Improving mentorship to avoid harming students: Opinion

Principal Investigators need to improve their mentorship and supports to avoid harming students, writes Emily Heffernan. Heffernan recommends that mentors respect their students’ boundaries by demonstrating healthy work-life balance, listening to students, valuing their goals and identities, and ensuring that graduate student workloads are appropriate so that students do not have to say “no” to their supervisors. The author also writes that mentors should treat their postdocs, lab technicians, and staff members as professionals and should not comment on a worker’s appearance unless it involves safety or impacts the representation of their lab. Finally, Heffernan encourages mentors to provide a way for students to give anonymous feedback so that issues can be brought to their attention. Inside Higher Ed (Account Req.) Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.