Graduate student success depends on strong, intentional advising and mentoring. While these roles are often discussed together, they serve different but complementary purposes. Understanding their unique contributions can help you better support students through their academic and professional journey. We also offer student-facing resources that you can share with your mentees to help them navigate these relationships from their side.
What’s the Difference?
Advising focuses on the academic trajectory of graduate students. As an advisor, you help students:
- Select courses and and meet degree requirements
- Navigate forms, policies, and administrative procedures
- Track progress toward milestones such as candidacy and graduation
- Stay on schedule and respond to institutional deadlines
Mentoring supports students’ broader development and professional identity. As a mentor, you:
- Guide students in their research, career pathways, and professional identity
- Provide encouragement and help students navigate academic challenges
- Connect students to professional networks, resources, and development opportunities
- Serve as a role model in your discipline or profession
Faculty may serve as both advisor and mentor to a student, though this is not always the case. Students are formally assigned academic advisors, but mentors are often identified informally and may come from within or beyond the student’s program or department.
Visualizing the Relationship
The diagram below illustrates how advising and mentoring responsibilities overlap, and where they differ in scope and intent.
Where Advising and Mentoring Overlap
Although distinct, both roles share important qualities:
- Offer guidance and constructive feedback
- Support goal-setting and academic planning
- Foster connection, motivation, and student retention
- Require regular communication, mutual respect, and clear expectations
When faculty serve effectively as both advisors and mentors, or collaborate with other mentors in a student’s network, they help students feel more supported, confident, and prepared for success.
Explore More
You can find downloadable resources, planning guides, and examples to support your work in the Advising Resources for Faculty and Mentoring Resources for Faculty pages.
Supporting Your Students
You are encouraged to share student-facing advising and mentoring resources with your graduate students. These pages are designed to help students understand the roles of advisors and mentors, prepare for meetings, and build strong professional relationships throughout their graduate journey.
View Advising and Mentoring Resources for Graduate Students
The information on these pages was developed in collaboration with the Faculty Advisory Council on Graduate Mentoring and Advising.
Learn more about the council and Boise State’s Graduate Mentoring & Advising Initiative here: Graduate Mentoring & Advising Initiative: Faculty Fellows and Advisory Councils.