Mentorship program

In 2017, a mentorship program was introduced for the incoming class of graduate students. This program had mixed success, depending on the engagement level of the (faculty and graduate student) mentors. It was discontinued the following year.

In 2019, The mentoring program was revived, with attempts made to fix the problems of the 2017 version. It now works as follows:

Each 1st-year student will be assigned a graduate mentor and a faculty mentor. The faculty mentor is meant as a resource, and students should take advantage of having access to them often. However, the faculty mentor will not be expected to reach out and initiate a meeting, so it is on the student to contact their faculty mentor if help is needed. The graduate mentor, however, will be highly engaged with their mentees and will initiate contact to check in on the mentee. If you feel that you do not need mentoring, please do still respond to your grad mentor's communications! Grad mentors have been through the process and so have personal insight into how to succeed in the program, and 1st-year students should take advantage of this experience. Mentors are there to be helpful; the more you engage with your mentor, the more successful you will be!

Graduate mentors are matched to incoming students with thought given to research interest, country of origin, degree program at SBU, and gender. Not all of these qualities will be a perfect match between mentor and mentee, but even if you have a question your mentor doesn't have direct experience with, they can try to answer your questions anyway and additionally direct you to someone who can. Faculty mentors are assigned at random and there is no correlation between faculty personality/research and that of their respective grad mentor, nor to the 1st year students they mentor.

2nd year students will also get a faculty mentor, and are encouraged to reach out to that mentor with any questions. Graduate mentors are only provided to the first-years, so as not to stretch the mentors too thin, but older students should feel free to reach out to anyone for help or advice.

Graduate mentors should check in with their mentees often in the first month or two, and should continue to do so periodically throughout the first years. If you are a mentee and your mentor hasn't reached out, feel free to initiate and reach out to them!.