The University invests significant resources in every student who is admitted for post-baccalaureate study - and our students devote substantial time and money pursuing their educational goals. Positive advising and mentoring of graduate and professional students fosters mutually beneficial relationships, leading to success for individual students and enhanced reputations for the graduate or professional programs. Research has shown that, especially for post-baccalaureate students, there is a high correlation between the quality of advising and student success.
The Work Group on Advising and Mentoring envisions a collective effort by the University community to promote and provide exemplary advising and mentoring of graduate and professional students. This initiative is intended to target unwanted attrition of graduate students (nationally estimated to be approximately 50%), promote a higher rate of PhD completion, and conserve scarce departmental resources.
The documents available under the header "Improving Advising of Graduate & Professional Students" on the Resources page provide guidance on how to enhance the relationships between advanced students and the faculty with whom they work and study.
We hope you will find these resources to be useful, and encourage you to use them as you wish or adapt them to meet your needs. At the end of each document you will find on-campus sources for direct assistance available to students, staff and faculty. The Work Group would also welcome your feedback on these materials and thoughts on how we might improve or add to the resources currently available.