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Preparing to Be Mentored

How to Get the Mentoring You Want: A Guide for Graduate Students at a Diverse University.”

University of Michigan, The Rackham School of Graduate Studies. October 1999
This guide is aimed at graduate students and explains how to develop mentoring relationships from the perspective of the mentee. The first section focuses on how to identify and interact with potential mentors. The second section deals with diversity issues such as the need for role models, questioning the canon, feelings of isolation, issues of balance, as well as sections dealing with issues of mentoring for various groups including gender, race/ethnicity, sexual preference, international students, students with families, those from working class backgrounds, those with disabilities, and nontraditional graduate students. The third section is titled Mentoring Issues Facing Underrepresented Faculty. This is particularly important since women and minority faculty often mentor more graduate students (and undergraduates) than their peers and so mentees need to be conscious of the extra burden. These same faculty members face many of the same challenges they do and can wield less power and influence on campus than their peers. This pamphlet is available in PDF format and includes a bibliography.