Managing Meetings with Your Mentor

Once you have established a relationship with your mentor, you are responsible for managing the mentoring relationship and getting the most out of the experience. Therefore, you must take the lead to initiate and plan the meetings and determine the preferred method of communication with your mentor. Shorter but more frequent meetings will help you keep work on track. You must be sure to ask your mentor for specific and constructive feedback throughout your work together.

Make sure that regularly scheduled meetings are on your calendar and your mentor’s calendar. Send an email reminder to your mentor prior to each meeting, with a suggested agenda, for example:

“We are scheduled to meet in your office at 8:00–8:30 am on Nov 7 to discuss progress on my project. I propose that we discuss pre/post testing. I have read the 2 articles you recommended at our last meeting, and I now have some specific questions. Please let me know if you have other topics that we should discuss. Thank you.”

Follow-up each meeting with an e-mail containing a brief summary of what was discussed, the results of the meeting, what is to be done, and by whom prior to your next meeting, for example:

“Thank you for the helpful guidance you provided during our mentoring meeting yesterday in offering descriptions of teaching methods that I was unaware of, as well as providing ideas for creating opportunities for interaction in online teaching. As we planned, I will consider how to apply those approaches to my project and we will discuss at our next meeting at 8:30–9:00 am on Nov 21. Please let me know if you have a different understanding of our recent meeting and/or work for our next meeting.”

Keep a log of meetings with your mentor. The e-mails noted above will become records associated with each meeting.