Mentoring #

I do not, in general, have very much to explicitly say about mentoring. As you will quickly note, my style tends to be quite hands-off. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to “chase” lab members to make sure that they’re doing what they need to be doing. If you think that you need a highly structured mentoring environment, this is probably not the research group for you.

That said, I aim to complement that hands-off style with an extremely “available” style: I want to be around whenever you need me to take care of something. As I note on the expectations page, I hope to be able to get back to you on text for comments within about a week (during normal times of the year), and to be available for spontaneous or scheduled meetings whenever you need them.

So, in short: I aim to be the kind of advisor that you want, and it’s up to you to tell me how that looks!

Individual Development Plans #

I do request one more structured piece of mentoring work for post-doctoral fellows. Since you’re at a difficult point in your career – making the transition from your doctorate, where the expectations are clear, to the job market, where they are anything but clear – it is worth your time to think hard about what kind of career you want, what kinds of skills you have now, and what we could do together during your postdoc in order for you to get from the latter to the former.

A classic way to do this is to work through what is known as an “Individual Development Plan,” or IDP. Here is a worksheet that can help you build your own IDP. Some time around the start of your postdoc, we will set a meeting to discuss the IDP in some detail. This will not only help me figure out what kind of mentor you would like me to be – e.g., are you headed for a professorship or private industry? where? on what timeline? – but also help you start thinking about how you can make those career goals work for you during your postdoc.