Peer Mentoring Program - Grad Student Interest Survey

Respondant campus location

Respondant willingness to participate

Overall

By campus

Summary of incentive “usefulness”

Suggested incentives

Notable Take-aways

Requests We Are Already Planning to Implement

• Very clear expectations and formal training for mentors
  • “onboarding sessions” and a formal orientation/ multiple orientations
  • Written materials and guidelines
  • Frequent meetings of just the mentors to talk about how to improve their mentoring skills
• Mentor/mentee accountability strategies and policies for conflict
• Content on ways to capitalize on OSU programs and facilities (the Union, RPAC, clubs, etc)
• Content focused on career growth both in academia and industry
• Strong faculty engagement
• Provide networking opportunities and opportunities for career growth
• Structures to measure success

Requests We’ve Thought About and Probably Won’t Be Doing

• Intentional matching based on shared interests
  • But I do think we should implement a request that mentor/mentees be based on shared first-language

Requests We Haven’t Considered

• Asynchronous trainings for online students
• Content focused on Columbus (I think this means introducing students to suggestions we have in order to enjoy the city?)
• Content focused on training students in grant writing
• Outdoor sessions
• Resume construction and reviewing

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Key Quotes

1.

“I feel that, as graduate students, PI approval is the biggest limiting factor in our participation in these kinds of things. I also think PI encouragement should come with the understanding that participation in the program would cut into time spent on research and that participants would (generally) not be expected to make up the time after work hours on on weekends. I also think providing food or snacks could be motivating. For example, if there were once a month meetings for participants where pizza or something would be provided, I think that would encourage my and others’ participation.”

2.

“Helping them navigate the research landscape, supporting them with scenarios when they feel overwhelmed, and creating social connections and involvement. I think new graduates, especially international graduates from different departments rather than the same department, have access to more opportunities and social connections.”

3.

“I think this should be treated like onboarding process for incoming graduate students. For labs with many graduate students, this won’t be an issue. For smaller labs, when there is only one student it might be very challenging to ask for help from other students at the beginning. Peer mentoring will be a good idea. This is beneficial for both the mentor and mentee students.”

4.

“We had this program before within our department. One discussion point is the quality/topic the mentor will cover. Some mentors have so many useful resources. Some mentors didn’t know as much. How can we distribute the resources evenly? Maybe a standard guideline would help.”

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Constructive Criticism

1. This would be yet another responsibility, something grad students don’t have time for

2. Graduate students in online programs who are working professionals who don’t have time for this

3.

“I marked that I don’t want to do this. I can see merit to it, but I think that you are not taking into account that many of us are working professionals. Some of us for the university. I think that gets forgotten a lot. I think it also gets forgotten that even though our campus location is listed as Columbus, our programs aren’t (are?) online, many of us are not even close to Columbus. PhD programs aren’t offered online in many departments and your own employees are driving two ore more hours to get to classes. To meet with advisors. Being bombarded by graduate student organizations who won’t delete them from their email lists to participate in things that we are never going to participate in because we aren’t actually on campus. Me being a mentor would have to be 100% remote because I’m not driving to campus for another meeting when it would be a two-hour one-way drive and the university doesn’t pay my mileage for my graduate work, or at least I don’t abuse the system and charge it. Those of us who are using our tuition benefit to further our education are often overlooked in the though process for how any thing is done, how classes are scheduled or how any additional services are offered.”