Details for the 2019 Mentoring Symposium will be posted soon.
For resources, visit the Mentoring Academy web page.
2018 Mentoring Symposium
The 2018 Mentoring Symposium was held on Tuesday, November 27, 2018, from 9 a.m - 3 p.m., in the University Library. Find out more about the topics addressed at the Symposium:
There are well-documented best practices that increase the likelihood of a successful mentoring relationship. By integrating these elements into the mentoring relationship, both mentors and mentees accrue benefits and are more likely to achieve their desired goals and outcomes. This session will introduce the elements of good mentoring as well as common benefits and outcomes of successful mentoring relationships.
Breakout Session 1: Maintaining Effective Communication
Good communication is a key element of any relationship, and a mentoring relationship is no exception. It is critical that mentors and mentees reflect upon and identify characteristics of effective communication and take time to practice communication skills within their mentoring relationship. This session will provide guidance on developing and maintaining effective communication.
Breakout Session 2: Aligning Expectations
A shared understanding of what each person expects is critical to establishing effective mentor-mentee relationships. Challenges arise when mentors and mentees have misunderstandings about expectations in the relationship, which naturally changes over time. Therefore, ongoing reflection and communication about expectations is needed to maintain positive and productive mentor-mentee relationships.
Diversity, along a range of dimensions, offers both challenges and opportunities to any relationship. Learning to identify, reflect upon, learn from, and engage with diverse perspectives is critical to forming and maintaining an effective mentoring relationship, as well as a vibrant learning environment. In this session, participants will considering how to foster an equitable and inclusive environment where everyone can do their best learning and create the highest quality of research, both because of and in spite of their diverse perspectives.
Reflecting on your mentoring relationships is a vital part of becoming a more effective mentor. This session will guide you in integrating what you’ve learned today with personal reflection to consider how to implement changes in your mentoring practice and to articulate your personal mentoring philosophy.
The IU Indianapolis Mentoring Symposium was intentionally designed as a hands-on and interactive learning experience that covers relevant topics and introduces critical concepts to foster and sustain effective mentoring relationships. Therefore, it is important to help Symposium participants “unpack” the rich content of the day and begin to reflect on next steps. This session will allow the panel of presenters a chance to share with the diverse Symposium participants how the information presented connects to their mentoring relationships, the many mentoring programs, and other opportunities available at IU Indianapolis and beyond. Suggestions will be offered on ways to integrate what was learned to get the most out of diverse mentoring experiences.
Mentoring Symposium Speakers
Speakers from the 2018 Mentoring Symposium:
Gustavo Arrizabalaga, Ph.D.
Professor, Indiana University School of Medicine
Dr. Gustavo Arrizabalaga received his Ph.D. in Biology from MIT and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he began his work on the cell biology of the human parasite Toxoplasma gondii. From 2004 to 2012 he was a faculty member at the University of Idaho where he established an independent research group. In 2012, he joined the Departments of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Microbiology and Immunology as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 2017. Since becoming an independent investigator, Dr. Arrizabalaga has had consistent external funding, and currently has an R01 and an R21 from the NIAID. With the goal of identifying proteins from Toxoplasma that are both unique and essential, and thus potential targets for drug development, Dr. Arrizabalaga’s research team has focused on the elucidation of the molecular events that drive parasite propagation. Current projects in his lab include dissecting phosphorylation cascades that control the parasite’s lytic cycle, stress responses in the mitochondrion, and the role of Toxoplasma in prostate inflammation. His current research team includes two postdoctoral fellows, three graduate students and one scientific aide. Dr. Arrizabalaga research is multidisciplinary and, accordingly, he holds appointments in the departments of Microbiology and Immunology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the IUSM. Throughout his career, Dr. Arrizabalaga has been committed to teaching and mentoring and has trained over 50 people in his lab. He received the 2017 IU Trustee Teaching Award and won several teaching awards at the University of Idaho. Currently, he is a member of the IUSM Diversity Council and of the Graduate School Admission Committee. He co-directs the schools’ Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in the Biomedical Sciences. Since 2016 he has been involved with the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) as a grant writing coach and trainer, mentoring junior faculty and postdoctoral fellows in writing research and development grants.
Tina Baich
Director of Faculty Mentoring, Office of Academic Affairs
Librarian & Associate Dean for Collections, University Library
IU Indianapolis
Tina Baich is the Director of Faculty Mentoring in the IU Indianapolis Office of Academic Affairs. In this role, she is responsible for the direction of the IU Indianapolis Mentoring Academy, including oversight of the proposal funding process, planning and managing the Mentoring Symposium, and support of faculty and librarian mentoring at IU Indianapolis. Tina’s primary appointment is with University Library where she holds the rank of Librarian and was recently appointed Associate Dean for Collections. She was selected as one of University Library’s representatives to the IU Indianapolis Mentoring Academy and co-coordinated the Library’s mentoring program. Tina is a recipient of the STARS (a section of the American Library Association) Virginia Boucher-OCLC Distinguished Interlibrary Loan Librarian Award (2016) and Indiana University’s W. George Pinnell Award for Outstanding Service (2017).
Tara Hobson
Director of Graduate Programs and Student Success, Indiana University School of Medicine
Tara Hobson, a 2017 alumna of the HERS Leadership Program for Women in Higher Education and 2017 Luce Foundation Fellow, holds an M.A. in Sociology, and is a doctoral student in Higher Education Leadership at Indiana State University. She has nearly ten years of direct involvement managing grant supported programs and research structured to enhance faculty mentorship, student training, and professional development planning, as a means to enhance the success of students and their faculty mentors. As the Director of Graduate Programs and Student Success at the IU School of Medicine, she focuses on increasing the understanding of group interactions as predictors and facilitators of individual outcomes to enhance graduate training. Tara oversees the areas of graduate enrollment management, graduate student affairs, and graduate alumni relations in the IU School of Medicine. She is a member of the IU School of Medicine’s Women’s Advisory Council and Diversity Council. Tara is a mentor for the IU Indianapolis Staff Mentoring Program and was recently selected by the IU Indianapolis Chancellor to participate in the Inaugural Women of IU Conference. She has been recognized for her mentoring and teaching skills, receiving awards for Outstanding Woman Staff Leader, the IUSM Hard Wired Award for Achievement, and Mentor of the Year Award. Her commitment to mentoring extends to undergraduate students in areas of diversity (DEAP) and academic risk (STAR). At the national level, she leadership positions with NAGAP and BioGAP, and is a regular workshop presenter at colleges and universities across the country.
Randall J. Roper, Ph.D.
Director of the Graduate Mentoring Center
Associate Professor of Biology, School of Science
IU Indianapolis
As director of the IU Indianapolis graduate mentoring center, Dr. Roper seeks to help both faculty and students improve their mentoring skills and promote diversity and inclusion at IU Indianapolis. In his laboratory, he mentors graduate and undergraduate students in research that discovers how three copies of genes on human chromosome 21 cause traits commonly found in individuals with Down syndrome. The goal of this research is to find ways to improve the lives of individuals with Trisomy 21 while training the next generation of scientists. His campus recognitions for education and mentoring include: the Trustees Teaching Award (2010), Mentor of the Year for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation at IU Indianapolis (2010), CRL Director’s Award for Outstanding Leadership and Mentoring of Undergraduate Research (2011), IU Indianapolis Athletics Favorite Professor Award (2014) and the Alvin S. Bynum Mentoring Award for Faculty at IU Indianapolis (2015).Etta Ward
Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Development
IU Indianapolis
Etta Ward has led research development operations in the IU Indianapolis Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research for over 16 years. As the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Development, her primary role is to advance the IU Indianapolis research mission and to promote independent and collaborative research success. Ward helped to spearheaded targeted programming to nurture and advance the research and creative activities of women and minority research faculty. One such program is the Enhanced Mentoring Program with Opportunities for Ways to Excel in Research (EMPOWER). Ward currently serves on numerous local and national boards such as the Villages of Indiana Board, the IU Liberal Arts Alumni Association Board (president), and the National Organization for Research Development Professionals (NORDP) Board. She received the IU Indianapolis Multicultural Staff Impact Award and the United Way Diversity Advocate Award in 2015 and was the recipient of the IU Indianapolis Outstanding Woman Staff Leader Award in 2016.