Purpose
The purpose of the mentor scheme is to improve the work experience of new PhD students and other faculty and improve their integration into the department’s routines and activities. In particular our ambition is to create more interaction and better collaboration between foreign PhDs and new faculty and the rest of the department.
Organisation
The mentor scheme will have a set-up with informal meetings between the mentor and the mentee as the key activity. There are no formal rules for these meetings, but the department suggests that they take place monthly, perhaps over lunch or coffee. We also suggest that the mentor is available – within reason – to the mentee for ideas and advice on problems and situations as they occur during the mentee’s first months at the department.
The mentoring relationship officially ends after six months. However, the mentorship for tenure track assistant professors lasts for the whole tenure track period.
Roles
All new PhD students, postdocs or assistant professors will be assigned a mentor upon arrival at the department. The mentor will be selected among the department’s professors, associate professors and experienced assistant professors. The head of the section to which the new staff member belongs is in charge of appointing the mentor. It will be the responsibility of the mentee to approach the mentor.
The mentor will offer advice and ideas about life as an academic both in general and at the university and the department, based on his/her own experience. The mentor is not supposed to act as a second supervisor, nor is the mentor expected to be familiar with the mentee’s particular research area.
Mentorship is considered to be part of the job description of a faculty member; no teaching hours will be allocated nor will pay supplements be given for acting as mentor.