Grow | Research Group Mentoring Schemes
What is group mentoring?
At DCU Mentoring Groups are led by a mentor, who is an academic staff member with experience of supervising postdoctoral fellows. The group meets 7 times over 9 months to discuss challenges that mentees face and consider solutions and career development.
Advantages of Group Mentoring (compared to 1:1 mentoring):
- More ground covered: Group mentoring increases the number of mentees that a single mentor can meet at a time. This leads to increased knowledge sharing and advanced networking.
- Many viewpoints received: Group mentoring means the span of perspectives is increased, allowing the mentee to get more ideas than from a single mentor. This way postdocs can leverage the experiences of their peers – as well as that of a senior researcher - in addressing their own individual challenges.
- Flexibility in a busy academic environment: Group mentoring allows individuals to attend whatever sessions they wish, and skip others if they require the time for other work or feel the area for discussion is not so relevant to them.
How will Mentoring Groups work?
- Groups of up to 6 participants will be assigned to each mentor. Programmes in other institutions have found groups with similar interests are most effective so, for this reason, we will strive to form groups from within particular faculties but from a range of disciplines to ensure a variety of perspectives are included.
- A short training session will be run for mentors in advance of the commencement of the scheme.
- We advise that groups meet a minimum of 7 times.
- Topics for discussion during group meetings will be decided by the group. HR Learning & Development can also provide support for mentors in topic selection if required.
Criteria to be a Group Mentor:
Applications are invited from academic staff with at least three year’s post-probation experience at DCU to join the Postdoctoral Staff Mentoring scheme as mentors. If you have previous experience as a mentor, this would be of benefit.
Becoming a Group Mentor on the PSRL Programme
As Principal Investigator (PI) in DCU you have knowledge and experience that is invaluable to our growing postdoc community.
Why not share it and simultaneously enhance your own professional development by becoming one of our first postdoc Group Mentors?
Mentoring is critical to a more meaningful postdoctoral experience, as well as facilitating career development. Group mentoring has been identified as a mechanism for fostering successful career development and vitality among researchers, and nurturing long-lasting relationships and collaborations.
As part of Professional Skills for Research Leaders (PSRL), we provide postdocs with group mentoring so that they can get advice from seniors in the field of research, knowledge-share among their peers, and explore career paths and challenges.
The PSRL mentoring programme runs every year from November, with group mentoring taking place from January to May/June (and longer if the group choose to continue their relationship).
Expression of Interest to join a Mentor Group:
If you wish to join a mentoring group, please email learning.development@dcu.ie
Expression of Interest to become a Group Mentor:
If you wish to become a Group Mentor, please email learning.development@dcu.ie