- Navigating Academic Relationships
The bedrock of any good relationship – whether academic or otherwise – is clear communication and aligning expectations. When clear communication is not established, it can lead to isolation, stalemates, and even conflict, but in all instances, it negatively impacts productiv...
- Overheard at Ground Level: Fresh Brewed Mentoring
Vanderbilt's Edge for Scholars hosts weekly Zoom office hours, called Ground Level, with senior mentors and leadership. Discussions range from advice for grant writing and publishing, study design, tenure/promotion, managing a lab, and more. We collected pearls from these discuss...
- Mentoring for Grief & Growth at the End of a Dissertation
Just yesterday one of my Ph.D. students whose dissertation is due to the committee next week asked me "Please tell me the truth. Am I okay?" I assured the student that they were indeed okay, and not just okay but that they had completed an impressive body of work, that they had...
- Designing Your Career
This post condenses a talk by Mark Denison, MD, at a Vanderbilt Translational Bridge meeting.
For many trainees, and occasionally even the senior faculty who mentor them, career development is a black box: You put in papers, grants, teaching, research, and other career-hel...
- Using Timelines to Diagnose Problems in Career Planning
This post builds on a presentation at the 2019 CTSA Annual Meeting of Training Program Directors.
Reviewing intended career progression is a cornerstone of mentorship. Goals for milestones such as manuscript and grant submissions typically dominate discussion. Often goals are ...
- National Mentor Month: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."
I thought of this ...
- Not that Kind of Boss: Tales of Team Management and Mentorship
One of the more challenging aspects of being a principal investigator (PI) and running a research lab is people management. Labs are complex environments comprising hourly technicians, salaried research scientists, undergraduates in their first lab, graduate students in training,...
- All About My Mentor
For the past three years, every time I heard someone talking about their path to success – understanding success as something utopic and unachievable – they always shared a magic recipe: hard work, perseverance, resilience, don’t be afraid of failure, a little bit of luck here ...
- Helping When You Have No Answers
One sign of a caring community is that individuals regularly reach out to each other for help. In many circumstances, we can best help by sharing our knowledge or suggesting solutions. Questions ranging from “What is the proper statistical analysis?” to “How can I improve my ch...
- Speed Mentoring: Seven Steps to a Successful Session
Speed mentoring is a riff on speed dating that allows trainees and early career faculty to meet multiple mentors in a short time. Have you ever wished you could have ten minutes for advice or conversation with an experienced researcher outside your immediate circle of mentors...
