[bioundgrd] Mentoring Survey results (2024)

[Amy E Keating]

Dear graduate students, UROPs, postdocs, and other lab members,

Thank you again to everyone who filled out our first annual department mentoring survey. We were happy to receive almost 250 responses, and I hope you enjoyed bubble tea on July 26 to celebrate this high rate of participation.

I am writing to share the anonymized survey results, which you can access here<https://tableau.mit.edu/t/IR/views/BiologyMentoringSurveyJuly2024PUBLIC/Overallsatisfaction>. I am gratified that most lab members are satisfied with their current mentoring situation and lab environment, but I recognize that some people are not and there is room for improvement. Certain questions highlighted areas where better communication would be helpful. Overall, the data provide insights into our relative strengths and weaknesses that will help us focus our initiatives and policies and create a baseline that will allow us to track trends over time. I am sharing the data with the faculty, and we will be discussing mentoring in our faculty meetings.

I appreciated the input of many of you who provided thoughtful responses to the prompt: “Please share any strategies that you have found useful to take a proactive role in your own mentoring.” We indicated in the survey that we would share those ideas, and they are attached to this message as a PDF and will be posted on our mentoring page<https://biology.mit.edu/internal/mentoring-students-and-early-career-scientists/>. I highly recommend reading these comments from your peers. Speaking to a wide range of people and asking for feedback and what you need are strong themes in these responses.

Note that Hallie is running a workshop for graduate students on August 13/15 about mentoring across levels, and there is still time to sign up, until Monday at noon, here<https://forms.gle/oD9jKMMyq3NWrRbDA> (see email from Hallie on 7/18 for more information).

If you feel that you are not getting what you need in terms of mentorship, I urge you to discuss this with your PI - open communication is often the best and most effective solution. There are also many people with whom you can strategize and resources you can access. Visit our mentoring page<https://biology.mit.edu/internal/mentoring-students-and-early-career-scientists/>, and consider speaking with Hallie Dowling-Huppert, a BioREF, a department faculty or staff member (including your building HR director or Mandana), deans in GradSupport (for grad students), or your academic advisor (for UROPs).

Finally, I’d like to thank Iain and the committee he chaired that helped to develop this survey: Laurie Boyer, Joey Davis, Omer Yilmaz, Francisco Sanchez Rivera, Alison Ringel, Erika Weiskopf, Kelsey Farenhem, Tobias Coombs, Alison Wirshing, and Melissa Pamula. If you have suggestions about how the department can support stronger mentoring relationships, feel free to email Iain or me, or come to my department head office hours<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rd7Q4He6WzD9k263dCPR3iHVlZW88GdMNCq0Gv-iauA/edit?usp=sharing> to chat.

I hope you will respond again next year - we value your input.

Best regards,
Amy

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