Mentoring science faculty: Principles and resources

One-on-one mentoring provides support and guidance to junior faculty while they navigate the demands of their pre-tenure years. Junior faculty benefit from the advice their mentors offer, and senior faculty find it rewarding and valuable to engage with junior colleagues.

Once tenured, faculty members face a different set of challenges than their pre-tenure colleagues. UBC Science supports pre-tenure mentoring and encourages the development of post-tenure mentoring strategies in the departments. This page provides guidelines for developing departmental policies on faculty mentoring, recommendations for establishing and maintaining a successful mentor-mentee relationship, and pointers to further internal and external resources on mentoring and related topics.

UBC Science Principles on Mentoring

UBC Science promotes the mentoring of pre- and post-tenure faculty. The goals of mentoring are to help prepare junior faculty for promotion and tenure and, more generally, to ensure our faculty's success. UBC Science expects all departments to provide one-on-one mentoring for each junior faculty member. The Statement of Principles on Mentoring provides guidelines for departmental mentoring policies.

Download the UBC Science Statement of Principles on Mentoring

Mentoring Policy

This sample mentoring policy is intended to bring various considerations to the attention of the departments when developing their mentoring policies or revising existing mentoring policies.

Resources for Mentee and Mentor

Mentoring Process

Mentor's and mentee's roles, suggestions on meeting schedules and ways to communicate successfully.

Mentoring Topics

Suggested areas for discussion between mentor and mentee (instructors, assistant and associate professors), concrete questions per area.

UBC Resources for Incoming and Current Faculty Members

UBC Science Mentoring Report 2004

Report of the UBC Faculty of Science Ad-hoc Committee on Mentoring of New Faculty, 2004.