Information for Cohort Mentors and Advisors

The role of Cohort mentors is to foster, support and facilitate the progress of HDR scholars towards their study milestones and degree completion.

Cohort mentors will endeavour to provide students with any or all of the following support:

• Providing information and assistance with HDR enrolment process and subsequent candidacy requirements (milestones) and management
• Providing information, guidance and feedback about a range of research and academic activities:
  • Critical thinking
  • Academic writing
  • Oral presentations
  • Ethics and biosafety application processes
  • Research Methods
  • Data collection, management, analysis
  • Peer-review publishing process
• Encouraging with the development organisational skills
• Facilitating networking with peers
• Referring candidates to appropriate university experts when required, such as
  librarians, teaching and learning staff, workplace health and safety, ethics committee, counselling, etc.
• Sharing research education resources and tools, and student work exemplars
• Providing general pastoral care: motivation and emotional support as well as encouraging self-confidence
• Where appropriate, cohort mentors will apply discretion and transparency when providing students with support and will keep advisory panels abreast of their interactions with students.

The role of the Cohort mentor is not to impede the progress of students and therefore:

• At no time will a Cohort mentor undermine or supplant the role of the advisory panel. However, please note that some of the Cohort mentors are also advisors as part of their normal academic activities.
• At no time will a Cohort mentor interfere with the candidate-advisory panel relationship. In this regard, Cohort mentors are expected to keep the mentoring process transparent by informing advisory teams and the head of the Cohort Program of interactions with students.
• Cohort mentors will not give content expert advice unless their expertise warrants it and is sought by the candidates/advisory team.
• Cohort mentors do not expect co-authorship unless they have significantly contributed to a particular research project.
  For example: a Cohort mentor could expect to be included as a co-author if he/she substantially contributed to the design of a study or the design of a research tool.
  For example: a Cohort mentor would not expect to be included as a co-author after giving feedback about the academic quality of a draft manuscript without any other substantial contribution to the study reported in the manuscript.