Mentoring is a personal enhancement strategy through which one person facilitates the development of another by sharing expertise, values and skills.

Mentoring@IGSSE

The IGSSE Mentoring Program has been set up along the guidelines of the TUM Graduate School in order to enrich the scientific and personal training of our graduate students and thus to accelerate their career development.

• Two scientific mentors (i.e. doctoral candidate supervisors - usually university professors) and – if desired – a mentor from industry are on-hand to provide mentees with relevant counseling.

• Upon starting a doctoral project, a supervision agreement between the doctoral candidate and his or her mentors is being signed. The agreement includes a time frame with milestones for the research, a list of courses to be taken, proposed soft/interpersonal-skills training elements, and a direction of planned international and industrial training while building a network of contacts. It also specifies adjustment measures to be undertaken without delay if a milestone is missed per chance. Official meetings of mentors and mentees are held on a quarterly basis. 

• Each doctoral candidate must prepare a seminar paper once a year to report on the progress of his/her work. At the same time, a short written progress report should be drafted, which may include suggestions for adjustments to the supervision agreement, modifications in the research training as well as the research program itself. The mentors are responsible for fulfilling the conditions of the supervision agreement.

Female Mentees

Female mentees benefit from special meetings and networking opportunities as well as extra courses and seminars. The TUM MentorING program offers training with the goal of improving the status of female researchers. Female scientists and academic practitioners from industry place themselves at the disposal of young women scientists, to guide the progress of their academic career based on their own personal experience.