Mentorship

What do we do?

The Mentorship Committee is in charge of organizing seminars and workshops and providing resources to promote successful mentorship practice. We also organize events to bring postdocs and potential mentors and mentees together to facilitate the development of new mentor-mentee relationships. 
 
Buddy Program: This program matches incoming postdocs with their colleagues already working at Yale. Current postdocs offer social support by answering questions about Yale, New Haven, or postdoc life in general.
 
Peer-Mentorship Program: This program matches a small group of fellow postdocs to work on career development and navigating mentorship relationships using a structured curriculum. This program runs approximately the length of a semester with monthly meetings.
 
Faculty-Postdoc Mentorship Program: This program matches small groups of postdoc mentees with a faculty mentor. Postdocs can use this opportunity to discuss various mentoring and career-related topics with their peers and with their more experienced mentors in a group setting.
 
Modern Instructor: The program selects instructors to teach their focus topic(s) to interested undergraduates and graduates at Yale over a 2-day period. This program allows instructors to gain classroom teaching experience by prompting active participation from the audience. 
 
Mentorship Training Program:  This program provides mentorship training for Postdocs and Associate Research Scientists. The program is facilitated by Dr. Erin Heckler and Dr. Victoria Hallinan of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs in collaboration with the YPA Mentorship Committee using the CIMER Project curriculum. Certification is provided upon completion.
 
GUMI: This program is intended to connect Yale undergraduate students with postdoc, graduate student, and professional student mentors from a wide range of fields. 
 
Spook-takular Science: This program runs in conjunction with the Office of New Haven Affairs and connects Yale postdocs with New Haven area public high school students. Selected postdocs deliver lightning talks to a group of high-school students. 
 

How can you get involved?

We are always looking for help! If you are enthusiastic about mentoring and/or you have some ideas for potential workshops/seminars/events, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to email our two Mentorship Committee Coordinators (Swapna Naik, swapna.naik@yale.edu and Marija Markicevic, marija.markicevic@yale.edu) with ideas and suggestions.

Committee members and contact info:

Swapna Naik

Coordinator

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Dagmar Zigackova

Coordinator

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Thomas Torng

Faculty-Postdoc Mentoring Coordinator

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Georgios Palaiokrassas

Faculty-postdoc coordinator

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Amanda Bentley-DeSousa

Modern Instructor Workshop Coordinator

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Kehinde Mary Taiwo

Mentorship Training Coordinator

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Srikar Gopinath

Peer-mentorship coordinator

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Peng Xu

Buddy program coordinator

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Aman Kumar

Member

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Adam Krysztofiak

Member

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Hesham Mukhta

Member

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