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Welcome to "Mentoring Matters" the podcast where professors Stephanie Hansen and Mary Drewnoski share their expert insights on how to excel as a mentor. Join us as we tackle the challenges of mentoring graduate students and offer actionable tips for building community, enhancing communication, and fostering a culture of learning within your team. With years of experience and hard-won wisdom, Hansen and Drewnoski will provide the guidance you need to succeed in your mentoring endeavors. Tune ...
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Mentoring 2.0: Integrating Generative AI Tools for Enhanced Support
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode of Mentoring Matters, we explore the transformative potential of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the context of graduate student mentoring. As these cutting-edge technologies continue to advance, they offer unique opportunities to enhance the mentoring experience and support the growth and development of …
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Reset: Starting Fresh at the Beginning of a Semester
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Send us a Text Message. In this (long awaited) episode of Mentoring Matters we discuss how to get our students started off strong at the beginning of the semester. Things we discussed include: How much Steph loves to plan Setting goals and milestones for your students AND helping them understand your purpose behind the plan Enjoy! If you are enjoyi…
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Thriving Together: Cultivating Well-Being in Students and Faculty
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51:05
Send us a Text Message. Dr. Jodi McGill (Assistant Dean of Research and Graduate Students at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine) joined us to discuss what we learned in our last grad faculty book club. We read the book "Wellbeing at Work" by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter, which is from Gallup and CliftonStrengths-based. The book fo…
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Wrangling the Chaos: Tips for Time Management
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45:42
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Send us a Text Message. Time management can be a struggle for graduate students and faculty. In this episode we offer tips to make more efficient use of your time, with the goal of reducing everyone's stress. We discussed: Scheduling "the big rocks" (e.g. the important, big items) first and putting the "sand" around them (e.g. the smaller, urgent t…
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A Behind the Scenes Peek at our Lives as Graduate Mentors
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we take you on a behind the scenes journey to hear about our graduate student interactions over a random week. Things we discussed: Being intentional with our time Planning ahead to reduce the student's stress (and ours!!) Helping students prepare for job interviews Preparing for student presentations And tha…
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Tips for Building Resiliency in Graduate Students
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36:49
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we share ideas for improving resiliency in our graduate students. Topics covered include: Angela Duckworth's book "Grit" and Liz Wiseman's "Impact Players" are two resources we discuss and recommend Passion is a part of resiliency, we discuss ways to foster passion in our students Deliberate practice: we sugg…
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Building Better Teams: How Book Clubs Can Foster Community and Professional Growth
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28:39
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we discuss how we've used book clubs with our graduate students to enhance community and habit building. Mary talks about reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Steph talks about reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. We discuss what worked, what we'd do differently next time, and…
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Utilizing Strengths in Graduate Student Mentoring
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode: Steph and Mary are on vacation! And nerding out about how we use the Clifton Strengths talent assessment in our graduate student mentoring. Similar to how we use Meyers Briggs Type Indicator, Strengths is another way to help us tailor the mentoring experience to get the most out of every student (in the leas…
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we discuss what a powerful tool recognition of individual and team success can be, including: Why it's important to ask your team members how they want to be recognized. Reinforcing the idea that your team is not necessarily just like you! Mary and Steph are super different in how they want to be recognized! …
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Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Reflection for Student Growth
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we discuss how reflection helps our graduate students learn and grow. We talk about some of the strategies we are already using to cause students to pause and reflect and ways we want to try in the future. What- Recapping the experience So what- Why does it matter? Now what- What's next? What do we do differe…
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Send us a Text Message. Attending conferences can be a great way to entice a student to finish a project and share their data. But how do we help students get the most out of an often very expensive conference attendance? In this episode we reminisce about some of our favorite conference moments and discussed: Helping introverted students practice …
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Send us a Text Message. Hello Mentors! In this episode we reflect on the value of taking time to prepare for our individual grad student meetings. We offer some strategies to find time in your busy schedule and discuss a checklist of items we like to cover in these individual meetings. It's hard to believe we have to schedule time to think about ou…
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Retreat! AKA How to Get the Most out of a Research Retreat
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Send us a Text Message. Retreat! Research retreat, that is! In this episode we talked about the research retreat Steph did with her lab recently. We talk about what went well, what she'd do differently, and Mary offered up lots of ideas for what she'd like to do at her own lab retreat. Key points we discussed: Planning ahead and how to get the most…
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we discuss the traits we've appreciated in our best bosses, and why those bosses might have actually been our best coaches. We talk about tips for figuring out how to be a better boss/coach for our team. Highlights: We don't want a boss, we want a coach. We want a purpose, and we'd like it to align with our v…
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Resources for our Professional Development
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28:36
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode, we discuss a few resources we’ve found useful for our own professional development. And how we use them with our grad students, of course! Resources we discuss: James Clear, Atomic habits, as interviewed by Brene Brown https://brenebrown.com/podcast/atomic-habits-part-1-of-2/ Goals are about winning the game…
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we discuss the hard-fought mentoring lessons we have learned not only over the past year, but stretching back to early 2020. We talk about what has gone well and what we still need to work on in the coming year. And we decided being a good mentor comes down to intentionality and being willing to put in the ti…
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Keeping the Curiosity: A Conversation with Dr. Jen Heemstra
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Send us a Text Message. Emory University Professor Jen Heemstra joined us for a conversation about strategies for success as graduate student mentors. We also chatted about ideas for faculty development and ways we can foster strong mentors. A few things we talked about: Fear of failure, why we as mentors should bring the same level of curiosity to…
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Using Personality Assessments to Tailor Graduate Student Mentoring
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we interview one of our own teaching mentors, Dr. Jan Wiersema of Iowa State University. We explore how using type indicators (sometimes called personality assessments) like Myers Briggs can help faculty understand their students on a deeper level, allowing them to tailor a mentoring approach to better connec…
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Ten Phrases to Use in Your Grad Student Mentoring
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Send us a Text Message. Welcome to Season 2! We are excited to be back after our summer hiatus. In this episode we discuss 10 phrases we find useful to have in your pocket when mentoring graduate students. Among others, we talk about the importance of seeking to understand why certain actions may or may not have occurred. If you are enjoying this p…
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Ten Pieces of Graduate Mentoring Advice for New Faculty
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we cover our top ten tips for things we wish we'd known when we started mentoring graduate students. Have a listen to learn why our number one tip was to keep your mouth shut! Our tips cover the things we've learned in the trenches during a collective 21 years of graduate student mentoring. You might be surpr…
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Crossing the Finish Line: Helping Students Find Finishing Energy
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode of Mentoring Matters we discuss how to help your graduate students plan for the end. Of their graduate program that is. We cover things we've done (or wish we had done) to help graduate students plan for and execute an excellent final thesis and even discuss some tips for preparing for the defense. 1) Startin…
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Let's Talk: Tips to Build Effective Oral Communicators
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode of Mentoring Matters we share our tips for helping graduate students become awesome oral communicators. Don't forget to give them opportunity to practice! Provide low stress opportunities to present such as giving presentations to your lab group. Have discussions about core concepts of effective communication…
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode we discuss one of our favorite subjects, how to build community within your graduate student team. Things we talk about include: Setting expectations from day one to help students understand the importance of teamwork Creating group challenges with fun rewards to drive productivity and team building Praising …
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Send us a Text Message. In this episode, we tackle a topic that can strike fear in the heart of even the best mentor—how to develop students into strong technical writers. In this episode we discuss tips for making the writing process manageable: Get them started early Break writing up into small sections Ask them to develop an outline for each sec…
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Expectations: Starting Graduate Students Off Right
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Send us a Text Message. Clear communication is key to success when working with graduate students. Articulating expectations at the start will pay dividends in the long run! In this episode we discuss how to: 1. Clearly communicate what you expect from your students, begin this during the interview. They should know what they are getting into... 2.…
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Send us a Text Message. In the inaugural episode of Mentoring Matters we talk about the one mentoring strategy that has had the single biggest impact on our graduate programs. We are Steph and Mary, best friends and professors in animal science who have spent years trying out ways to become better graduate student mentors. We've made the mistakes, …
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