Mentoring

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is a process through which experienced mentors offer support, advices and understanding to their younger and less experienced counterparts (mentees). This process helps the early-career researchers to start and develop their studies or career and succeed in their lives. The first mentoring programs started in NKC gender & science.

Advantages of mentoring

For mentees:

Getting experiences
Possibility of learning and developing new skills
Setting of goals
Motivation
Faster reaching the successes
Unbiassed feedback
New important contacts

For mentor:

Getting new contacts
Possibility of participating on development of young researcher career
Opportunity to get another view of point
Practice the communication skill

Mentoring is a common part of education and professional development of early career researchers at universities and institutes in western Europe and U.S.

Mentoring programs for early career researchers provide for example:

Mentoring at the Biology Centre

Mentoring programme is realised within the ABERA project.

One to one mentoring

It´s about the support in career development of early career researchers on biology field. This will happen thanks to mediation of contac to mentor, which can come from Biology centre or any other institution in Czech Republic or around the world.

The mentoring program lasts 10 months and frequency of meetings and online communication is up to you and your mentor.

The program starts with Opening workshop, the expected date is 25.2.2021. The number of mentees is limited to 15.

Do you want to join the program and get start your research career?

It is in your hands! More information via email tina.vrabcova@bc.cas.cz

Target group

For active students from Faculty of Science, SBU (for those who start their career)
PhD students and postdocs employment at Biology centre

Do you want to be a mentor at BC?

We are looking for mentors for early career researchers from the ranks of BC researchers.

What does it involve?

The joy from getting new contact and to communicate according to your possibilities and mentee´s needs.

More information via email tina.vrabcova@bc.cas.cz

Mentoring news at BC

Looking back at the 2nd year of the mentoring program

The 2nd year of the Mentoring Programme ended with the final meeting of the mentees. The feedback on the whole process was very positive, below we selected a few comments from the program participants.

Priscila, ENTU

“I originally joined the program driven by the desire to search for a way out of academia and to make connections with peers that experienced the same.

However, throughout the mentoring process and networking provided by the program I found, instead, my somewhat lost passion for science and I realized that is possible to find great conditions for research and creative work in Academia. Truly, no system is perfect, but regardless of what we

choose to be in this life, we must think outside the box and take it into our hands to make it successful.”

Sentiko, ENTU

Regular meetings with mentor helped him to focus on his tasks and gave him beneficial advice and feedback regarding results, analysis, sample evaluation. Now is he prepared for submit paper in journal in March.

Faydima, UMBR

„I appreciated the program, which showed me that before the final aim and goal, I must research enough and find out all the prerequisites for that one. Fulfill them and then step into the main journey.

However, I am satisfied with the program because first, with the guidance and help of a mentor, I found out what gaps I have. How much I must work on the basis and backgrounds and then go to the main road.“

The 2nd cycle of the Mentoring program was finished by Closing meeting with mentees. Their feedback from program and whole process was very positive. You can read the feedback from some of the mentees below.

The Mentoring program 2022

Biology Centre is launching a new mentoring program, which will start in February 2022. This program lasts 10 months and is appropriate for active Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows working at BC.

Mentoring is a process through which experienced mentors offer support, advice, and understanding to their younger and less experienced counterparts (mentees).

How the program works:

The Introductory workshop (led by Kateřina Cidlinská,Ph.D. and Kateřina Machovcová, Ph.D. from Institute of Psychology, CAS) – identification and analysis of your goals.

Mentor – either you find the mentor yourself or we help you with it. Your mentor can be from BC or another institution in the Czech Republic or wherever from Europe.

Mentoring – sharing of experience, advice, feedback on personal meetings, via emails or phone calls – the way and frequency is up to you and your mentor.

Abroad trip (when you have a mentor from abroad) – the costs connected with traveling are reimbursed from the ABERA grant.

Closing meeting – december 2022, evaluational meeting about progress in fields set at the beginning of the program.

The Mentoring program is very individual, is a kick-start to your research career, helps with orientation in the academic system, and enables you to get to know new people. It requires a pro-active approach, initiative, and willingness to work on self-development.

You can register for mentoring program via email tina.vrabcova@bc.cas.cz.

The Mentoring program 2021

Introductory mentoring workshop is successfully over

In the last BC Newsletter was mentioned the invitation to the mentoring workshop. On 25th of February this workshop was realized and the target group was Ph.D. students and postdocs. The lecturers were from Institute of Psychology CAS – Kateřina Cidlinská, Ph.D. and Kateřina Machovcová, Ph.D.

The introductory workshop was held online and there were 10 active participants. These mentees got valuable advice and now they are in the phase of contacting their mentors. Mentoring programme lasts 10 months. During this time mentee will be in touch with her/his mentor by their needs. The whole process is voluntary. In many cases, it will lead to exciting research cooperation and a mutually beneficial relationship. People can be a mentor and a mentee in any age – we can still learn new things and share our experience.

Mentoring in a research career

25.2.2021 mentoring will start at BC. Do you want to participate on Introductory workshop? Write an email to tina.vrabcova@bc.cas.cz.

Lectures

1) Mentoring – the effective tool of development for individuals and institutions

2) How mentoring helps

3) About the differences between mentor and mentee

4) Mentoring and science career

1) Mentoring – the effective tool of development for individuals and institutions

The topic of our first video spot about mentoring is „Mentoring – the effective tool of development for individuals and institutions“. Mentoring as a modern approach to professional and personal development introduces Kateřina Cidlinská, Ph.D. from Institute of Psychology, CAS.

About Kateřina:

She graduated in sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences (Charles University)
She is a founder of the first Czech mentoring program for PhD students and post – doctoral students
She advocates practical support of academic career development for early career researchers
She is engaged in research of academic career, working conditions and gender inequality in science
Between 2017 – 2019, she was the president of European mentoring programme network – EUMENT-NET
For last 4 years she was the president of Czech Association of PhD students (České asociace doktorandek a doktorandů)

Mentoring as a modern approach to professional and personal development introduces Kateřina Cidlinská, Ph.D. from Institute of Psychology, CAS.

2) How mentoring helps

The second video spot about mentoring was recorded by Vladimíra Petráková, Ph.D. from J.Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, CAS. This video is named „How mentoring helps“ and Vlaďka described her experience with mentoring.

About Vlaďka:

She obtained her Ph.D. at ČVUT and Institute of Physics in the Biomedicine engineering field.
Between 2016 – 2019 she was as Humboldt Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin, where she studied plasmonically amplified fluorophores and supersensitive microscopy.
She is establishing her own research group at J.Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry from January 2021
She is one of the founders of Czechpats in Science organisation, which supports Czech researchers in abroad.
She has 4 children.

How mentoring helps

3) About the differences between mentor and mentee

25th of February will be held the Introductory mentoring workshop for active early career researchers. Don´t hesitate and register via email tina.vrabcova@bc.cas.cz and find your mentor.

Mentoring is more and more popular in the Czech Republic, not only at universities or research institutes. How mentoring helps the young people to find their pathway and get practical information is introduced by Anna Rojková from SOCIDE Company, which established the Active students project.

About the differences between mentor and mentee and how mentoring broadens early career researcher´s horizons is telling the polar ecologist Marie Šabacká, Ph.D. from the University of South Bohemia, who is a mentor since spring 2020.

The mentoring project of Active student is available here https://socide.cz/

About Marie:

She has a master’s degree in Biology from the University of South Bohemia.
She obtained her Ph.D. in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from Montana State University, Bozeman, USA.
Her Ph.D. was focused on terrestrial microbial ecology across the polar desert landscape of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.
The Postdoctoral position with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, after that short postdoc at School of Geographical Sciences at University of Bristol, UK,
Her current position is at the Centre for Polar Ecology, University of South Bohemia.
She has participated in nearly 20 research expeditions or voyages into the Arctic, Antarctic, and other remote areas.

About the differences between mentor and mentee

4) Mentoring and science career

In the last of our videos Dr. Kateřina Falk summarizes her career, during which she changed the position of mentee and mentor. As she said: “Ii is very important to realize that in any age you can be mentor or mentee”.

About Kateřina:

she is focused on plasma physic, interaction of matter and lasers,
she studied on Imperial College, she obtained her Ph.D. at Oxford University,
she worked in National laboratory Los Alamos in New Mexico,
Currently, she is a group leader in Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf,
She obtained significant scientific awards like SET for Britain, Neuron Impuls, etc.,
she is active in popularization of science,
She participated in mentoring programs as mentor and mentee for NKC, VŠCHT and British Chamber Commerce BCCG.

Mentoring and science career