Supporting Graduate Students' Academic and Professional Success
No matter how you look at it, graduate school is hard. One way to be successful at doing hard things is to have friends to help you along the way. This is where the UCR Graduate Student Mentorship Program (GSMP) comes in.
[Image description: A sign with black lettering that says “Everyone is Just Trying to Make It.”]
Caption: In it together!
Established in 2010, GSMP supports approximately 100 incoming graduate student mentees, half from the humanities, arts, social sciences, and education, while the other half are students in STEM fields. First-year PhD and MFA mentees are assigned to both peer and faculty mentors in their own or a related discipline. Over the course of their first academic year, mentees build a sense of graduate student community and gain access to support, advice, resources, and community as GSMP participants.
GSMP employs about 35 advanced graduate students to mentor up to 4 first-year mentees over the course of the academic year (fall through spring). Mentors provide both proactive and responsive mentoring, logging around 11 hours of mentorship per month (mentors are paid $23 an hour). Mentors go through mentorship training and are provided professional development opportunities on a quarterly basis. Mentors meet with their mentees once a week and their GSMP faculty Mentor once per quarter. To be eligible to become a GSMP Peer Mentor, graduate students must have a GPA over 3.0 and eligibility to work at 7% full time employment. If mentors complete the mandatory training and log at least 25 mentoring hours over the course of the academic year, they become eligible to receive the College Reading & Learning Association’s International Peer Educator Training Program Certification.
[Image description: Coach, Ted Lasso, pointing to a yellow sign above his office door that says “believe.”]
Caption: You can succeed!
In short, mentorship is crucial to graduate student success and well-being; it lowers graduate student attrition, especially among the most vulnerable populations. For this reason, GradSuccess invites you to direct first-year student to GSMP and welcomes your application, should you like to become a mentor. If you would like to learn more about GSMP and the role of mentors, feel free to attend the GSMP Info Session on May 30th at 2PM via Zoom.