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Revised May 2025

In our small department, the thesis/graduate faculty advisor needs to serve two roles: an advisory role (supporting our graduate students in meeting the requirements toward a degree) and as a key mentor (supporting our student’s professional development more broadly, including a holistic approach that acknowledges our students’ individual backgrounds, challenges, priorities, and goals). Advisors work closely with the graduate program advisor and the relevant directors of graduate studies. We all bring different skills to mentorship, so it is important to encourage our students to create supportive mentoring networks and do our best to refer them to other resources as appropriate.

• Be familiar with our graduate handbook, timelines, and CU graduate policies, and ensure that you know where to look up questions.
  • One of the biggest mistakes that people make has to do with defense timing: a thesis defended for spring graduation will need to be relatively polished before spring break.
• Review policies and timelines with your student in every meeting.
• Be in good communication with the director of graduate studies for your program and with the Graduate Program Assistant about student progress and concerns. Pay close attention to graduate program assistant emails about deadlines and policies.

• Early on, establish regular meeting patterns (once a month at a minimum) and expectations, and let the graduate student know that those meeting patterns may increase at certain stages in their career.
• Practice active listening.
• Discuss multiple potential career paths with the student, ensuring that you support options beyond academic career paths. Work with the student to identify needs in preparation for those potential paths, and consider to whom you and the student can reach out when advice is needed.
• Be available and establish clear expectations around communication with you, the director of graduate studies, and the graduate program assistant.
• Be respectful and mentor your student in respecting people’s time. We all make mistakes – but seek to respond quickly, to show up for meetings on time, and schedule meetings to account for things like moving from one class to another.
• Be supportive of the student’s choices surrounding work-life balance, while also being realistic about work and academic expectations.
• Recognize that your student’s experience – whether as an undergraduate, in interactions with people on campus, in life – may vary dramatically from your own, and be sensitive to those differences.

• Be responsive to student emails, preferably within 48 hours.
• Set clear expectations for when feedback will be returned on drafts, and adhere to them.
• Meet regularly, at the minimum, once a month.
• Mentor your student in taking responsibility for their own progress by giving them necessary tools, including reminding them of online resources, staff and faculty resources, and time management strategies (or resources to learn about time management strategies).
• Be willing to address concerns about progress in supportive ways. Seek paths forward and document communication about progress.
• Support your student in finding venues for professional development and procuring additional resources, including grant support, conference and travel support, in communication with the director of graduate studies for your program.
• Support your student in developing and pursuing their own intellectual paths, including research topics and genres of research expression that may vary from your own.
• Try to observe your student teaching at some point so that you can incorporate that information into recommendations – skills in the classroom are relevant to a broad range of career paths.
• Discuss norms and expectations relevant to your field, while leaving space for challenging norms and expectations that are unethical or unjust.
• Give constructive feedback in teaching, research, and other areas. Think about framing comments in terms of what the student should do, rather than in terms of what is “missing” or “inadequate.”
• Advocate for your student in professional circles as appropriate.

• Seek ongoing education on developments in best practices by reading recent research, attending workshops, checking on resources provided by the Graduate School, etc.