Support career development

Karin Grasenick, Julia Trattnig | 29 September 2021

One of the most effective structural measures to support career development is through the implementation of a mentoring programme.
Only a dedicated mentoring programme in a complex large-scale, international, publicly funded research infrastructure (CoLIPRI) or project can provide the special design needed for such an environment and offer help for EDI-related issues within the project framework.
A dedicated project mentoring programme does not only have individual advantages for mentors and mentees, but also structural advantages for the project.

One of the most effective structural measures to support career development is through the implementation of a mentoring programme.

Many universities and research institutions offer mentoring programmes to support their students, PhDs or often female researchers (as many mentoring programmes are for women support only). However, only a dedicated mentoring programme in a complex large-scale, international, publicly funded research infrastructure (CoLIPRI) or project can provide the special design needed for such an environment.

This is one of the main differences compared to mentoring programmes offered at local institutions or universities: the latter aim to provide career support for mentees within their framework, i.e. mentors often stem from the same university/institution, country or scientific field, whereas a dedicated project mentoring programme, such as the HBP High Potential Mentoring Programme, offers partnerships with mentors from different partnering projects, external institutions as well as different scientific fields and countries.

Due to the size and distributed nature of the project infrastructure, the design of the mentoring programme is unique because it takes place solely online. This means that all process steps (promotion, registration, matching, mentoring sessions, accompanying measures and feedback) are organised via a diversity of online tools (among others, emails, zoom/skype video calls, shared documents and collaborative tools like padlet or mural).

In-person meetings are only organised in special cases by the mentoring partner themselves, e.g. when both mentee and mentor attend the same conference and decide to meet there. One of the main benefits of the online design is that mentoring partnerships are stable and regular because they can be held from any place.

As matching of the mentoring partnerships also takes place and is confirmed virtually, the question how similar mentor and mentee should be is of even more importance.

Mentors often identify with the same gender, especially women-women-mentoring. Although these approaches show advantages, they also pose some risks: If mentor and mentee stem from a similar scientific discipline, mentoring sessions might focus on subject-specific aspects that should be supported by the respective subject supervisors. Additionally, life and professional experiences might not be reflected enough, but get simply adopted by mentees.

Mixed-gender mentoring partnerships, as they are offered in the HBP High Potential Mentoring Programme, can open the understanding for contexts in which mentors or mentees cannot experience themselves and are thus more inclusive:
For example, the access to networks or informal rules which focus primarily on a specific gender and to which women or minority members often do not have access.

Lastly, it depends on the objectives and expectations of mentees if mentoring partnerships should be quite similar or not.
For example, mentees might wish to have role models from the same gender concerning the compatibility of family and career. Still, it might open up new perspectives and approaches to have other role models than expected – in this case it could be men who violate traditional gender roles by insisting on both family and career (Grasenick, 2021).

Another reason for a dedicated project mentoring programme is to offer help for EDI-related issues within the project framework and thereby create a momentum of supporting networks, which can foster collaboration with other project members and identification with the project.

This sense of belonging within the given framework can be enhanced with accompanying measures to meet other mentors and mentees and thereby increase networks. Networks within project structures can thus be steered by the governance side and consequently counteract informal networks that may be unknown to the governance level.

Therefore, a dedicated project mentoring programme does not only have individual advantages for mentors and mentees, but also structural advantages for the project.