As the name suggests, the mentors and the mentees form the two important pillars of the program. The mentees include PhD students, post docs and assistant professors. The mentors are senior employees of the UT, namely associate professors and professors who, through their wealth of experience can act as friend, philosopher and guide to the mentees.
In February 2006, a similar program was started at the University. However, in that program, the mentees were limited to the female academic employees at the UT. The success of the program prompted the development of the current Mentor-Mentee Network with a goal to reach a wider audience.
The program ensures that one mentor has just one mentee. The mentors and mentees are matched at random, though adequate care is taken to guarantee that the mentor is not the direct supervisor and preferably from a different area than the mentee. This is done so that a mentee feels completely at ease to discuss work-related problems with their respective mentors. In addition, this random assignment of mentors to mentees ensures that the social network of both is extended.
The mentees are given a chance to meet their mentors four times during the year with adequate spacing between meetings so that the mentees can use this time to work towards their goals, which is decided upon in the previous meeting. If the mentor or the mentee is not satisfied with the person they have been assigned, they can ask for a different mentor/mentee after their first session. All information shared between mentor and mentee is kept strictly confidential.
Instead of limiting the program to just discussing issues with senior faculty members, there will also be an `intervision' workshop twice a year where the participants can interact with their own peers. For this, groups of six or seven people will be selected and given a couple of hours to thoroughly discuss a particular problem faced by the majority of people in that group. If the number of participants is adequate, the idea is to group the PhDs only with PhDs or post-docs only with post-docs and then there is a greater possibility of groups sharing similar problems.
As it is the initiative of the University, both the mentors and the mentees will not have to take leave to participate in the program. The mentor's faculty will receive 200 euros per interview as a token of appreciation for their time spent with mentees. It is completely free for the mentees. At present there are 15 Mentors and 14 Mentees. There is still space available. Anybody interested in making use of this chance for self improvement can check the PA&O website or email Laura Bruggink ([email protected]) for more information.
