Mentoring Guidance

This section offers guidance that we hope will be helpful in informing mentoring relationships within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Below please find:

• Based on the value of mentoring with regard to ensuring the success of junior faculty members and enhancing the quality of the professional and personal lives of junior faculty, Instructors and Assistant Professors in the department are expected to have at least one mentor. Associate and Full Professors also are welcome to have mentors.
• Mentors are encouraged to provide guidance on all aspects of faculty involvement – Scholarship, Service, and Teaching.
• Although we strongly recommend and encourage all senior faculty in the department to serve as mentors, doing so is not a requirement.
• Oftentimes, faculty members will have a cadre, rather than a single, mentor. Different mentors can provide valuable professional and personal guidance in different domains and using different approaches. It often is helpful if the different mentors communicate with each other and this typically occurs with the mentee also involved in the conversation.
• Your mentor(s) may be faculty inside the department or both inside and outside the department; it is recommended that at least one mentor is inside the department.
• Mentor-mentee assignments will be re-considered annually within the department. Mentor-mentee relationships may not be permanent and change is acceptable. If either the mentor or the mentee desires a change because they are no longer compatible or because there are changes in the goals and interests of either person, they are encouraged to share this directly with the other party. In addition, the person desiring a change is welcome to speak with the Vice Chair for Faculty Development or another Vice Chair or the Chair to receive assistance in making a change. Requests for such changes will be honored.
• There are two different avenues for mentor selection within the department: (1) Junior faculty members may choose their own mentor(s) based on similar scientific, clinical, or professional interests and/or someone who has shown particular interest in their professional growth and success; or (2) Junior faculty members who do not select a mentor may be assigned a mentor based on similar scientific, clinical, or professional interests and the needs and goals the mentee has established for their career path.
• The mentoring partnerships that form should be trusting and collaborative.
• The mentor and mentee may agree to utilize a Mentoring Toolkit to guide their interactions. This Toolkit guides mentors and mentees to focus on meeting structure; ground rules for the relationship; the mentee’s goals and expected time frame for their attainment; and both party’s commitment with regard to setting priorities and using time productively, planning experiences/activities, developing an advisory board of informal mentors, interacting with senior colleagues, quick starting the promotion/tenure process, enhancing the mentee’s visibility within the community, and increasing the mentee’s understanding of the Emory institutional culture. See attached Mentoring Toolkit.
• One key goal of the mentoring relationship is to support the mentee’s increasing career independence. To this end, it is essential that the relationship foster increasing levels of autonomy. For example, the mentor’s involvement should be more pronounced in the early stages of the mentee’s career, however, over time, the mentor should be on fewer of the mentee’s papers/grants and less involved in their educational and clinical endeavors, committee and other service work, etc. Such career independence is essential for professional growth and satisfaction, as well as for promotion.
• It is not uncommon for one of the mentee’s mentors to be the person responsible for conducting the faculty reviews associated with the annual Career Development Conference Reports. However, this means that the mentor has a dual role with the mentee and this can be complicated. In situations where this complexity is of concern to either party, an alternative arrangement should be requested to the Vice Chair for Faculty Development or the Chair.
• Peer mentorship is another avenue for fostering the success and wellbeing of junior faculty. Individuals interested in joining a peer mentoring group should contact the Assistant Vice Chair for Faculty Development for New Initiatives to express interest in joining a peer group.

• Devote time, energy, and resources to the mentoring relationship
• Be knowledgeable about the Emory system and promotion guidelines and share this institutional knowledge
• Provide mentorship on scholarship, service, and teaching
• Offer to meet with your mentee within the first 4-6 weeks of the start of his/her appointment and/or of the mentoring assignment and get acquainted and share things in common that make each of you unique and talk about each other’s expectations, time commitments, and other issues and concerns
• Continue to meet regularly on a mutually agreed upon schedule to provide guidance and support, follow-up on progress and accomplishments, and address concerns and barriers to progress
• Have a shared understanding of confidentiality and honor this understanding
• Agree on means of communication to keep in touch
• Help establish clear goals and expectations for the mentee’s career trajectory and for the relationship
• Stimulate questions about specific career interests
• Provide emotional support and advice if needed
• Help build specific competencies
• Plan experiences and activities
• Offer resources to the mentee to assist in career growth and exposure
• Promote independence and autonomy for the mentee
• Offer the mentee opportunities for networking and career advancement (e.g., offer co-authorship on invited papers or chapters, recommend for appointment to committees, provide opportunities for journal article reviewing)
• Provide constructive feedback regarding the mentee’s strengths and potential areas for improvement
• Serve as an advocate for the mentee
• Meet with the department chair or others in senior administrative positions to help ensure that the mentee has the resources and opportunities needed to excel
• Offer guidance to the mentee on the mentee’s mentoring efforts with more junior colleagues

• In choosing a mentor, interview them to ascertain the goodness of fit
• Be a driver of the mentoring relationship
• Be prepared for all scheduled meetings with your mentor to utilize allotted time (e.g., investigate potential funding opportunities or committee or community involvements to discuss with the mentor)
• Take the initiative to keep in touch and request formal meetings
• Describe your expectations about what you want to achieve from the mentoring relationship and identify the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that you want to gain
• Be sure you and your mentor agree on and review and update the goals and expectations for your progress and the mentoring experience
• Share your thoughts, plans and goals about your career development with your mentor in an ongoing fashion
• Set up and carry out agreed upon activities designed to further your career
• Work with your mentor to identify people and information that might be helpful to you
• Share your honest self-assessment
• Be open to ideas and suggestions offered to you by your mentor
• Take full advantage of the opportunity to learn and grow
• Follow through with suggestions and recommendations

For a department to thrive, faculty at all levels need to feel that their contributions to acknowledged and valued. This document focuses on supporting the career autonomy of junior faculty to promote scholarship. There are other documents related to this process vis-à-vis education and service.

For junior faculty to advance and be promoted, they need to be effectively mentored and have their growing professional autonomy supported. Senior faculty who mentor their junior colleagues also need to have their contributions to the work recognized. In many senior faculty-junior faculty pairs, there is a comfortable process in which junior faculty feel supported and that their growing autonomy is acknowledged in terms of authorship status on papers, roles on grants, committee appointments, etc. Most research mentors and lab directors are very generous and foster a good environment for their junior faculty, encouraging their growth and development and helping them begin independent careers. However, there can be other dyads where this process could be done more effectively.

A series of meetings were held with faculty at all levels of professional development to develop informal guidance for faculty members with regard to supporting the career autonomy of junior faculty related to scholarship, while simultaneously acknowledging the contributions of senior faculty. This guidance is not meant to be proscriptive, but rather to serve as a guiding framework.

This document begins with a description of an optimal culture within the department aimed at fostering faculty autonomy and acknowledging appropriately the contributions of all parties. What follows is a discussion of expectations for mentoring relationships. Then we offer recommended best practices for authorship, grant processes, and navigation of the transition from mentee to mentor. 

• Culture
  • All members of the faculty value and support developmentally-appropriate levels of career autonomy in their colleagues and convey an appreciation for the fact that as individuals move forward in their careers they need more independence and power.
  • Junior faculty are responsible for initiating their own growth and independence, albeit with the support of their more senior colleagues.
  • Both independence of scholarship and team science should be promoted.
  • Senior faculty and mentors openly convey pride in their junior colleagues’ accomplishments.
  • Junior faculty actively recognize their mentors/senior colleagues’ contributions to their scholarly, educational, and service endeavors (e.g., ideas, guidance, materials).
  • Open dialogues occur with regard to career autonomy, during which the parties acknowledge and attempt to address different perspectives on this matter and agree to seek consultation when needed.
  • Differences about authorship status and roles on grants are most effectively resolved within the specific dyad/team/group itself, but when this is not possible, then consultation should be sought from appropriate senior faculty or the Department Executive Committee.
  • Annual faculty review sessions serve as a medium to address these issues as well.
  • Regular outside “audits” of all mentoring relationships are a standard within the department.
  • To optimally support the career development of junior faculty researchers, the Department will strive to offer them appropriate start-up funds, independent space, and leadership roles/responsibilities, etc., which will help empower junior faculty.

• Expectations
  • From the outset of the mentoring relationship, junior faculty member, with guidance from their mentors, lay out a trajectory for an independent field of inquiry that emerges from or is related to the mentor’s area of expertise, with acknowledgement that this trajectory may be revised as the junior faculty member’s interests evolve.
  • Discussions are held at the outset of a mentoring relationship or relationship between a senior and a junior faculty member with regard to expectations for career autonomy and appropriate credit for both parties and efforts should be made to ensure a collaborative matching of such expectations.
  • Discussions are held at regular intervals for mentoring relationships and senior-junior colleague relationships with regard to changes in expectations related to career autonomy and appropriate credit for both parties and efforts should be made to ensure collaborative matching of such expectations as they shift.
  • It is appropriate for one or both parties to consult with another colleague (e.g., Vice Chair for Faculty Development, Vice Chair for Research) in order to seek guidance and assistance with resolution and there should be no retribution for seeking such consultation.

Best Practices

• Authorship
• • Background – Authorship is way of both assigning responsibility and giving credit for intellectual contributions. Agreeing upon authorship requires upfront and ongoing conversation about who should be included and in what order based upon contributions - Decisions about authorship should reflect honestly the actual contributions to the final product. Consistent with current publication standards, each author’s contributions related to a paper should be clearly articulated in writing. Individuals only have their names on papers if they have performed the work or made a substantial, direct intellectual contribution to the work The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defines authorship by the following criterion: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. The American Psychological Association considers someone an author who is involved with initial research design, data collection and analysis, manuscript drafting, and final approval. However, the following do not necessarily qualify for authorship: providing funding or resources, mentorship, or contributing research but not helping with the publication itself. 
  • In practice, a variety of factors have led to authorship practices that are not consistent with the aforementioned standards. For example, junior faculty may believe that including senior faculty members on the publication will enhance the chances of successful publication, regardless of whether or not these individuals actually substantively contributed to the work. In addition, junior faculty may be reluctant to not include their senior colleagues, because of the power they hold over them vis-à-vis their employment, funding, and other professional opportunities. Further, senior faculty may feel pressured to have their name on more publications so that they are seen as productive scholars, even if they do not directly contribute to the work. Sometimes senior faculty believe that they should be listed as authors because of the logistical, financial, or administrative support they provided for the work, even if they did not contribute intellectually. Sometimes, disagreements or disputes arise in terms of authorship credit and order. These differences often reflect misconceptions about what grants authorship and/or communication problems between or among colleagues, which may either be prevented or addressed by open discussions and agreements about standards for authorship.
  • The research team reviews the Collaboration and Team Science Field Guide (http://teamscience.nih.gov) and may craft a Prenuptial Agreement for Scientists (http://ori.hhs.gov/education/preempt_discord.shtml) based on standards in the field (e.g. journals).
  • In collaborative research endeavors, publication credit and order is discussed up front and frankly and in an ongoing fashion, with differences of opinion acknowledged and addressed.
  • Everyone who makes a substantial intellectual contribution to the work is an author.
  • While there are a variety of ways to determine authorship order, authorship order accurately reflects the scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their relative status, and such order is decided by the authors collectively.
  • People who make other substantial contributions to the work (e.g., provision of funding or services, such as patients or materials), without an intellectual contribution, are acknowledged in an acknowledgment section, but not included as an author. Providing funding or services may not be sufficient for authorship credit.
  • No one is too junior to be first or last author.
  • Everyone who is listed as an author shares in the preparation of the manuscript by either writing it or reviewing drafts and approving the final document.
  • Differences about authorship status are most effectively resolved within the research team itself, but when this is not possible, then consultation should be sought from appropriate senior faculty or the Department Executive Committee.
  • Manuscripts are reviewed by co-authors within a reasonable time frame (i.e., approximately one month) and if a co-author cannot complete his/her review within a reasonable time frame, the other authors may choose to remove him/her from the publication after giving a warning.

• Grant Processes
  • There are many similarities related to investigator status with the authorship issues noted above under Authorship Guidelines. Currently, Emory guidelines suggest that each investigator who applies for tenure should serve as principal investigator on at least 2 major grants (R01 or equivalent).  It is in the best interest of senior faculty to have their mentees succeed at Emory, and it is in the best interest of junior faculty to participate in grants as early as possible.
  • There is a discussion up front regarding who should be the Principal Investigator and who should be included as an Investigator. This discussion also should include who is the Contact Principal Investigator.
  • If a junior faculty member contributes to the scholarship that laid the foundation for the grant proposal, that person is included as an Investigator on the grant.
  • If a junior faculty member is an expert on the work associated with the grant, he/she is given the opportunity to serve as the Principal Investigator, especially for non-center grant applications which often require senior faculty for success.
  • The roles and responsibilities of all parties are discussed at the outset and as needed in an ongoing fashion over the course of the project and it may be helpful to have this in writing.
  • There is some dialogue up front about authorship related to publications that will emerge from the grant and this will differ depending on the nature of the grant (R, K, etc.).

• Navigation of the Transition From Mentee to Mentor
  • As junior faculty begin mentoring students or trainees, the traditional arrangement with their mentors may need to change.  For example, if a junior faculty member begins supervising a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow, it may be appropriate for the student to be first author with the junior faculty being senior author for publications arising from that work.  Also, the junior faculty seeks guidance from senior faculty before taking on trainees of their own.
  • As junior faculty begin the transition to mid-career faculty, it may no longer be appropriate for their mentors to be included on their publications and their grants, as it is essential for promotion that one demonstrate independence.