Mentoring Agreement

Below is a mentoring agreement that roughly outlines what I seek to provide as a mentor for all of the students working with me.

Typical Mentoring Plan in the Slepian Group

The following mentoring plan addresses how the student will acquire the required skill-set and competencies to excel in their academic career, and also addresses how the success of the plan will be assessed.

Career Navigation: ZS will mentor the student regarding appropriate publication timelines, appropriate conferences to attend, the process for seeking postdoctoral fellowships or a career in industry, and the time management and organizational skills required for an academic career. This will include ensuring the student is aware of and takes advantage of the many offerings at UF at the Department and University level, such as panels on seeking postdoctoral fellowships (ZS serves on a University-wide mentoring committee and thus is especially able to communicate about these offerings).

Formally Communicating Results: The student will receive training in and feedback during the preparation of manuscripts for scientific journals and presentations at conferences. These projects will also be presented both at professional meetings and at Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collaboration meetings (ZS is a member), and ZS will arrange practice presentations prior to any external talk.

Informal Presentation and Communication Skills: The student will present their work at the weekly Slepian research group meetings to an audience including a postdoc, fellow graduate students, senior scientists, and undergraduates. The student will receive additional personal and networking mentoring from the UF Astronomy Department mentoring committee.

Assessment of the Mentoring Plan: The success of the mentoring relationship will be assessed twice per year using the peer-reviewed Mentoring Competency Assessment (“The Mentoring Competency Assessment”, Fleming et al. 2013). This assessment uses a 26-item skills inventory to identify areas of strength and areas  needing improvement in the mentoring relationship. A mutually selected third person (a UF Astronomy senior faculty member) will join these conversations to help offer an unbiased, experienced perspective on how to address any areas of improvement identified.