Setting Up a New Mentor/Mentee Relationship

You, as the mentor, have the responsibility of setting the stage and parameters of your mentor/mentee relationship. While it’s important to ask your mentee for their input to stress the ownership part from the start, you are the initiator. 

There are many important parameters to define, such as:

• Tone

• Boundaries

• Expectations of each of you

• Communication methods and frequency

• Responsibilities

Tone - how serious or light-hearted your interactions may be 

Will you joke around with the student? What’s an appropriate (or inappropriate) type of joke? Will you be rushed and stressed to them or attempt to flip a switch when they’re around to be more relaxed? Will you be “nice” or “abrupt”? Most students will look to their mentor to set this tone. The bigger the age gap between you and the student, the more likely they will stay in a professional zone longer with you; and, if you want them to be more relaxed around you, you may have to exert effort to get that to happen.

Boundaries - where the lines will be between professional and personal

Will you consider your mentee a friend? Will you share things about your life with them? Will you talk to them about more than just lab stuff? Your first instinct (or your first forced reminder) should be to always protect the mentee. You are the one in a position of power over them, no matter how close in age you may be. 

Here are some boundaries to consider: 

• never date your mentee (Vanderbilt Guidelines)

• don’t be alone in a car with them

• don’t be alone behind closed doors with them

• don’t invite them over to your house (unless many lab members are there at the same time)

• don’t single them out with your positive attention (you want your mentee to feel appreciated and supported, not focused on and paid too much attention to)

• don’t belittle your mentee

• don’t make physical contact with your mentee (they have plenty of friends who can hug them if the need it)

• don’t buy your mentee gifts (unless your lab is doing a thing or you bring something for everyone in the lab, in which case, make sure they know that)

• don’t consume alcohol around your mentee unless it’s a full lab event sanctioned by your PI (but know that Vanderbilt is against alcohol being present if undergrads are there) - this is a situation that can come up often at conferences. If the conference sponsors the activity with alcohol and your undergrad is there, recruit buffer people and don’t extend hanging out beyond the conference activity.

• don’t text, call or email your mentee in the middle of the night, in fact, you should question the need to text or call them at all or use it only in rare circumstances where you need to get a hold of them for something critical (i.e., emergency situations) - we highly recommend that labs use a messaging platform like slack so that messages are sent in a public environment and even DMs can be accessed by the group admin, if needed

These types of boundaries protect you just as much as they protect the student. Be beyond reproach. Hanging out with your student as friends may seem fun and devoid of anything that could go wrong, but their safety and your job are at stake if it does. You don’t know your mentee’s background and experiences. You don’t know what makes them uncomfortable inside (even if completely harmless from your point of view). 

Other types of boundaries define the work environment that you may set with the student (as opposed to merely for yourself):

• Set working times with your mentee (for each of you) and discuss whether it’s ok or not to contact each other outside of those times

• Will you be available to the mentee anytime they need you (i.e., can they drop by your desk/office with questions?) or do you want them to schedule a time to meet?

• Will you tell your PI or someone else in the lab anything the mentee might say? For instance, if the mentee has to go home for the week because a parent is sick, can you tell others this? This type of boundary may be something you have to discuss as situations arise, but you might tell them from the beginning that you’ll respect their privacy and always ask if something they tell you is public knowledge. Or you might be uncomfortable with a mentee confiding in you; in which case, you should warn them you aren't much of a secret-keeper.

• Will you discuss polarizing issues (i.e., politics, religion) with your mentee? If you are the type to regularly engage in respectable discussions with people and would like to do so with your mentee, ask. Explain your rationale and give them the chance to decline. 

We’ve been mentoring students for a long time, particularly collectively. Boundaries are easily crossed and some, of course, are worse than others to cross. Even the most ethically-bound individuals can find themselves crossing boundaries. Be careful and consider your actions at all times. None of us can know what is going on in the mind of another, and the mentor-mentee relationship should be as sacred as possible. Do your best. If you think you crossed a line, ask a lab mate and tell your mentee you think you crossed a line and am committed to not doing it again. If you see a lab mate cross a line, give them that feedback and help them figure out a better approach. If you need advice on how to handle boundary setting, the expert mentors of the SyBBURE Searle program are here to help.

Expectations - how you define your working-related values and relationship

The SyBBURE Searle program has three main global expectations of students including, 

• Picking the top 3 priorities (classes, research, other priority of their choosing)

• Planning for larger chunks of available time for lab work

• Treating the lab as home

But, as you are on the ground with the mentee, what are the daily, weekly, monthly, etc. expectations of the student?

Here are factors to consider for your expectations of the mentee:

• How regularly will you meet?

• Do you expect the student to take notes when you meet?

• What should they be prepared to tell you when you meet?

• How many hours do you expect them to be in a lab each day or week?

• Do the expected hours a week include meeting times?

• Is there a lab meeting the student should attend? Present at?

• How long should it take for them to get comfortable with a particular protocol or technique?

• When should they be able to work independently?

• Will you expect them to help you on the side with your projects or are they only focused on the main project that you’ve decided on with them?

• Will you expect them to help you with your presentations?

• Will they contribute to and be included in the authorship of any papers resulting from their work?

• What is a realistic timeline for a publication on the project(s)?

• Do you expect your mentee to be honest?

• What do you expect success to look like? 

• What are your goals for them for a given period of time?

• Do you expect them to identify their professional needs and ask you for help? Or will you help them determine their needs?

• Will they provide their semester schedule, including any breaks and testing periods, ahead of time?

Addition factors that students may be curious about:

• Can you provide them with career guidance? If so, what potential career paths?

• How much they need to be in the lab versus working remotely?

• Will you always be in the lab when they are?

• Who should they go to if you aren’t around?

• How will they know when they can do work on their own as opposed to you being nearby?

• Will they be meeting with the PI or just your or both you and the PI at the same time?

• What do you have expertise in already versus just learning yourself?

• When do you plan to be out or away? Or when do you have particularly busy times?

These questions should give you a good starting place to have a discussion with your mentee about expectations.

Communication methods and frequency - establish how and when you will communicate

While we listed the regularity of meetings under the Expectations section above, communication is so important that it should have its own section. Communication happens through:

• In person or remote meetings

• Working or training sessions

• Ad hoc messages

Be sure to relay or decide together on the format, frequency and participants of any meetings. We recommend that you send a calendar invite to avoid any confusion or miscommunication. 

For training/work sessions, talk about what those will look like. For new protocols or techniques, will you demonstrate, then let them do it on their own while you watch, then progress to them doing it all on their own and showing you the results? Will you align your lab work to your mentee’s schedule so you are always there? If not or they are working remotely, how do they contact you if they have problems or questions?

If something comes up, do they email you, come find you in the lab or message you some other way? Do you like receiving tons of questions through email or other messaging platform? Or would you rather the mentee wait until your next meeting time or schedule an additional time to talk with you. We’ve already recommended using a group messaging system (other than text) to keep proper boundaries between you and your mentee, but these platforms are also great ways to communicate. If your lab doesn’t use a platform like this, we highly recommend it. 

Responsibilities - establishing control and contributions

When it comes down to it, by choosing to mentor a student, you take on the responsibility of contributing to their growth and potential successes and failures. Communicating this chosen responsibility to your mentee can help establish a strong start to your relationship. If a student knows that you take this responsibility seriously and are committed to helping them, you begin to establish trust and respect. You may want to additionally tell them that you will take the responsibility of helping them with any or all of the following:

• progress on their career path (or even figure out what their career path is in the first place)

• set and meet goals

• overcome challenges

• build skills

• learn new knowledge

• deal with any problems that arise professionally or personally

On the other end of the relationship, the mentee should primarily be responsible for attempting (and hopefully accomplishing) the research laid out in their project, adhering to the outlined expectations, learning new skills, and speaking up when they realize they need something from you. Keep the responsibilities of the mentee simple and straightforward. 

Talking through the responsibilities of both parties is almost like entering a mentor/mentee agreement. It helps clarify your intentions and general expectations so that you can move forward to a fruitful and enjoyable mentor/mentee relationship.