Stanford Biology Professor Patricia Jones with student

How to Be a Good Mentor

Most graduate students will mentor an undergraduate, rotation student, or younger graduate student at some point. This is a big responsibility and a great opportunity. Take it seriously!

If you want to mentor a younger student, visit Outreach and Engagement for mentoring and outreach opportunities.

The materials below provide some guidance for getting started as a mentor. The other resources listed in this Advising and Mentoring section, as well as your personal experiences, will also help guide you as you explore and develop your mentoring style and abilities.

"Introducing Students to Research" (ASBMB Today)
"Seven Steps to Successful Summer Student Supervising" (Benchfly)
"Nature's Guide for Mentors"

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Stanford Biosciences, 1967: First synthesis of biologically active DNA in test tube
Stanford Biosciences, 1970: Development of the florescence-activated cell sorter
Stanford Biosciences, 1971: Discovery of RNA priming of DNA synthesis
Stanford Biosciences, 1972: First construction of a recombinant DNA molecule containing DNA from two different species
Stanford Biosciences, 1973: First expression of a foreign gene implanted in bacteria by recombinant DNA methods
Stanford Biosciences, 1984: Isolation of a gene coding for part of the T-cell receptor, a key to the immune system's function
Stanford Biosciences, 1987: Purification of first stem cells
Stanford Biosciences, 1988: Discovery of the nuclear factor of activated T cells
Stanford Biosciences, 1990: Discovery of "Off-switch" for genetic reproduction in bacteria
Stanford Biosciences, 1995: Development of the microarray technology that allows researchers to see at once which genes of the thousands present in a cell are switched "on"
Stanford Biosciences, 2000: First use of gene expression profiling to distinguish cancer sub-types
Stanford Biosciences, 1990-2001: Participation in the Human Genome Project; Stanford is 9th worldwide in contributions to the genome
Stanford Biosciences, 2001: The first molecular snapshot published of the protein machinery responsible for transcription in yeast — RNA polymerase II — in action; this helped explain how cells express all the information the human genome
Stanford Biosciences, 2002: First use of RNAi to switch off genes in mice. RNAi offers an extremely selective method to "mute" a single gene amongst the thousands in the genome, helping provide precise information about the role of the gene
Stanford Biosciences, 2009: A researcher sequences his own genome for less than $50,000 and with a team of just two others
Stanford Biosciences, 2007: Array tomography invented
Stanford Biosciences, 2007: For the first time, researchers use a healthy person's complete genome sequence to predict his risk for dozens of diseases