CBI RCR on “Mentor-Mentee
Responsibilities and Relationships”
September 10, 2014
facilitated by Brian Bahnson
• 
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of
Heracles and Asopis. In his old age Mentor
was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor
and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in
charge of his son Telemachus, and of
Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the
Trojan War.
• 
When Athena visited Telemachus she took the
disguise of Mentor to hide herself from the
suitors of Telemachus' mother Penelope. As
Mentor, the goddess encouraged Telemachus
to stand up against the suitors and go abroad
to find out what happened to his father. When
Odysseus returned to Ithaca, Athena appeared
briefly in the form of Mentor again at
Odysseus' palace.
- Wikipedia
What is your definition of mentor?
noun
an experienced and trusted adviser.
• an experienced person in a company, college, or school
who trains and counsels new employees or students.
verb
advise or train (someone, esp. a younger colleague).
What are Mentor-Mentee Responsibilities?
Mentees’
Mentors’
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Mutual Mentoring Map
• In the white area, jot down the people (within
and outside of your campus) who can serve as
mentors to you (e.g., dissertation advisor, peer,
senior faculty member, spouse)
• In the gray area jot down the gaps you see in
your network + people that you think might fill
them.
• Work individually on your own map and
questions below for a few minutes. Then you ll
share it with your group.
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Case Study 1 - At Institution X, biological sciences faculty are expected to develop—and
secure outside funding for—research projects in their area of specialization. A junior faculty
member has been fortunate in obtaining a new investigator grant from a federal agency that
has allowed her to support a graduate student as well as a part-time technician. She is
pleased that the graduate student working on this project is both excited about the research
and highly skilled in the laboratory. On the basis of work that the graduate student has been
doing over the past six months on this grant, as well as studies that she conducted prior to her
faculty appointment, the faculty member is preparing to submit a major grant proposal to the
same funding agency. As part of the requirements for this proposal, the faculty member needs
to provide preliminary data to support her stated hypotheses. Consequently she has asked her
graduate student to provide her with his raw data, along with the general conclusions that he
has made as a result of his work.
With the grant proposal deadline looming, the faculty member takes the graduate student’s
research materials home for the weekend to read over. During her examination of this material
she is shocked to see that some of his experimental designs have serious flaws. For one
experiment he failed to include a critical control and in another he discounted some data points
that he had labeled as "outliers." The conclusions that the graduate student derived from his
experimental work are now in question, but they are crucial for the grant proposal. The faculty
member agonizes over how to proceed.
On Monday morning the faculty member approaches the graduate student and tells him of her
concerns. Before he has a chance to respond she tells him that he needs to repeat several of
the key experiments, using the appropriate protocols, and that they must be completed this
week, in time to be included in the grant proposal. The graduate student tells her that he had
planned to take part of the week off to attend a family reunion, but the faculty member is
adamant that he remain to carry out the required studies. The graduate student storms out of
the lab and the faculty member returns to her office to determine what her options are.
Case Study 1 questions
•  Did the faculty member act as a proper mentor to
the graduate student?
•  Did the student fulfill his responsibilities as a
mentee?
•  What issues need to be resolved moving
forward?
•  What would be your advice to the faculty
member?
•  What would be your advice to the graduate
student?
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CBI’s Mentoring Role
What mentor/mentee relationships
exist as part of CBI?
What mentoring possibilities are
missing in CBI and should be added?