11  Mentorship and Development

I take your mentorship seriously. My goal is to help you develop into the researcher and person you want to become. I want to get you where you want to be — whether that’s staying in academia, moving to industry, working in public health, or taking your skills in a direction neither of us has imagined yet. Good mentorship means giving you honest feedback, creating space to take intellectual risks, and supporting your growth even when it means you eventually move on.1

11.1 My Mentorship Philosophy

I view mentorship as a collaborative relationship. You’re not here just to execute my research ideas; you’re here to develop your own scientific thinking and skills. I expect you to come with questions, push back on ideas (including mine), and gradually take more ownership of your research. In return, I commit to being available for regular check-ins, giving constructive feedback, and advocating for you — in the lab and beyond.

Mentorship extends beyond science. I care about your wellbeing and want to understand how your work fits into your broader life and goals. If you’re struggling with something — whether it’s professional, academic, or personal — you can tell me. I won’t have all the answers, but I’ll help you find resources or just listen. That said, I’m not a trained therapist or counselor. If you need that kind of support, I’ll help you connect with someone who is — see the Getting Help chapter.

This is a professional relationship. I care about you as a person, and I’ll invest in your success, but my role is mentor, not friend. That distinction matters because there’s a real power differential between us — I write your evaluations, your letters, and have influence over your career. Keeping a clear boundary is what allows me to give you honest feedback and fair evaluations.2

Our backgrounds, identities, and experiences may differ. I’ll work to understand your perspective, but I won’t always get it right — tell me when I miss something. You should have multiple mentors who can provide different (often conflicting) advice, come from different perspectives, and provide support in different ways. No single mentor can (or should) be everything to you — see Building a Mentoring Network.

11.2 Matching Expectations

Mismatched expectations can be a big source of friction in mentor-mentee relationships.3 To avoid expectation misalignment, we will make expectations explicit, write them down, and revisit them.

In your first weeks in the lab, we’ll have a dedicated conversation about how we’ll work together. This isn’t about your research — it’s about the working relationship itself. Topics include:

  • Meeting frequency and format (weekly 30 minutes? biweekly 60 minutes?)
  • Communication preferences (email vs. Slack, response time expectations)
  • Feedback style (how direct, written vs. verbal, how often)
  • Work patterns and availability (core hours, remote work, vacations)
  • How you learn best and what kind of support you need

This conversation is bidirectional. I’ll tell you what I need from you, and I want to hear what you need from me. We’ll revisit it at least once a year — or sooner if something isn’t working. A first-year grad student and a fifth-year grad student need different things from me, and your needs will shift as you grow. If something about our working relationship isn’t serving you, tell me so we can adjust.

To help structure this conversation, we will use these two tools:4

11.3 Individual Development Plans (IDPs)

Within your first month in the lab, we’ll work together to create an Individual Development Plan. This will be your road map and it will outline:

  • Your scientific interests and career goals
  • Technical skills you want to develop
  • Publications, presentations, or other milestones you hope to achieve
  • How your current project(s) support these goals

We’ll revisit your IDP together at least once a year (more often if needed). It is not a contract — my expectation is it will change as your goals change. But having this clarity helps both of us make sure your time here counts toward what matters to you.

11.4 Building a Mentoring Network

No single mentor can (or should) meet all your needs. You need a mentoring network — multiple people who collectively support different dimensions of your development.5

Seek different mentors for different things. Methods expertise, career strategy, identity-specific support, writing, teaching, social support, navigating your specific corner of academia — all of these are reasons to find someone beyond me. Your committee members, collaborators, peers, and people outside Stanford all count. I’ll help you identify potential mentors if you tell me what you’re looking for.

11.5 Career Development Support

I want to help you develop skills and connections beyond your immediate research projects.

  • Networking: I’ll introduce you to collaborators, invite you to relevant conferences and seminars, and help you build relationships in your area of research.
  • Grant writing and funding: I’ll involve interested graduate students and postdocs in grant proposals. This is a valuable skill, and being part of the funding conversation matters.
  • Job market preparation: For those heading to the academic or industry job market, we’ll start early. This includes feedback on your CV and research statement, practice talks, and strategic advice about positions and timing.
  • Professional development: Whether it’s learning to teach, improving your writing, understanding publishing strategy, or other skills — let me know what would be useful and we’ll figure it out together.

We’ll discuss authorship expectations early on every project. Authorship shouldn’t be a surprise or a source of anxiety — see the Expectations chapter for how we handle it.

11.6 Letters of Recommendation

I’m happy to write you a strong letter of recommendation.6 To write a strong letter, I need to know you reasonably well — ideally, we’ve worked together for at least a few months and you have concrete examples I can use in your letter.

Good letters take time. For your first letter of recommendation, you should give me as much time as possible and you should send me:

  • The position description or call for applications
  • The website for the thing you’re applying to (so I can include details tailored to the application)
  • Your current CV
  • Any specific points you’d like me to emphasize
  • The deadline

For your first letter, we will write it together. You’ll fill out an outline or draft based on a template I provide. You can do as much or as little of the filling out as you are comfortable with. I will write the letter in a shared document. You will be able to see what I am submitting. I think this level of transparency is important because (1) it makes writing future recommendation letters for you easy, (2) you’ll eventually have to write your own letters (without guidance), and (3) it ensures you know exactly what I plan to submit about you and gives you a chance to change something.

After the first letter, you’ll tailor this version for each new application. Update the essential facts (e.g., number of publications, years we’ve known each other) and anything else that has changed.

I will tell you if I can’t write you a strong letter. Writing a lukewarm or negative letter of recommendation can be devastating to an early career. If I don’t write you a strong letter, it is not a judgment about you — it might just mean we haven’t worked together long enough, we haven’t produced concrete output I can reference in your letter, or that someone else could speak to your strengths more directly.

11.8 Feedback and Performance Review

I give feedback often and in multiple forms. In our one-on-ones (which I try to do at least monthly for graduate students and postdocs), we’ll discuss what’s working, what’s challenging, and what you should focus on next. For big-picture feedback, we’ll do formal reviews: once yearly for postdocs, around the end of each academic year for graduate students, and as you transition through your undergraduate career.

This feedback should never be a surprise. If something isn’t working — a paper draft that needs a major rethink, a presentation that fell flat — I’ll tell you directly and help you improve. If you’re doing great, I’ll tell you that too. And if you want feedback at any time, ask.

I will also ask you for feedback — at least once a year. How is the mentoring relationship working? What could I do better?7 This isn’t a formality. I genuinely want to know, and I’ll act on what you tell me. Formal reviews are also a natural time to revisit whether our working expectations still make sense.

11.9 When Things Aren’t Working

Sometimes mentoring relationships have friction. That’s normal — two people working closely together won’t always be perfectly in sync.

Option 1: Tell me. Most issues are fixable with a direct conversation, and I’d rather hear about a problem early than have it fester.

Option 2: If you’re not comfortable telling me — or if I’m the problem — talk to someone else. Within Epidemiology and Population Health, you can reach out to Professor David Rehkopf, Professor Michelle Odden, or Professor Melissa Bondy. For people outside the department, you can contact the Stanford Office of the Ombuds, which provides confidential, impartial support for resolving any academic or work-related concern, or Stanford TILE.

Option 3: Seek a different mentor. This is your career and training and you have ownership over it. I will not be offended. I want what is best for you and that includes supporting you from a distance if you think that is the best path forward.

See the Getting Help chapter for more resources. I won’t take it personally if you need to have that conversation with someone else first. What matters is that the problem gets addressed.

  1. An eLife article makes the case for why writing down mentorship expectations is useful for both the mentee and the mentor.↩︎

  2. A 2019 National Academies report on effective mentorship in STEMM makes this case well: clear professional boundaries protect both mentor and mentee and are a prerequisite for honest, productive mentoring relationships.↩︎

  3. Masters & Kreeger (2017), “Ten simple rules for developing a mentor–mentee expectations document,” PLOS Computational Biology, provides a practical framework for this conversation.↩︎

  4. Note that this is separate from your Individual Development Plan below. The expectations conversation is about how we work together; the IDP is about where you’re headed.↩︎

  5. See Chapter 4 of The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM. tldr: trainees with multiple mentors report higher satisfaction and better career outcomes than those who rely on a single mentor.↩︎

  6. If I cannot write you a strong letter of recommendation I will tell you. I will never write you a lukewarm or negative letter of recommendation.↩︎

  7. A mentorship survey by the Meren Lab found that 67% of mentees reported their mentors never asked them for feedback — and nearly all of the most negative mentee experiences were concentrated in that group. The fix is simple: ask. So I will.↩︎