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Research Mentoring

• Introduction
• Background
• Identification of Research Active Staff
• The Role of a Mentor
• Identification of Mentors
• Allocation of Mentors
• Associated Forms of Support

Introduction to Mentoring

The School Board has committed the School to implementing a research mentoring scheme for staff as part of its agreed research strategy (see below).

Within the scheme, the role of the mentor is developmental, not managerial.

There will be other ways of receiving mentoring in addition to the formal School scheme, such as:

• Through involvement in a research and development group or cluster
• Through involvement in a research degree supervision team
• Through informal peer mentoring within or between departments, perhaps focused on specific aspects such as writing for publication or peer editing.

These will prove particularly valuable should there be an imbalance of potential mentor/mentee numbers in the School scheme at any time.

In the School scheme, mentor/mentee pairings need to be assigned with consideration of relative levels of development within the pairing. Provisional pairings should not be confirmed until the pair have met and satisfied themselves that they can work effectively together. It might be that a staff member who is a mentor for a novice researcher also receives mentoring from a very experienced researcher. It would be surprising if one mentor could meet all the needs of a mentee, so other forms of mentoring (as above) are likely to be accessed even by those within the School scheme, and mentoring pairings are likely to change over time.

Both giving and receiving mentoring involve the allocation of scarce time. Staff not currently research active but aspiring to be so are encouraged to report their support needs, so that the Research Committee and Heads of Department can discuss how best to meet these.

(Paper accepted by the Faculty Board on 17.10.02)