Postdoctoral Resources

Mentoring Resources

Texas A&M has created a Compact Between Graduate Students and Their Supervising Faculty to offer guiding principles intended to promote and support a positive mentoring relationship between graduate students and their supervising faculty. This compact is also useful for postdoctoral scholars.

The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) has created a Compact between Postdoctoral Appointees and Their Mentors, which is “intended to initiate discussions …about the postdoctoral appointee-mentor relationship and the commitments necessary for a high quality postdoctoral training experience.” The AAMC suggests various ways it can be used in order to create mutual expectations for training between postdocs and their mentors.

The AAMC also has created a Compact between Biomedical Graduate Students and Their Research Advisors, which “is intended to support the development of a positive mentoring relationship between the pre-doctoral student and their research advisor.” The AAMC suggests possible uses for the compact which sets broad guidelines to initiate discussions about the student-mentor relationship.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) provides Resources for the Development of Early-Career Scientists. One of these, “Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty” provides a collection of practical advice and experiences from seasoned biomedical investigators. Included among many chapters is Mentoring and Being Mentored. The guide is available in either PDF or free printed form.

Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR)

Both NIH and NSF have training grant requirements for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars for responsible and ethical conduct of research.

The Division of Research units at Texas A&M offer training in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). Training is offered by the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative to familiarize researchers with research misconduct, data management, conflict of interest, collaborative science, responsible authorship, mentoring, peer review, animal research, and human subjects research.

The University of Illinois hosts the National Center for Professional & Research Ethics. The Center, sponsored by NSF, gathers and disseminates ethics resources, including educational curricula and online courses, reference materials, scholarly and research literature, and resources available for use in RCR education required by NSF and other funders of research. In addition, the site’s interactive community offers a place where users can publish and share scholarship, discuss ethics-related issues for professionals and researchers, and develop and share new course offerings.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Research Integrity provides an extensive listing of a wide variety of RCR resources.

For examples of RCR programs at other institutions see:

• University of California, Davis
• Columbia University
• Washington University

 

For resources related to RCR from professional organizations 

The American Psychological Association has organized a list of the nine areas that RCR encompasses, as defined by federal agencies, and links to resources that investigators can use to obtain the information and training needed.

The National Academy of Engineering Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science (OEC) has relaunched its website. Previously focused primarily on engineering and research, the redesigned OEC site has expanded to encompass ethics issues in science. The project was undertaken with the cooperation of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and in collaboration with the Ethics Education Library of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Read more.