Mentoring in Research

Do you want to improve your mentoring and managing skills? Do you want to work more effectively with undergraduates, graduate students and research assistants? Do you want to develop your mentoring skills in order to prepare for the academic job market? Come to this 2-day workshop!

Who:

Postdoctoral Scholars who work or anticipate working with undergraduate and graduate students, and who would like to assess their competencies and build their skills as mentors. 

Description:

This 2-day workshop provides hands-on training to improve the mentoring skills of participants. We will shed light on your mentoring style, and provide feedback for how to interact with mentees and mentors of differing styles. This interactive workshop uses case studies, scenarios, and small groups to explore a variety of situations and to illustrate the challenges and rewards of mentoring in research. 

Goals:

Participants will:

• explore one's own learning and teaching style and how it impacts mentoring

• improve your skills as a mentor and project manager

• learn from case studies common issues, challenges around mentoring, in an open discussion with peers and faculty mentors

Instructors:

Sofie R Kleppner, PhD, is the Assistant Dean for Postdoctoral Affairs for Stanford University. She received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed postdoctoral training at the Brain Research Institute, UCLA. Following several years in the biotech industry, she joined the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute as Program Officer and then Associate Director. Her experience in academia and biotech led to a deep interest in the role of mentoring, and the traits of effective mentors.

Janet Kalesnikoff, PhD, is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for Biomedical Data Science at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Experimental Medicine from the University of British Columbia, and completed her postdoctoral training with Stephen Galli in the Department of Pathology at Stanford. Driven by her motivation to mentor students in scientific research, she worked as a Sr. Research Scientist with Dr. Galli for 7 years; she was primarily responsible for recruiting, mentoring, training and supervising high school students, undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the laboratory. She also worked for 3 years as an instructor (General Biology I) at the UC Berkeley Extension.