Advising and Mentoring

The Neurosciences IDP is committed to providing advising in support of the scholarly and professional development of its students. When most effective, the advising relationship entails collaborative and sustained engagement by both the advisor and the advisee. Advising expectations should be periodically discussed and reviewed to ensure mutual understanding. Both the advisor and the advisee are expected to maintain professionalism and integrity.

Program staff are the primary resources for information on admissions, degree requirements and courses, financial support, university and academic services, student life, advising, and career counseling.  

All first year Neurosciences graduate students have an assigned First Year Advisor drawn from a team of faculty members recruited to this role. First Year Advisors are meant to be an ally who can be relied upon to provide informed counsel about these and other issues during the first year. Students are encouraged to stay connected to their First Year Advisor during the entire course of graduate study.

After a student officially joins a lab, the principal dissertation advisor, also called thesis advisor or research advisor, provides guidance and direction to the doctoral student’s research, as well as evaluation of the student’s progress. Students are encouraged to seek out additional mentoring from faculty such as their First Year Advisor, thesis committee members, or faculty members of the SoLiD program or Pathways to Neurosciences program for non-research mentoring.

Joining the Program: Faculty who are interested in formally affiliating with the Neurosciences IDP will meet with the program co-directors to discuss expectations and opportunities for engagement. Click here to learn more about expectations for involvement and to request a meeting.

Faculty who wish to host rotation students will be required to agree to the guidelines in the Mentor Code of Conduct document, maintain affiliate status in the program, and commit to attend a workshop on program mentorship expectations once every three years. Workshops will be hosted quarterly by the Mentoring Committee. For more information about the motivation behind this requirement please see our email here. To complete the agreement form click here.

To have a student join a lab for thesis research, the faculty mentor must have already completed a workshop since 2022.