As announced in a message to PSPS at the end of Feb, I had looked at any mentoring related materials from the Big 10 institutions, including UCLA and UCB. Approaches to formalizing mentor/mentee relationship were mixed, where roughly half of the schools have some form of guidelines, but most others had no guidelines. PSU's only data on mentoring was from the PLOS Computational Biology program which had a page on "How to Select a Postdoc".
I felt the most efficient approach to developing the PSPS policy on mentorship would involve modifying pre-exisiting sets of guidelines and agreement form. The AAMC produced the "Compact Between Postdoctoral Appointees and Their Mentors". This document is attached as a word file, but you can also find it at www.aamc.org/postdoccompact. Attached also is a modified word document called "Mentor Agreement Form" which could be completed and signed by both the trainee and the mentor (click the blue "files" at the bottom of the page to view these 2 attachments).
One possible approach with these two documents could be a mutual agreement by both the mentor and trainee to the tenets of the Compact, and then formalizing the particulars of the agreement/relationship/position using the Mentor Agreement Form. However this is one of many possible approaches the PSPS could take on the subject.
Now your feedback is needed! Both forms are open to editing and alteration. I look forward to seeing a dialog on Mentorship!!!
Thanks!
Denise
