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  • Interdisciplinary Speed Mentoring

Mentoring for ECRs

Getting support from a mentor can be extremely helpful as you progress in your research career. You may choose to join a mentoring scheme or seek a mentor independently.

Cross-institutional Speed Mentoring

Speed mentoring offers you the opportunity for a series of short, focused conversations about a specific question or issue you are struggling with or a goal you are trying to achieve. At this session, which is focused on career and professional development, you will rotate around four different mentors, spending 15 minutes with each, to gain different perspectives on a personal professional issue you are seeking to resolve.

This session is being run in collaboration across the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Kent, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, and Sussex and King’s College London. If offered a place you will have the opportunity to participate in speed mentoring sessions with academics from a selection of the participating institutions. Those academics may or may not be based in your disciplinary area. The focus is on career development more generally.

Making the most of the session

In order to benefit fully, in advance of the session we will ask you to:

• Think about a problem, issue or challenge on which you would like to gain input
• Try to identify any options you may be considering and think about the advantages and disadvantages of these
• Note down a one-minute description of yourself and your role that provides context.

Objectives

You will have the opportunity to:

• Get help with addressing a particular career development challenge
• Consider new approaches in a space away from your normal working environment
• Increase your confidence
• Build a support network outside your own team or work area to draw on in the future
• Understand and gain insight into the sector more broadly

Format

This is an interactive online event.

Target audience

Early career researchers on fixed term contracts. If you are unsure of your eligibility, please contact the member of the organising committee from your institution at researchstaffoffice@sussex.ac.uk

Registration

As part of the application process, you will be asked to briefly describe what you hope to discuss with the mentors and what you’d like to get out of the session. We will use your responses to these questions as a basis for participant selection. You will be notified of the outcome during the week commencing 6th November.

The registration has now closed, please stay tuned for future opportunities! 

Places are limited and will be distributed between the participating institutions; please note that registering may not guarantee a place, though we will operate a waitlist if needed. If selected, you will be emailed invitations with joining instructions in advance of the event.

What is mentoring?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a mentor is "An experienced and trusted adviser"

Mentoring relationships can take many forms (one-to-one; group; senior-to-junior; junior-to-senior; peer-to-peer...), can arise naturally or be specifically organised, can be formal or informal and last short or long periods of time. 

The key to all mentoring relationships is that the mentor and mentee come together with the goal of advancing the professional (and personal) development of the mentee, often benefitting the development of the mentor too.

You do not need to be enrolled in a formal scheme to benefit from mentoring and many researchers choose to seek their own mentor either within or outside the University - however the University recognises the value of mentoring, and has created a framework and scheme to encourage one-to-one mentoring within and across Schools and Departments: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/organisational-development/mentoring

One-to-one mentoring

The benefits of a one-to-one mentoring relationship are:

• Supportive relationship in which to explore and progress professional development goals
• Learn from a more experienced colleague(s)
• Tailored support and guidance appropriate to your situation / career stage
• Confidential and objective discussions

Becoming involved in mentoring at Sussex - as a mentee or mentor

If you are a member of Sussex staff and would like to become either a mentee or mentor in the University scheme - look at the Organisational Development mentoring information pages, consider linking with a local mentoring co-ordinator or signing up for a workshop, and complete the relevant forms > to become involved

Making the most of your mentoring relationship

• Before you enter a mentoring relationship be clear of your reasons for wanting to be mentored.
• Have a clear idea of the type of support you require from your mentor (e.g. sounding board, providing feedback, challenging your assumptions, providing alternative perspectives…).
• Research potential mentors within and outside your network. Ideally meet informally with a few potential mentors to see who you have a good rapport with.
• If your mentoring requirements are diverse, you may need to consider having more than one mentor in order to meet your needs.
• In your first mentoring meeting have an open discussion about your hopes and expectations of mentoring. Agree practicalities such as meeting times, duration of relationship, contact between meetings etc.
• Be open and honest with your mentor, they can only help you based on the information you choose to disclose.
• Keep to your commitments, follow through with agreed actions and be proactive in your development, both during and between mentoring meetings.
• Find out more at the University's mentoring website: Mentoring at Sussex

Contact Us

   @SussexResearchr