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Efficiency Tools

Mentee-Mentor Agreement

An interactive tool for navigatingmentee-mentor relationships
Edge for Scholars’ Mentee-Mentor Agreement uses an interactive online approach to initiate and revisit the important conversations that are building blocks for a solid mentee-mentor relationship.

Mentoring relationships substantially contribute to professional career development, and excellent communication underlies successful mentoring relationships. To get these relationships off to a good start, training wheels sometimes may help accelerate progress.

Most people think of pre-built contracts filled with legal language when they think of mentoring agreements. However, mentoring relationships must be custom-built to serve the mentee’s needs and the mentor’s experience. Shouldn’t mentoring agreements do the same thing to help these relationships form?

Designed to serve mentees’ needs at various phases, from predoc to postdoc to early-career faculty, the REDCap-based tool facilitates the unique needs of each mentee-mentor pairing.

The Mentee-Mentor Agreement asks a series of questions under broad categories:

  • 1:1 Meetings
  • Lab Meetings
  • Communication
  • Mentoring Panel
  • Financial Support
  • Scientific Development
  • Approach to Scholarly Products
  • Career & Professional Development
    • NIH’s yearly Individual Development Plan (IDP) requirements

mentor notes

The Mentee-Mentor agreement is a more user friendly, relevant document which serves as an active guidepost applicable to all levels of the scholar’s career development.

Available to use with or without Flight Tracker.

How it Works
Complete Questions

Mentee spends approximately 30-45 minutes answering questions via the online portal.

Completion by the mentee initiates an email to the mentor indicating an agreement is ready for review.

Align Expectations

Mentee and mentor meet to discuss questions with a focus on areas where viewpoints do not align.

The final agreement is saved in the online portal, which is editable.  Agreement is available as a PDF.

Revisit & Adjust

The Agreement is a living document to revisit and adjust over time.

It provides a deliberate opportunity to reflect on current needs, celebrate accomplishments, and address issues.

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Mentee-Mentor Agreement in Conjunction with Flight Tracker
In Flight Tracker, go to the Mentors menu.
Select Mentee-Mentor Agreements Dashboard.
Follow the three-step process.

Mentee-Mentor Agreement Without Flight Tracker

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The mentee logs in to the tool and spends approximately 30-45 minutes answering questions via the online portal. Completion by the mentee initiates an email to the mentor indicating an agreement is ready for review. Next, the mentee and mentor schedule an hour to meet and discuss each question, focusing on those questions for which mentee and mentor viewpoints do not align. Ideally, this prompts productive discussions about those viewpoints, and ultimately results in a final and agreed upon response. Once complete, users can save and store the final agreement in the online portal—editable at any time—and a PDF version may be saved or printed.

The Mentee-Mentor Agreement aspires to be a living document to revisit and adjust over time. Mentoring relationships develop and change over time, and so the Mentee-Mentor Agreement needs to adapt to those changes. After the initial meeting, it is recommended the mentee and mentor(s) revisit the Agreement six months later. They can address topics not previously discussed and confirm that their original responses still align. To keep current, the mentee and mentor should then revisit the document annually. By offering this iterative process, the Agreement provides the mentee and mentor a deliberate opportunity to reflect on current career stage needs and successes accomplished and to discuss how to address minor hiccups or major issues that may have arisen.

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The Mentee-Mentor Agreement asks a series of questions under broad categories:

  • 1:1 Meetings
  • Lab Meetings
  • Communication
  • Mentoring Panel
  • Financial Support
  • Scientific Development
  • Approach to Scholarly Products
  • Career & Professional Development
    • NIH’s yearly Individual Development Plan (IDP) requirements

View a sample agreement

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First, check out the EdgeForScholars.org blog post entitled Getting Expectations in Line with an Online Mentoring Agreement. This post is designed to introduce the topic to you and relevant stakeholders.

If your group and/or institution would like to employ the Mentee-Mentor Agreement program, then you have two options to adopt, depending on your situation.

A. If you have Flight Tracker installed to track your group of scholars:

  1. Check on your Flight Tracker Home page that the Mentee-Mentor piece is On.
  2. Under the Mentor menu, go to Mentee-Mentor Agreements Dashboard. Follow the three steps there.
    1. First, configure any institutional resources to be checked off.
    2. Second, make sure the REDCap user-ids for all the scholars and mentors are stored properly in REDCap.
    3. Third, share the link to access the agreements.
  3. Your local Flight Tracker will then house any completed agreements.Long term, Flight Tracker will automatically queue up reminder emails to go to the scholar-mentor pair at appropriate times (namely, 6-12 months after its completion).

B. If you have scholars that aren’t being tracked by Flight Tracker:

Your scholars can still use a restricted version of the Mentee-Mentor Agreement. Be aware that Vanderbilt will house and own any data collected by this process.

Have your scholar/mentee visit https://redcap.link/ft_mma and sign up to fill out an agreement. Flight Tracker will contact the mentor when completed. No long-term follow up will take place under this system (i.e., repeating the agreement in six months).

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The Mentee-Mentor Agreement has been updated to fulfill the NIH’s yearly Individual Development Plan (IDP) requirements. You’re welcome!

QUESTIONS

Email Scott Pearson at scott.j.pearson@vumc.org.

upcoming Mentee-Mentor Agreement events [ view all events ]
November 21, 2024 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Panel | MCN C-2209
Edge Seminar
Grants & Funding
Pre/Post Doc
Early career faculty
December 2, 2024 | 1:00 pm (In-Person) Dr. Todd Edwards | Room 1040, 2525 West End
Mentoring
Mid career faculty
Senior faculty
December 5, 2024 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Dr. Digna Velez-Edwards | MCN C-2209
Edge Seminar
Newman Seminar
Grants & Funding
Pre/Post Doc
Early career faculty
January 13, 2025 | 9:00 am (In-Person) Dr. Todd Edwards | 2525 West End, 6 Floor boardroom
Grant Pacing Workshop
Grants & Funding
Pre/Post Doc
January 16, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Panel | PRB 206
Newman Seminar
Grants & Funding
Early career faculty
January 30, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Dr. Bill Cooper | PRB 206
Edge Seminar
Pre/Post Doc
RCR
February 6, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Panel | PRB 206
Newman Seminar
Faculty Life
Early career faculty
February 12, 2025 | 8:00 am (In-Person) Student Life Center
Forum
Doing Research
Pre/Post Doc
Early career faculty
Mid career faculty
Senior faculty
February 20, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Dr. James West | PRB 206
Edge Seminar
Writing & Publishing
Pre/Post Doc
RCR
March 27, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) TBA | PRB 206
Edge Seminar
Newman Seminar
Faculty Life
Mentoring
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Management & Leadership
Pre/Post Doc
Early career faculty
RCR
April 3, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Russ Bebee | PRB 206
Edge Seminar
Doing Research
Pre/Post Doc
Early career faculty
April 10, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Dr. Julie Bastarache | PRB 206
Newman Seminar
Grants & Funding
Early career faculty
May 1, 2025 | 12:00 pm (In-Person) Stacey Satchell | PRB 206
Edge Seminar
Newman Seminar
Faculty Life
Life Hacks
Pre/Post Doc
Early career faculty
A new way to think about collaboration between mentee and mentor.
Testimonials
I like that it allows an assessment of whether the research of mentor's team and mentor's mentoring skill meet mentee's expectation and whether mentee's performance during the first period meets mentor's expectation.

~ Mentee-Mentor Agreement User

It's nice to get in the same room with your mentee/mentor and discuss things that may be felt to be "assumed" about the mentee-mentor relationship. That made this exercise useful for me. I'd think probably useful to review it once a year.

~ Mentee-Mentor Agreement User

Going through this made me realize that I had a great mentor because we already touch on many of these in our meetings.

~ Mentee-Mentor Agreement User

FLIGHT TRACKER
automated tracking & analysis of career outcomes
Success

Assistant Professor

Department
Medicine/Genetic Medicine
Award Type
  • New Investigator Award

Assistant Professor

Department
Dermatology; Biomedical Engineering
Award Type
  • I01
  • IK2

Associate Professor

Department
Medicine, Division of Clinical Pharmacology
Award Type
  • R01

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Department
Medicine/Division of Rheumatology and Immunology
Award Type
  • K08



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