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Graduate Mentoring Resources for Faculty and Staff

This page offers tools and templates to help you build strong, inclusive, and effective mentoring relationships with graduate students. You’ll find resources to support every stage of the mentoring process, from initiating conversations to aligning expectations, tracking progress, and navigating challenges.

Looking for advising tools instead? 

Share These Student Resources

We encourage faculty to share our student-facing mentoring content with your mentees. These pages help students understand what mentoring is, how to find and build mentoring relationships, and how to engage productively with mentors.

These student resources are designed to complement the tools and approaches shared below.

Getting Started: Mentoring Foundations

Explore key concepts, benefits, and evidence-based practices to support effective mentoring relationships.

Boise State Resources

  • Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) Free tools, frameworks and training modules to strengthen mentoring. Visit CIMER.
  • Council of Graduate Schools
    Curated mentoring resources for faculty, students, and administrators. Explore CGS mentoring resources.

Establishing Expectations and Agreements

Creating shared expectations at the beginning of a mentoring relationship can prevent miscommunication and promote clarity.

Mentor-Mentee Agreements

Use these tools to discuss roles, communication preferences, timelines, authorship, and more.

Templates and Examples

Tip: Table 3 in the above article outlines sample topics to include in mentoring agreements. 

Supporting Student Progress

Use structured tools to facilitate ongoing communication and progress tracking.

Individual Development Plans (IDPs)

Help students define and revisit academic, professional, and personal goals.

Discipline-Specific IDP Tools & Examples

Articles and Guidance

Graduate Student Annual Progress Meetings 

Use structured tools to facilitate ongoing communication and progress tracking.

Templates and Examples

University of Illinois Examples:

University of Connecticut Template for Annual Reviews of Doctoral Students

Articles and Guidance

Reflection & Evaluation Tools

Support feedback and mutual growth in your mentoring relationships.

Mentor Self-Assessment Tools

  • Reflect on your own mentoring practices and identify areas for growth
Templates and Examples
Articles and Guidance

Navigating Mentoring Challenges

Prepare for difficult conversations and transitions with tools to guide reflection and problem-solving.

Case Studies and Discussion Guides

Practice identifying and responding to common mentoring dilemmas.

Resources

Difficult Conversations and Conflict Resolution

  • Guidance for navigating common mentoring challenges, including miscommunication, mismatched expectations, or evolving student needs
  • Conversation frameworks, reflection prompts, and case studies to help you approach sensitive topics with empathy, clarity, and professionalism
Resources
Further Reading

Additional Mentoring Guides

  • A Mentoring Guidebook for Faculty: Helping Graduate Students Grow Into Respected Professionals and Trusted Colleagues

Guidebook from the Graduate Student Senate of Case Western Reserve University that includes checklists and worksheets for faculty advisor-advisee first meetings and setting expectations, and addresses advising and mentoring within diverse communities.

Access A Mentoring Guidebook for Faculty

  • How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty

A detailed guide to effective mentoring from University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School that addresses reasons for mentoring, general guidelines for mentoring, advice on initial meetings, how graduate programs can encourage mentoring and much more.

Access How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty

  • Mentoring Toolkit from University of Southern California

Toolkit designed to engage mentors in deeper thinking about how mentoring relationships in graduate education can embody equity-mindedness.

Access the Mentoring Toolkit

  • On Being a Mentor: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty

W. Brad Johnson & Kimberly A. Griffin (2025)

A widely used resource on the responsibilities and challenges of mentoring graduate students.

View on Routledge

Mentoring Training

  • National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) Courses

Access asynchronous mentor and mentee training tools that are publicly accessible through the course catalog of the National Research Mentoring Network. Explore courses such as Advancing Inclusive Mentoring (AIM) and Mentoring Graduate Students, Post Docs & Early Career Faculty. Courses are self-directed and designed to help faculty members (or other experienced researchers) optimize their mentoring relationships with graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early-career faculty.

  • Postdoc Academy Mentor Workshops and Toolkits

Workshops and toolkits for mentors addressing topics from setting expectations and building actionable career plans to giving & receiving feedback, managing time, and managing career transitions, among others. Ten toolkits for mentors each include an evidence-based video that introduces the topic, a video where fellow mentors share about their mentoring practices and favorite tools, reflection prompts, and additional resources on the topic.

Access Postdoc Academy Mentor Resources

Share A Resource or Suggestion

Have a mentoring resource you’ve used with students that others may benefit from? Have ideas about additional content? Contact the Graduate Student Success Center at success@boisestate.edu.

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