Mentoring Up: Navigating Your Mentoring Relationship

New course for 2026!

What is GC 520?

GC 520: Mentoring Up. This 8-week course will meet the first eight Fridays of Spring 2026 from 10 to 10:50 a.m. in SSB2790. It will be graded S/U.

Taught by the Dean of the Graduate College, David Eddington, the course is very similar to the mentoring workshops we are offering faculty and shares a little under 50% of the content, and the other 50% is more geared towards PhD students. The course will build community with other PhD students across many UIC disciplines.

Below is an outline of the course weeks and topics.

How do I register?

For Spring 2026, enrollment is capped at 25. Register for CRN 49240 via XE registration at my.uic.edu.

When does GC 520 meet?

Spring 2026 section:
  • First eight Fridays, 10 – 10:50 a.m. CT in SSB 2790.

Course learning outcomes

GC 520: Mentoring UP – Competencies and Learning Objectives

Introduction to Mentoring Up (Week 1)

  1. Learn about other mentees in the group to begin building a learning community.
  2. Define mentoring relationships and their role as a mentor/mentee.
  3. Prepare to effectively reframe the relationships with their research mentors and “mentor up.”

Maintaining Effective Communication (Week 2/3)

  1. Accept and use constructive feedback.
  2. Identify different communication styles/ approaches.
  3. Use multiple strategies for improving communication (in person, at a distance, across multiple mentors, and within proper personal boundaries).

Aligning Expectations (Week 3/4)

  1. Effectively establish mutually beneficial expectations for the mentoring relationship.
  2. Clearly communicate expectations for the mentoring relationship.
  3. Align mentee and mentor expectations.

Addressing Equity and Inclusion (Week 5)

  1. Improve and expand understanding of equity and inclusion, and how diversity influences mentor-mentee interactions.
  2. Recognize the impact that conscious and unconscious assumptions, preconceptions, biases, and prejudices bring to the mentor-mentee relationship and how to manage them.

Building Research Self-Efficacy (Week 6)

  1. Identify signs of self-efficacy that resonate when conducting research related tasks.
  2. Define self-efficacy and its four sources.
  3. Articulate their role in building their own research self-efficacy.
  4. Assess the influence of others on their research self-efficacy.
  5. Devise strategies to support others’ research self-efficacy.

Achieving Independence (Week 7)

  1. Define independence, its core elements, and how those elements change over the course of a mentoring relationship.
  2. Identify the benefits and challenges of fostering independence, including the sometimes conflicting goals of fostering independence and achieving grant-funded research objectives

Seeking Professional Development (Week 8)

  1. Identify the roles mentors play in their overall professional development.
  2. Develop or revise their individual development plan IDP.
  3. Recognize and engage in open dialogue on balancing the competing demands,  needs, and interests of mentors and mentees, e.g., research productivity, grant funding, creativity and independence, career preference decisions, non-research activities, personal development, work-family balance, etc.