Mentoring

Our field boasts a wide range of area studies and disciplinary knowledge, but how one makes one’s way through dissertation rites, funding cycles, postdocs, job markets, and non-academic career trajectories is often left as much to creative invention as it is to shared advice. Early-career scholars rightly lean on their advisors, their universities, and their peer networks with these issues, but the advantage of an association like ASEEES is that we can offer a good deal more.

ASEEES is sponsoring a new network to match volunteer mentors and mentees who are interested in conversation on these and other topics over the course of a single academic year.

MENTORS

Mid-career or senior scholars, as well as professionals from outside the academy. Mentors need not be members of ASEEES.

MENTEES

Graduate students at any stage of their careers or post-graduates within five years of receipt of their terminal graduate degree (including PhD, MLS, MA and JD). Mentees must be members of ASEEES.

HOW IT WORKS

• Mentors and mentees are matched by the ASEEES Mentoring Committee.
• This one-year mentoring relationship is intended for September 2024 through August 2025.
• Communications may take place as often as once a month, either electronically or where possible, in-person, but are intended more commonly as three to four conversations over the course of a year about the state of a given field; an exchange of experiences on entering these fields; and how a mentor can offer a fresh perspective on a junior colleague’s plans.
• Participants are encouraged, but not required, to meet once in person at the annual ASEEES convention.
• Mentoring conversations are intended to be reciprocal, in the sense that junior and senior colleagues are interested in sharing ideas and experiences at different locations on a career spectrum;
• While reading of dissertation chapters or grant proposals aids every young scholar, this program defers that labor to the mentee’s local networks. No commitment to reading is required of the mentor in this program.

Also see: Mentoring Resources

2024-2025 Call for Participation

Apply to find a mentor or volunteer to serve as a mentor by May 29.

TIMELINE

• May 29 – Register to volunteer as a mentor or to request a mentor.
• mid-August – Participants will be notified in mid-August or early September. 
• September – Program starts.
• Fall – If possible, schedule a meeting at the ASEEES Annual Convention.
• August 31 of the following year – Program ends.

ASEEES is happy to provide a certificate of participation for mentors upon request. Please contact Grants and Programs Manager Leah Valtin-Erwin at leah_aseees@pitt.edu.