mentMAINZ Mentoring Program

“Mentoring is building bridges into your future. To share life and work experiences in a trusting mentoring relationship with your mentor will boost your career orientation, inspire your character and support your level of professionalism.”
Katrin Klauer, Project Management Mentoring, Alumni, Graduate School MAINZ

Mentoring

Mentoring is a promoted professional relationship between different generations and hierarchical levels. It offers a learning process that is individualized, improvement-oriented, feedback-supported, systematic and based on the? practical application of skills. The mentMAINZ Mentoring Program is embedded in the training program of MAINZ. mentMAINZ boosts the career management of our students for the time after completing their doctoral thesis.

The program starts with an analysis of the individual competence profile, personal interests and values as well as of the required work environment. Based on this analysis the Graduate School MAINZ supports each student to find and contact a matching mentor for a one-year relationship. During the mentoring relationship, the mentor invests time and attention for the professional orientation of the mentee and promotes the student by sharing his or her personal experience, network and feedback. Additionally, mentees benefit from participating in success teams regarding their personal development and professional vita shaping.

The framework of the mentMAINZ Mentoring Program includes:

  • a competence profiling
  • two workshops with other mentees to define personal criteria like branch, company, position and mentor´s experience, to plan the search for a mentor, and to train the first contact
  • four supported meetings during the period of the mentoring relationship; these meetings are based on the method of success teams to reach individual goals empowered by a team
  • four meetings with the mentor during the one-year mentoring relationship (travel support is provided)
  • documents and guidelines for mentor and mentee to clarify their roles and obtain an agreement for a successful mentoring relationship

 

Contact

Katrin Klauer

Mo to Thu: 10 am to 4 pm

kklauer@uni-mainz.de

 

Testimonials

“On the one hand, my mentoring relationship gave me more academic input, even options for cooperation with my mentor’s department and, on the other hand, it made insights into my future career possible, expanded my networks, and supported me in my career planning."
Bernd Oschmann, MAINZ PhD student, mentMAINZ mentee

“What I benefited most from as a mentee is that I have greatly expanded my network in the scientific community through my mentor, and correspondingly got opportunities for scientific collaborations. Furthermore, triggered by discussions in the group coaching sessions, I started thinking more often about things like career plans, life-work balance, etc. This is helpful in situations of life transition, or when making important decisions. Finally, as an international student, it was also a very good experience for me to work/discuss together with other German students and looking at things/life from a different perspective.”
H., MAINZ PhD student, mentMAINZ mentee

“I think that the mentMAINZ program is not only useful but also extremely important. What really helped me was that, through my participation in mentMAINZ, I could profit immensely from the experience of others and thus successfully follow my own path. My mentor came from the industrial sector, which enabled me to gain concrete insights into professional life in an industry. I also had a very trustworthy relationship with my mentor, so I could ask her quite openly about things like applications and salary expectations, as well as job interviews. That helped me a lot. I also came to realize how important contacts are. Nowadays, good grades are not enough; you have to start to build your own network very early on. I used my time as a mentMAINZ mentee very actively for this. The support provided by Edeltraud Eller from the Graduate School was very professional and clarified many things; her availability was very helpful in many situations.“
Julia Krez, MAINZ Alumna, mentMAINZ mentee

“For me, the mentoring program was great help in preparing for the job hunt. My mentor helped to identify possible weaknesses in my CV and introduced me to the day-to-day work in industry. He was instrumental in getting me to pursue an internship that got me new contacts and first-hand experience in industry. In a complementary way, the coaching sessions helped to define what I wanted from a future employer.”
S., MAINZ PhD student, mentMAINZ mentee

"The mentMAINZ program represented a wonderful kind of support during my doctorate. I received important stimuli from exchanges with fellow students in the events offered by the program, as well as from conversations with my mentor. My perspectives about possible career paths have become more differentiated and my own career planning has thus become more reliable. In particular, I profited greatly from the often informal exchanges, because we could openly discuss issues that concerned most of us but were rarely addressed outside of such a group."
Christian, MAINZ PhD student, mentMAINZ mentee

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