Postdoc Mentor

Faculty and Staff Resources

On-Campus Resources

  • The Graduate School hosts a website​ solely dedicated to posting postdoctoral positions​ at CU Denver and CU Anschutz (https://gs.ucdenver.edu/postdocjobs/). Posting positions is quick and easy, and you have control over who receives the applicant's information (e.g., CVs and references). ​
  • CU Careers - This database posts job openings throughout the CU System and is accessible worldwide.

Off-Campus Resources

On-Campus Resources

Off-Campus Resources

What Does it Mean to be a Great Mentor?

Mentoring comes in many forms and many different mentoring styles can be effective. In general, though, great mentoring means that you…

  • invest your time in developing another person's career and well-being
  • are committed to advancing the individuals's personal academic and professional goals
  • understand and accept that your trainees will have varying career goals
  • will tailor your mentoring style to accommodate differences in culture, ethnicity, gender and disability

Why Be a Great Mentor?

In addition to the satisfaction of seeing your trainees succeed, being a great mentor has additional benefits for you. For example, being a great mentor can help you…

  • attract the best and most competitive trainees
  • create a more productive working relationship, in turn, increasing your own success
  • broaden you professional network as your trainees achieve their own career success

Where Does Great Mentoring Begin? With a Detailed Plan.

The NIH now requires progress reports to include discussion of how Individual Development Plans (IDPs) were used in the training of any pre and postdoctoral trainees supported by NIH funds. Furthermore, the NIH also expects postdocs to be actively engaged in their career development regardless of their mechanism of support. As if those requirements were not reason enough, a detailed IDP can help your trainees ensure they are acquiring the skills and qualifications they need to transition in their careers.

We encourage all trainees to create a Career Plan or IDP early in their training and to discuss it with you - you can provide extremely valuable insight into what it really takes to move on. Feel free to have your trainees use our online Individual Career Plan (ICP) tool, or any of the resources online (e.g., AAAS's myIDP.)

In addition to a career plan, setting expectations can alleviate future conflict and foster an environment of clear communication. We also encourage you and your trainees to formally discuss expectations, and a great place to start is with the AAMC Compacts for graduate students or postdoctoral fellows. Finally, the National Postdoctoral Association provides some recommendations for developing a postdoctoral mentoring plan that may be useful.

How We Can Help

The Postdoctoral Office and Career Development Office are here to support you in your mentoring efforts. We can assist with providing data and boiler-plate documents for your grant applications, serve as an informational resource for the exploration and pursuit of your trainee's career goals, and offer a centralized location to identify career development training events on campus. In addition, we also can provide resources that may help you as you help your trainees prepare for the next stage of their careers. There clearly will be other resources that you would find helpful, and we hope you will let us know how we can provide additional support.

Career and Mentoring Resources

Policies and Administrative Resources

As of May 15th, 2015 the Graduate School has discontinued its oversight of the hiring of postdoctoral fellows. This includes signing off on any letters of offer; approval for either new hires or raises; and terminations. These all can now be managed within your School/College with no additional insight outside of standard HR policies and procedures.

Although we no longer process HR-related issues, the Postdoctoral Office still serves an informational and advisory role for all issues related to postdoctoral fellows. As such, the following documents may be helpful for you, and a good place to begin finding answers to your questions:

If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to contact us - we're here to help.

Postdoctoral Office

CU Anschutz

Fitzsimons Building

13001 East 17th Place

C5000

Aurora, CO 80045


postdoc.office@cuanschutz.edu

303-724-2930

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