Mentoring by Postdocs, by Sriram Vishwanath, University of Texas

From CISEREUPI

Mentoring by Postdocs, by Sriram Vishwanath, University of Texas

Idea: The idea is to recruit postdoctoral researchers instead of faculty to mentor students. Faculty are too busy and don’t care enough, graduate students are too inexperienced. Postdocs are at the ideal spot, they want the experience of mentoring and through them, faculty and graduate students automatically are involved in the process of mentoring

Objective: Get more one on one mentoring for the REU participants. It is a win-win as postdocs learn mentorship, a critical component for their career and REU participants get a senior mentor that meets them and spends a lot of time with them.

What Works Well: I don’t know yet, I am trying it for the first time this year.

What Doesn’t Work So Well: The main issue is locating good postdocs with projects that REU participants can work on. Also, we have no means of compensating postdocs, but they are doing it for the experience.

How to Measure It: We will have feedback from the participants this year to see how well this mechanism works!