Foundations in Research Mentorship

Overview

The Foundations in Research Mentorship Online Guide is designed to support University of Toronto faculty as they navigate, develop, and cultivate academic mentoring relationships throughout their research career.

This guide contains the following sections:

Your Research Mentor Network
What Are Your Mentoring Needs?
Aligning Expectations
Effective Communication
Assessing Your Mentoring Relationships

This guide contains hands-on exercises, practical worksheets, reflection prompts, and other resources. Faculty are encouraged to navigate through this guide at their own pace and return to any helpful resources as their mentoring network and career evolve. The resources can be used for self-reflection or as guiding material for your mentoring practice.

This guide is grounded in evidence-based mentorship research and best practices, incorporating resources developed by established centers for research mentoring and faculty development.

We welcome your feedback. This mentorship guide is a living resource. If you have suggestions for improving it, please share them with us at cris@utoronto.ca

Your Research Mentor Network

Understand the benefits of mentorship and being an active architect of your mentoring relationships and network.

Why Does Mentorship Matter?

Strong mentoring relationships are among the most powerful predictors of long-term research success, scholarly productivity, and greater career satisfaction. Yet, many faculty navigate the complexities of an academic research career without adequate mentorship, often relying on informal, sporadic, or reactive relationships rather than thoughtfully cultivated ones.

Traditional models of mentorship often position mentees as a passive recipient of mentorship. However, faculty who benefit the most from mentoring are those who take an active role in identifying their mentoring needs, seeking out the right people to meet those needs, and continually shaping their mentoring relationships as their research career evolves.

By shifting the view of yourself from someone being mentored, to being the architect of your own mentoring network, you can actively build and manage your mentor network in a way that supports your broader research strategy. For faculty, this could mean:

Proactively seeking out mentors and/or peers with expertise relevant to your research program.
Understanding what your needs are from your mentors and how they can support you and your research.
Considering if there are aspects of your identity, background, or career path (e.g., first generation academic) that shape what you need from a mentor.
Driving conversations between you and your mentor to ensure alignment of the role they can play in supporting your research goals.
Seeking out new mentors or adapting your relationship with an existing mentor as your research program evolves or shifts in focus.

Reflection Prompt: Effective Mentoring Relationships

Take a moment to consider either a current or previous research mentoring relationship.

Consider the following:

What made this relationship particularly effective or ineffective?
What role did you play in making this relationship effective/ineffective?
What could you do to help ensure your mentoring relationships going forward are effective?
What are some of the aspects of this relationship that have been beneficial to you?

What Are Your Mentoring Needs?

Identify gaps and needs in your mentorship network relative to your research goals and values.

What's Important to You?

Having a strong network of mentors provides you with critical support and guidance throughout your research career. However, it can be challenging to know who to reach out to if you’re unclear on what your personal values and needs are.

Identifying your personal values and principles and how they tie into your research career will help you to better understand what areas you require support and guidance. Reflecting on your core research values when cultivating your network of mentors will help you seek out mentors whose expertise, style, and priorities align with what matters most to you. A mentoring relationship built on shared values is more likely to be honest, sustainable, and effective as you navigate challenges in your research career.

The following worksheet will ask you to identify your core research values and how they influence your research:

Who Is There to Support You?

A key step in expanding your mentor network and furthering your existing relationships is knowing what you need from your mentors. Creating a Mentor Map is an opportunity for you to reflect on your existing research mentor network, identify what your unmet needs are, and plan on how to expand your network to meet those needs.

This exercise, adapted from NCFDD’s Mentor Map, prompts you to think about your existing mentor network categorized into eight needs commonly experienced by faculty.

Common Mentor Map Categories

Professional Development

Many faculty members were trained as graduate students in how to do research tasks, but many did not receive training in the other important aspects of their job. Professional development refers to the “how to’s” of your academic position: from how to develop a strategic research agenda to how to respectfully disagree with a senior colleague to how to get a travel reimbursement. CRIS programming is centered around a Researcher Development Framework to support across a broad range of topics.

Role Models

Many academic professionals give themselves over completely to their jobs. They become disciplinary superstars but their personal well-being and relationships may suffer. A role model is someone who is doing life in a way you aspire to do it – in all aspects of life including professional success and personal fulfillment.

Substantive Feedback

Faculty members grow professionally through thoughtful and critical feedback from other experts in their field or discipline. Not only can peers and senior scholars provide tailored guidance for your scholarship or teaching, they might also have ideas for the best publication outlets or venues for your work. When you seek feedback from colleagues, you strengthen professional and personal relationships.

Intellectual Community

Many faculty members had a strong intellectual community back in graduate school and recount fond memories of invigorating intellectual debates and engaging conversations. But when people become professors and are hired into departments, they are often the only one who specializes in their disciplinary sub-field and this can feel lonely. By leaning on your peers and colleagues, you can build an intellectual community that can support you through the process of writing, developing your research strategy, and navigating research obstacles.

Accountability

Academic professionals tend to prioritize urgent tasks, such as teaching and service, because those aspects of the job have clear built-in accountability. Meanwhile, the things that are more important to your long-term success – such as your research and personal wellness – have little built-in accountability. For that reason, we encourage you to develop meaningful accountability structures to focus on what really matters and support you in aligning your time with your priorities.

Emotional Support

Faculty life comes with a host of stressors. You may be starting your first academic job and find yourself completely uprooted from your previous support systems, or you may have received a promotion that brings with it new duties and new potential conflicts and challenges. Wherever you are in your career, you need trusted colleagues who can listen empathetically and help you get through challenging times.

Access to Opportunities

It can be to your great advantage to build relationships with well-connected people in your department who have insider knowledge in the way your institution works. They know which funds in the budget can be accessed for your special project, and they know which people can help you access new opportunities.

Sponsorship

If you have a sponsor, you have someone in your corner who uses their power and influence on your behalf when you’re not in the room and you’re a topic of conversation. Sponsors are influential in shaping the narrative about your professional identity, body of work, and teaching approach. Sponsorship is essential for your success, yet it takes time and intentionality to build relationships with potential sponsors.

Creating Your Mentor Map

By organizing your existing mentors into categories, you will be able to better identify gaps in your support and guidance. Knowing which gaps are present in your mentor network will allow you to intentionally seek out mentors or adapt your existing mentoring relationships to fill those needs.

The following worksheet will help you identify your existing mentoring relationships and identify areas where you could expand your network. For more insights into the mentor mapping process, see our webinar on Mapping with Intention: Building Your Research Mentorship Community.

What Roles Can Your Mentors Play?

As you start to identify your specific mentoring needs, you may notice that different individuals offer different strengths. Rather than relying on a single mentor to meet all your needs, consider adopting a multiple mentoring model where you build a network of mentors that each play a different functional role to your research and professional growth.

The following worksheet lists some common needs from early career research faculty. As you check off which specific roles you want your mentor to play, reflect or even note down who would be the best mentor to fulfill this role.

Aligning Expectations

Identify what roles you need your mentors to play to support your research and clearly communicate expectations for the mentoring relationship.

What Are Your Goals and Are They Aligned?

A crucial element to a successful mentoring relationship is a shared understanding of the expectations of the relationship. It is important to communicate these expectations early in the relationship and to be open to changes as your research career evolves.

One commonly used approach to ensure that expectations are aligned among mentors and mentees is using a Mentoring Compact. A Mentoring Compact is an agreement between a mentor and mentee that outlines the expectations, boundaries, and responsibilities of each party to help create a structured and supportive relationship.

Below is a template for a Mentoring Compact and guiding questions to help align expectations with your mentor/mentee:

Effective Communication

Prepare for productive meetings with your mentor and consider how communication style and power dynamics impact relationships.

Communicating with Your Mentor

Strong communication is the foundation of any productive mentoring relationship. Clear, consistent, and honest dialogue allows both your mentor and you to align expectations, address concerns before they grow into larger issues, and ensure that the relationship continues to meet your evolving needs.

While communication is a shared responsibility, when mentees take the initiative to drive communication, it ensures their needs are met and that the relationship is more efficient and productive.

Strategies for Effective Communication

Below are some strategies to consider that may help strengthen communication between you and your mentor. These have been adapted from CIMER’s Mentoring Up Curriculum.

Determine your mentor’s preferred medium of communication (face-to-face, video-call, email) and acknowledge if it differs from your own personal preference.
Schedule a regular time to meet or check in with your mentor.
Keep track and share progress toward project and professional goals, both verbally and in writing.
Identify challenges and request your mentor’s advice/intervention when appropriate.

Prepare for meetings with your mentor by articulating specifically what you want to get out of the meeting and how you will follow up after the meeting.

How to Prepare for Your Meetings?

As you prepare for meetings with your mentor, it is helpful to identify how the relationship can help support your research goals and what challenges you would like to seek advice on from each mentor.

The following exercise will help you meaningfully prepare for your conversation with your mentor.

Coming soon: A Foundations in Research Mentorship Conversation Workbook designed to support meaningful, structured conversations between faculty and their mentors.

How Can Power Dynamics Influence Your Mentoring Relationships?

Power dynamics are an inherent part of mentoring relationships. Mentors may be more senior to their mentees, further along in their career, and may even hold influence over a mentee’s success. Left unaddressed, these imbalances can undermine trust and limit the productivity of the relationship. Even amongst peers and colleagues at a similar career stage, power dynamics can still be present and are oftentimes shaped by identity, positionality, access to networks or resources, or differences in lived experiences.

Effective research mentorship should be grounded in equity, diversity, inclusion, indigeneity, and accessibility (EDIIA). Mentoring relationships are shaped by power, identity, institutional culture, and differential access to opportunity. Attending to EDIIA helps faculty build mentoring relationships that are more respectful, inclusive, responsive, and supportive of diverse research trajectories and lived experiences.

Being aware of how power dynamics can shape communication and decision-making is an important first step toward building a more equitable and productive mentoring relationship. The following reflection prompt invites you to notice how these dynamics may have surfaced in the past and to reflect on how to best navigate this challenge moving forward.

Reflection Prompt: Power Dynamics in Mentoring

Take a moment to consider either a current or previous research mentoring relationship.

Consider the following:

Did a difference in power show up in this relationship (e.g., titles, access to networks, institutional hierarchy)?
How might aspects of identity (e.g., gender, race, career stage, etc.) shape how power was distributed in this relationship?
Recall a specific interaction where the power differential felt most present. What happened, and looking back, is there anything you wish you had said or asked?
Is there anything you wish you had discussed with this mentor early on that may have helped you better navigate this dynamic? How can you readdress those topics now?

Assessing Your Mentoring Relationships

Assess mentoring relationships to determine if they are meeting your evolving needs as a researcher.

Why Assess Your Mentoring Relationships?

Mentoring relationships are not static – as your research career progresses, the support you seek from your mentors will likely evolve as well. This means that these relationships require ongoing reflection and check-ins to ensure that expectations remain aligned and that the relationship is effective.

Taking time to reflect on your mentoring relationships allows you to identify what is working well, address any gaps or concerns early, and ensure that the support you are receiving continues to align with your goals as a researcher.

To do this, schedule regular opportunities to reflect on your mentoring relationships. This can be completed independently or discussed openly with your mentor.

Reflection Prompt: How to Assess Your Mentoring Relationships?

Take a moment to consider either a current or previous research mentoring relationship. Consider the following:

Am I receiving the type of support I need (research program management, technical expertise, career advice, guidance on funding)?
Is communication in this relationship open, respectful, and consistent?
Do I feel comfortable raising concerns or disagreeing with my mentor?
Does my mentor understand how my positionality (e.g., gender, race, career stage, etc.) may shape my experience differently than theirs?
Is this relationship helping me progress toward my research goals?
Are there gaps or needs that this mentor is not positioned to fill?
How am I contributing to this relationship in ways that also make it valuable for my mentor?

Evaluation Frameworks

To learn more about how to conduct a formal assessment of your mentoring relationships, explore the following list of validated evaluation frameworks:

Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA/MCA-21)

Originally designed for STEMM research mentoring contexts, this tool was developed to help evaluate research mentors and mentees across six competencies of mentorship: maintaining effective communication, aligning expectations, assessing understanding, addressing diversity, fostering independence, and promoting professional development.

Original: Fleming M, House S, Hanson VS, et al. The Mentoring Competency Assessment: validation of a new instrument to evaluate skills of research mentors. Acad Med. 2013;88(7):1002-1008. doi:10.1097/ACM.0b013e318295e298
Revalidation: Hyun SH, Rogers JG, House SC, Sorkness CA, Pfund C. Revalidation of the Mentoring Competency Assessment to evaluate skills of research mentors: The MCA-21. J Clin Transl Sci. 2022;6(1):e46. Published 2022 Apr 1. doi:10.1017/cts.2022.381

Mentor Evaluation Tool

A tool to assess the effectiveness of mentoring dyads in the health sciences field and has been tested with junior faculty across Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy schools.

Yukawa M, Gansky SA, O’Sullivan P, Teherani A, Feldman MD. A new Mentor Evaluation Tool: Evidence of validity. PLoS One. 2020;15(6):e0234345. Published 2020 Jun 16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0234345

Mentorship Profile Questionnaire and Mentorship Effectiveness Scale

A tool to help mentees reflect and measure the effectiveness of their mentoring relationships.

Berk RA, Berg J, Mortimer R, Walton-Moss B, Yeo TP. Measuring the effectiveness of faculty mentoring relationships. Acad Med. 2005;80(1):66-71. doi:10.1097/00001888-200501000-00017

Resources

Below is a list of resources and templates that were shared throughout this guide:

Explore Related Events and Workshops

To learn more about the topics discussed throughout this Guide, see below for sessions offered as part of CRIS’ Foundations in Research Mentorship Program:

Mapping with Intention: Building Your Research Mentorship Community

Host: Centre for Research & Innovation Support, U of T

Date: September 24, 2026

Cost: Free

Access requirements: UTORid

This webinar hosted by CRIS with NCFDD will guide faculty through the Mentor Mapping process and share methods to cultivate mentoring relationships that support your research goals.

The Art of “Menteeship”: A Book Talk and Conversation with Dr. Maria LaMonaca Wisdom