Mentoring

Mentoring

Accompanying mentoring that supports you in the development of your independent academic career is an integral part of MeDDrive funding. In addition to your academic supervisors, a member of the research committee supports you as a project mentor in your academic and personal career development. A written Progress Report (template Progress Report) serves as the basis for the annual Mentoring Committee meetings.

Notes on mentoring

All MeDDrive fellows are supported by a mentoring committee consisting of two self-selected mentors (the submitting professor and the named supervisor from the application - who must be habilitated, appointed or an experienced postdoc) and the assigned project mentor from the Forschungskommission. This team is responsible for providing project-specific advice and feedback, guiding academic progression, and ensuring that fellows have sufficient time and resources to complete their MeDDrive project. A dialogue should be established between the mentors and the MeDDrive fellows, which ideally will continue beyond the duration of the project.

The annual feedback meetings are organized independently by the MeDDrive fellows and can be held either in person or virtually. The first mentoring meeting must take place within the first 6 months from the start of funding, the second within the first 18 months. The completed and signed progress report must be sent to the Research and International Affairs department within one week of the mentoring meeting.

The Progress Report facilitates the structuring of the feedback meetings and serves as a basis for the protocol. Please send the processed form as well as your submitted project outline to the participants of your mentoring committee approximately one week before your feedback meeting. To document the conversation, please bring a printed version to the meeting. During the feedback meeting, the progress report will be completed by the project mentor of the Forschungskommission and signed by you and your mentoring committee as a follow-up to the documentation. For virtual feedback meetings, the signature of the project mentor and the fellow is sufficient. The report must be submitted to Research & International Affairs within one week of the interview.

Procedure of the feedback meetings (approx. 45 minutes):

• Project presentation (status, further milestones, possible adjustments), approx. 10 minutes.
• Scientific discussion with the mentoring committee (approx. 5-10 minutes).
• Discussion of further points relevant to the project and career (exemptions, publication, prizes, science communication, teaching)
• Determination of next milestones

Curriculum

MeDDrive fellows must attend 2 events from the Dresden School of Clinical Science Key Competencies series within their 2-year funding period. The compulsory event is "What is good scientific practice", which must be attended in the first or second year. The second event can be chosen freely within this series of events.