The power of mentoring
Mentorship has the power to transform careers, build confidence, and create lasting impact. This website brings together quick, actionable advice from our Mentor in a Minute video series, insights from Mentor Monday sessions, and essential mentoring resources. Whether you’re a graduate student seeking guidance or a mentor looking to make a difference, this site is here to support you.
Mentor in a minute: Graduate School Advice
In this series, mentors from Colorado State University’s Graduate Center for Inclusive Mentoring share quick, actionable tips to help graduate students thrive—in under a minute!
This month, Gene Gloeckner, Professor Emeritus of the School of Education, shares a tip on how to accomplish big, and often overwhelming, goals.
Mentor Monday: Monthly Tip
Dec. 2025: Navigating conflict in mentoring relationships
Luiza Cliver, Director of Conflict Resolution Services at the Student Resolution Center, led our December Mentor Monday session on navigating conflict to build stronger mentoring relationships. When addressing an issue with a mentee, she recommended using specific and direct language to describe feelings and needs, while also expressing curiosity and listening openly.
To initiate a difficult conversation, ‘I’ statements can help convey feelings or experiences without placing blame. Here are some examples:
- “When [insert behavior], I feel [insert feeling].”
- “When [insert behavior], the assumption I make is [insert assumption].”
These can be followed with questions from a place of curiosity, like:
- “What did you mean when you said X?”
- “What would be helpful for me to know?”
- “What do you feel is missing from the narrative?”
- “How did X impact you?”
In these situations, you can acknowledge your mentee’s feelings and show empathy even when you disagree with them. When you need to discuss something that involves personal impact, prioritize having the conversation in person.
The Student Resolution Center offers conflict resolution services for students AND faculty/staff, including one-on-one conflict coaching, mediation, customized training for groups, and restorative justice to repair harm.
Past Mentor Monday Tips
Help or Hindrance? International Graduate Students Share What Made a Difference (Nov. 2025)
The November Mentor Monday session featured a panel of four international graduate students: Katherin Meza, Clara Mosso, Minh Nguyen, and Amir Nobarian. They shared their experiences with the transition to CSU, including challenges with navigating the visa process, difficulties finding housing from afar, and the high cost of moving internationally. They also described challenges after arriving, including language barriers, differences in communication styles, complicated income tax rules, and the high cost of travelling internationally to visit home.
The student panelists and representatives from the Office of International Programs – Lisa Pappas and Christy Eylar – suggested several ways advisors can help:
- Reach out to admitted students to help them start the visa application early and provide supporting letters/documentation. Requirements and timelines differ across countries, making it important to consult with the Office of International Programs, which has helpful pre-arrival resources. Contact Christy Eylar ([email protected]) if you’d like to attend a webinar on the visa process or schedule a training session for your department.
- Help your international students learn about student support services, including academic, employment, wellness, and connection/community resources.
- Be patient with language and communication differences. Promote a culture of mutual understanding by keeping an open mind and learning from one another.
Faculty Support for Graduate Students' Mental Health (Oct. 2025)
The October Mentor Monday session focused on resources and strategies for supporting graduate students’ mental health. It was led by Dr. Sara Anne Tompkins, Associate Dean of Student Services for the Graduate School, and Janelle Patrius, Manager of Mental Health Initiatives for the CSU Health Network.
Graduate students are significantly more likely than the general population to experience anxiety or depression, yet many don’t seek mental health services. Mentors are often the first people to notice when a graduate student is struggling with their mental health, but knowing how to respond can be challenging.
A student’s distress may be evident through emotional signs (e.g., sadness, anxiety, anger, apathy, suicidal comments), cognitive signs (e.g., declines in performance and concentration, the inability to speak, unusual speech), and physical signs (e.g., frequent health/sleep issues, rapid weight change, significant alcohol or drug use). The Health Network offers Notice and Respond workshops to help participants recognize and respond to a range of mental health issues, including suicide.
Faculty can support students’ mental health by learning about campus mental health and disability resources, encouraging students to use those resources, demonstrating compassion while offering a supportive ear, and creating inclusive learning environments for both coursework and non-coursework aspects of graduate studies. If you were unable to attend this Mentor Monday session, but are interested in learning more, you can request a 30-minute workshop. This workshop offers faculty guidance on how to respond when a graduate student is experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma, or thoughts of self-harm or harm to others.
Mentoring past uncertainty (Sept. 2025)
Dr. Colleen Web, Vice Provost for Graduate Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School, led our September Mentor Monday session on mentoring past uncertainty.
Dr. Webb acknowledged the current unpredictability of funding landscapes and job markets but emphasized that uncertainty is a timeless challenge for graduate students. To enhance resilience and the ability to pivot to new career opportunities, students should develop a flexible set of interests and skills by exploring areas outside of, but complementary to, their core area of expertise. Here are suggestions for facilitating this diversification of interests and skills:
- Encourage a “fail fast” approach where interests and new skills are tested by experimenting with low-cost, high-value experiences that maximize information return (e.g., shadowing professionals for a day or conducting informational interviews, rather than taking semester-long courses in new areas).
- Ask reflective questions about what the student learned from low-stakes explorations.
- Help the student identify which complementary skills add the most value before they invest more deeply. Help them balance depth and breadth without spreading themselves too thin.
- Share your own career pivot points and uncertainties, underscoring that career paths are nonlinear and failure is a valuable learning experience.
Building an accessible graduate experience: Supporting neurodiversity and mental health (May 2025)
In our March Mentor Monday session Dr. June Gruber, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, gave a seminar on cultivating a healthy and happy graduate mentoring dynamic.
Dr. Gruber touted the benefits of a multiple mentor model where mentees receive different kinds of support from a variety of mentors. She also highlighted research-based strategies for improved mentorship, including taking an authoritative approach that holds the mentee to high standards while offering consistent support and encouragement, conveying a belief in the mentee’s potential, and helping the mentee embrace failure as a part of the growth process.
Dr. Gruber emphasized the importance of setting clear expectations through written agreements that are drafted by the mentor and mentee and reviewed at the beginning and end of each semester. These agreements can change over time but should include information on the culture of the research group, the preferred mode and frequency of communication, work schedules and tasks, and realistic goals for the semester. She also advocated for normalizing mental health discussions.
For more, read the article Dr. Gruber co-authored entitled “Three research-based lessons to improve your mentoring.”
Insights into the international student experience (April 2025)
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.
Cultivating a healthy and happy graduate mentoring dynamic (March 2025)
This session, 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.
Additional Mentoring Resources
For graduate students
The Graduate Peer Mentoring Program is perfect for those who want to mentor others, or find a peer mentor from across campus.
For graduate advisors
The Mentor Well training series is intended to build mentoring skills for faculty mentors of graduate students.
For the graduate community
Join us for Mentor Mondays to discuss effective mentoring relationships and their critical role in the graduate community.