedback, and mentoring tools like individual development plans and mentor-mentee agreements.
• Then, the course addresses some of the common challenges faced by mentors such as assisting mentees with meeting goals, time management, burnout, and imposter syndrome.
• Lastly, the course ends with a module on peer and group mentoring, a framework for implementing mentoring programs, and tools for evaluation.

Throughout the course, there will be optional synchronous office hours with the instructor to discuss mentoring topics in real-time and network with peers in the course.

No prerequisites required.

• Define mentorship
• Identify core components of a mentoring philosophy
• Describe mentoring approaches for diverse mentees
• Compare mentoring characteristics across career phases
• Generate a rubric for selecting mentors and mentees
• Discuss the common challenges with mentoring
• Design an individual development plan
• Develop a mentor-mentee agreement
• Practice effective communication in mentorship
• Describe time-saving tools for mentees
• Describe the impact of burnout on mentees
• Summarize imposter syndrome
• Describe the steps to end a mentoring relationship
• Summarize the steps to build a mentoring program
• Create an evaluation tool for mentorship