Thread by @MurielleAlund

At our latest @MSU_IBIO postdoc meeting @HelenMcCreery presented her recent paper with @AmandaHund , @LizScordato et al. on the importance of #mentorship in #STEM & how to remediate to the lack of guidance on how to be a good mentor. Thread! 👇 (1/n)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ec…

I loved every bit of that paper! This is something that should really be spread to all institutions and read by grad students, postdocs and PIs alike! Read it, spread it, get discussions started at your department! #AcademicTwitter (2/n)

Starting with a survey of mentors & mentees at US research unis: 70% of mentees experienced breakdowns in mentoring relationships at some point, affecting their #mentalhealth , 39% reported frequent poor mentoring, but 70% of the mentors say that they rarely mentor poorly! (3/n)

The paper advocates for mentorship training at #PhD and #postdoc level already, to be prepared for when supervision opportunities come up, as noted by 1 participant:

"Grad students need training in mentoring so that if we become professors or bosses we don't suck at it." (4/n)

The paper describes what makes a good mentor, and gives concrete advice on how to train for it. It can be learned!!!

"the best advisors strive to model excellent scholarship and provide sponsorship, collaboration, and encouragement to build student skills and confidence" (5/n)

This one is a vey important and tricky one, but essential to retain #diversity in #STEM :

"An effective mentor must be able to adapt mentoring strategies to the needs of different students and to a single student over time" (6/n)

"In contrast to #academia, companies in the private sector have long recognized that good management practices increase employee #productivity and #retention and have consequently made management training a priority." (7/n)

"Communication skills can be taught and improved, [it] requires effort and investment from both parties , and mentors trained in #communication best practices can subsequently help mentees improve their communication skills." (8/n)

Using already available training schemes from the industry and peered reviewed literature on mentorship, the authors present a one-semester long seminar on mentorship that they already ran twice, as well as a shorter workshop format and/or a lecture. (9/n)

All the material is readily available for anyone wanting to implement the course at their institution, including mentorship best practices, examples of case studies, a guide for writing professional emails, and much more (lots of resources in the supp mat)! (10/n)

"To make changes to academic mentorship culture and improve accountability, an objective assessment program that rewards effective mentors, provides honest and constructive feedback, and requires improvement is essential." (11/n)

They've done all the work for you: the numbers and data are here and compelling, all the material ready to be implemented. Let's work on making academia a better place for all kinds of students by learning to be better, flexible mentors to future generations of academics! (12/12)

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