Supporting sustainable mentoring practices across the academic arc
Mentoring Reimagined is an evidence-based, campus-wide program that supports faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars in strengthening mentoring practices across the academic career. The program provides structured spaces for learning, reflection, practice, and discussion, with concrete tools participants can use to make mentoring more intentional, sustainable, and responsive to the realities of academic life.
At its core, Mentoring Reimagined treats mentoring as a set of skills that can be developed or augmented, rather than an innate quality that some people naturally have. The program is designed for participants with a wide range of mentoring experience. Whether participants are new to mentoring or have been doing this work for years, Mentoring Reimagined offers practical tools, shared language, and structured opportunities to reflect on what is working, what is difficult, and what could be clearer, more sustainable, or more effective.
What is being reimagined?
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Challenging the “guru” model: Traditional mentoring models often assume that mentees should find or be assigned a single “guru” mentor who can provide all the guidance, feedback, sponsorship, institutional knowledge, and professional support they need to succeed. In practice, this model overburdens mentors while leaving mentees undersupported.
Building networks of Support: Mentoring Reimagined offers a different approach. We emphasize mentorship networks: the idea that people need different kinds of support at different times, and that no single mentor can or should be responsible for meeting every need. This approach helps mentees build more robust support systems and helps mentors define their role more clearly and sustainably.
Mentoring at every stage of the academic career: We also reject the idea that mentoring is only for students or early-career academics. Academic careers have many chapters, each with new questions, pressures, opportunities, and transitions. While mentoring needs evolve with different goals and circumstances, everyone needs mentors, including faculty at all ranks, postdoctoral scholars, graduate and undergraduate students.
Mentoring is essential work that also benefits mentors: Finally, we reimagine mentoring as work that can become more visible, more effective, and more sustainable. Mentoring is often treated as extra labor in an already fragmented academic workload. The strategies we advocate for, such as building networks of support and mentoring with more structure and transparency, reduce confusion, prevent misunderstandings, and help avoid unnecessary burden.
What the program does and does not do
Mentoring Reimagined offers workshops, tools, and facilitated conversations to academic units (departments, divisions, and schools) and existing programs on campus (e.g., graduate student mentoring programs) that help participants learn innovative best practices, reflect on past and current mentoring experiences, clarify expectations, build mentorship networks, and practice strategies for more effective and sustainable mentoring.
Mentoring Reimagined is not a one-to-one or team mentor-matching program. Individuals, departments, programs, and units remain responsible for identifying mentors, building mentoring relationships, and designing local mentoring structures. Mentoring Reimagined supports that work by providing the language, tools, and shared frameworks that make those relationships and structures more likely to succeed and to be sustainable.
Why participate?
Academic time is limited, and mentoring work is often already happening in the context of busy faculty, graduate student, and postdoctoral lives. Mentoring Reimagined is designed with that reality in mind. The program provides structured time to examine the mentoring participants already do, practice new concrete strategies, and leave with tools to make future mentoring efforts clearer and more sustainable.
Immediate takeaways for faculty:
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New practical tools to use immediately
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Stronger merit and promotion cases through evidence of excellence in teaching/mentoring
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Satisfaction of federal training and other grant requirements
Immediate takeaways for students and postdocs:
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New practical tools to use immediately
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Stronger academic job applications through evidence of excellence in mentoring
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Language and strategies to use with current mentors
Immediate takeaways for departments/units/programs:
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Satisfaction of departmental/unit training grant requirements
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Responsiveness to Academic Program Review recommendations regarding mentoring, climate, graduate student support, or faculty development
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Shared department/unit frameworks and language for considerations of mentoring
How to participate
Departments, programs, and units interested in using Mentoring Reimagined for these purposes are encouraged to contact us at ofew@berkeley.edu to discuss how the program can help meet their needs.