SABER is pleased to announce a mentoring group opportunity offered through the PEER (Persons Excluded due to Ethnicity or Race) SABER committee. The SABER PEER Network is a space where individuals who identify as PEER educators and their allies come together to support one another and drive meaningful change. One such support initiative is the PEER Mentorship Program, whose goal is to connect small groups of mentors and mentees who support one another in the various facets of being an academic (e.g., life work balance, grant writing, navigating politics of academia, the job market, teaching approaches). Although we encourage PEERs and their allies to participate, the program is open to all SABER members. 

Please read on to learn more about this exciting mentoring opportunity.

This is the time of year when school has started and so a good time to think about building a community to help navigate and support the challenges that come with the academic year (and beyond). I am emailing you in my role as the coordinator for the PEER mentorship groups/communities to seek new members (both mentors and mentees) to join a group. While in the past I have sometimes put out a call at other times of the year, going forward the intention is to focus on a single call for participants that ties in with the start of the academic year. 

The PEER committee mentorship group invites you to join a small group of fellow biology educators who want to get together as a small group/community on a regular basis during the 2024-25 academic year. Please complete this form if you want to join a new mentorship group for Fall 2024. The information gathered here will be used to help assign you to a mentorship group. We aim to keep the groups on the smaller side (up to 5 members) and will do our best to match you up with others with similar interests and diverse career stages. We also know that interests shift over time and that in many cases mentorship will end up encompassing a broader range of topics than what you may be initially interested in. We also recognize that regardless of where you are in your academic journey, that you will have things to share as both a mentee and mentor in your mentorship community so you just have to pick interest areas rather than identify yourself as a mentor or mentee. When welcomes instructions are shared with members - I will invite one of the more senior individuals to act as the group lead to organize scheduling of meetings, etc. Please sign-up prior to Friday October 25, 2024. We will form the groups after that date and follow-up with community members by early November. 

Click Here to Sign Up

We would also like to hear from those of you who are in a mentor group already (or were in a group in the past year and no longer are) to check-in to see how things are going and learn more about why you left (if you left). You can complete that survey HERE prior to October 25th too please.

Thanks!

Anne McIntosh (she/her, amcintos@ualberta.ca) 

PEER mentorship community group coordinator