Mentoring Impacts

Dr. Joseph Brown, Director of CSU’s Academic Integrity Program, led this discussion.

CSU does not have an overarching institutional policy on the use of generative AI. However, the default in any class is that use is unauthorized unless the faculty explicitly permits use. This applies not only to coursework but also work towards a graduate degree (e.g., proposal, thesis, dissertation). As AI becomes more sophisticated and more students integrate it into their workflow, it is increasingly important for advisors and graduate students to communicate clear expectations regarding AI use.

Dr. Brown provides these recommendations to advisors and their graduate students:

• Discuss acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI. Work together to create a written agreement that follows your discipline’s guidelines, updating it each year.
• Be transparent about the use of AI. When in doubt, explain and explicitly cite your use.
• Avoid using AI for content generation outside of your discipline or area of expertise.
• The use of AI in academia is of ongoing debate, with some applications being more contentious than others. Using AI to solicit feedback, manage projects, or summarize course readings is generally less controversial than using AI to generate content for credit, provide feedback on student work, or misrepresent qualifications.

Our September Mentor Monday discussion, led by Dr. Grace Borlee, focused on using mentoring compacts to align expectations, reduce conflict, improve efficiency, define boundaries, and achieve goals in mentoring relationships.

Mentoring compacts establish guidelines for both the mentor and mentee about their individual commitments and expectations for each other. They take unsaid assumptions and turn them into written agreements on a variety of aspects of the mentoring relationship, including communication, meetings, confidentiality, responsibilities, goals, boundaries, accountability, and conflict resolution. They are living documents that mentors and mentees should develop together and revisit frequently.

For guidance on developing a mentoring compact, see “Ten simple rules for developing a mentor-mentee expectations document” by Masters and Kreeger (2017). The Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research provides a library of mentorship agreements and compacts.

• are developed and continuously revised with participation from the entire group.
• clearly specify both appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
• outline the reporting entities and disciplinary outcomes for conduct violations.
• include protection against retaliation.

Our September Mentor Monday discussion, led by Dr. Grace Borlee, focused on using mentoring compacts to align expectations, reduce conflict, improve efficiency, define boundaries, and achieve goals in mentoring relationships.

Mentoring compacts establish guidelines for both the mentor and mentee about their individual commitments and expectations for each other. They take unsaid assumptions and turn them into written agreements on a variety of aspects of the mentoring relationship, including communication, meetings, confidentiality, responsibilities, goals, boundaries, accountability, and conflict resolution. They are living documents that mentors and mentees should develop together and revisit frequently.

For guidance on developing a mentoring compact, see “Ten simple rules for developing a mentor-mentee expectations document” by Masters and Kreeger (2017). The Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research provides a library of mentorship agreements and compacts.