Our Purpose
The Graduate Center for Inclusive Mentoring seeks to improve the mentoring culture at CSU to ultimately elevate the educational and training success of CSU graduate students and post-doctorates. GCIM is committed to providing a supportive environment in which faculty, post-doctorates, and graduate students share and learn excellent mentoring skills, enabling them to be successful mentees as well as mentors.
Building a Thriving Culture of Mentoring Excellence
An important objective of GCIM is to equip mentors with the expertise and resources needed to help mentees meet their goals and expectations. This includes finding success and gratification in their chosen profession, developing excellent communication skills, and setting reasonable goals on a personal and professional level, to name a few. As such, mentors should exhibit the personal attributes that will demonstrate to the mentees how to be productive, successful, and confident in their chosen field. Some of the characteristics of a good mentor should include:
- a willingness to share knowledge and skills necessary to succeed
- maintaining a constructive attitude with mentees and a willingness to listen before providing advice
- being open and honest with the mentees
- being supportive and accessible in times of need
Furthermore, mentors should be culturally responsive and mentor through a lens of equity and inclusion to best support the success of graduate student and post-doctorate mentees, including those groups that have been traditionally under-served.
GCIM is pleased to provide:
- Mentor and mentee trainings to faculty, staff, graduate students, and post-doctorates
- Socialization activities developed to encourage professional networks
- Recruitment and retention activities and programs with an emphasis on graduate students from under-served populations
- Activities and programs that prepare students as strong candidates for graduate school
- Consultative services to departments and colleges regarding graduate recruitment, retention, and professional development activities
- Access to GCIM Faculty and CIMER trained faculty
CIMER Trained Faculty
Meet Our Faculty
GCIM Faculty
The GCIM prioritizes expanding mentoring training and offerings for the CSU community. As part of this effort, these faculty members are also currently actively engaged in GCIM initiatives.
Mentoring Resources
The Graduate School commissioned task forces in 2016, one led by students and one by faculty, to develop white papers on mentoring. Links to the pdf documents are provided below:
Research Mentoring to Advance Inclusivity in STEM (RMAIS) is a project of the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology (GDPE) and was funded by The Women & Gender Collaborative at CSU. This initiative is designed to provide enhanced experiences and improve gender inclusivity for graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty engaged in STEM research. While focused on gender and STEM, much of this work also incorporates identity and intersectional identity more broadly.
Signature Events - Graduate Students, Faculty and Postdocs Welcome
Mentor Mondays – a series discussing effective mentoring relationships and their critical role in the graduate community. Fall 2020 topics are:
August 31 | Best-practices: providing psychosocial support online
October 5 | What to do when online mentoring is not working for you
November 2 | Teaching and Mentoring in a Time of Social and Racial Justice | Special Guest Speaker, Dr. Álvaro Huerta
December 7 | Moving forward, preparing for Spring Semester
Mentoring Best-Practices for Equity and Inclusion workshop:
- January 12 | Professional Development Institute 2021 | Learn more at tilt.colostate.edu/PDI
Register and view more information for each session at graduateschool.colostate.edu/events/
Spotlight Scholarships and Professional Development Opportunities for Students
Advancing Education Scholarship – honoring the legacy and memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Application deadline: February 18, 2020
- Scholarship Announcement and criteria
- Cover sheet
- Contact: Allison DeWaele at Allison.DeWaele@colostate.edu.
Financial Aid Resources
View the financial aid resources page for information on scholarships, assistantships, and fellowships.
Graduate Student Satisfaction Survey
The Graduate School is committed to the success of all students. To this end, the Graduate School surveys graduate students every two to three years to assess student satisfaction related to campus climate, professional development, and mentoring support. The results of our latest survey are here.
Principles of Community
The Principles of Community support the Colorado State University mission and vision of access, research, teaching, service, and engagement. A collaborative and vibrant community is a foundation for learning, critical inquiry, and discovery. Therefore, each member of the CSU community has a responsibility to uphold these principles when engaging with one another and acting on behalf of the University.
We create and nurture inclusive environments and welcome, value and affirm all members of our community, including their various identities, skills, ideas, talents and contributions.
We are accountable for our actions and will act ethically and honestly in all our interactions.
We honor the inherent dignity of all people within an environment where we are committed to freedom of expression, critical discourse, and the advancement of knowledge.
We are responsible, individually and collectively, to give of our time, talents, and resources to promote the well-being of each other and the development of our local, regional, and global communities.
We have the right to be treated and the responsibility to treat others with fairness and equity, the duty to challenge prejudice, and to uphold the laws, policies and procedures that promote justice in all respects.
Graduate Ram Impact
Amy Carpenter
MBA alum makes non-stick gum a reality While most entrepreneurs struggle to find a new idea that sticks, the company that MBA alum Amy Carpenter co-founded took off because she helped invent something that didn’t. After 20 years as a
Hope Cornelis
As appearing in CHHS.Source.colostate.edu | Sep, 2020 | by Gretchen Gerding Hope Cornelis (M.S. ’17) serves as the program coordinator for the Sexual Assault Resource Team Peers at Poudre School District in Fort Collins. She is originally from Illinois, and
Nikki Seymour
As appearing in WarnerCNR.Source.colostate.edu | July, 2020 | by Mary Guiden Seymour lands NSF fellowship for geosciences research Nikki Seymour, who received a doctoral degree in geosciences from Colorado State University earlier this year, has received a postdoctoral fellowship from