This website (and accompanying document) provides guidelines and tools intended to be useful to all within the MSU community who have advising and mentoring roles related to graduate education. While attention to compliance issues (e.g., Responsible Conduct of Research, Title IX) is essential to creating a community of integrity and excellence, the purpose of this document is to highlight the essential role of advising and mentoring. Advising involves providing basic information about requirements, policies and procedures that apply to everyone. All students have the right to expect thoughtful, timely, and accurate advising. Mentoring involves a deeper relationship and has a more extensive impact. Effective mentoring relationships are formed through principles of reciprocity and mutual responsibility. Mentors and mentees respect one another both as researchers/scholars/creative practitioners and as individuals. That respect is formed through a shared commitment to scientific, creative and professional excellence.
MSU Guidelines for Graduate Student Mentoring and Advising (PDF)
The following guidelines are intended to foster faculty-graduate student relationships that are characterized by honesty, courtesy, and professionalism and that provide students with intellectual support and guidance. The academic unit is especially important, since it forms the community of scholars responsible for cultivating a stimulating intellectual environment and, through the joint efforts of all faculty members of the unit, for mentoring of graduate students.