IHPCSS Mentoring: Introduction for Mentors

1 Announcements

1.1 Vaccine Status

Will be checked at the reception

1.2 Staff Lanyard

Make sure you have GREEN lanyard

2 Mentoring at the Summer School

2.1 Committee

• Scott Callaghan (lead)
• Weronkia Filinger
• Elsa Gonsiorowski
• Ilya Zhukov

2.2 Mentoring Program

• Each student is assigned a mentor; mentors have 2-3 students
• There are 5 returning mentors, students from previous years who were selected to attend
• We have a number of mentoring sessions planned throughout the week (schedule included later)
• Sign up to help!

2.3 Session Help Opportunities

• Monday morning: parallel programming hands on
• Tuesday morning: parallel programming hands on
• Tuesday afternoon: Mentoring Resource Fair
• Wednesday morning: HPC python / performance analysis hands on
• Friday morning: Deep learning hands on

2.4 Mentoring Program Success

• Students consistently rate the mentoring program as the most valuable and distinctive part of the summer school
• You have something to offer every student
• Matching is a best guess based on the surveys
  • Not just matched on technical topics
  • If not a good match, that's ok; students can request a change
  • Students will have opportunities to talk with other staff

3 What is Mentoring?

3.1 Mentoring Basics

• Partnership between 2 people
• Give support, guidance, maybe advice
  • Listen, understand, validate
  • Favor guiding over telling
• Based on mutual trust and respect
• Ask questions and challenge, but be encouraging

3.2 Topics for Mentoring

• Not just technical topics
• Students are interested in hearing about:
  • Career progression
  • Work-life balance
  • Dealing with tough advisors
  • Future of HPC
• You may need to bring up these topics
• Ultimately, these conversations can have a huge influence on their career paths

4 Mentoring at the Summer School

4.1 Mentors

staff-bios.pdf

4.2 Mentoring Schedule

4.3 Monday 10:00 – Staff & Returning Mentors Introductions

• Brief staff introductions
• Returning mentors will give 2 minute lightning talks on their research area

4.4 Monday Lunch – Mentor groups & Goal Setting

• Please sit with your mentor group
• Play the ice-breaker game if you haven't yet
• Can sit with another mentoring group and play the game cross-group
• Discuss goal for the week, what do the students hope to get out of the summer school?
• Start getting your mentees to think about career paths and what they might want to discuss during Thursday's one-on-ones

4.5 Tuesday 16:30 – Resource Fair

• Please sign up for a topic
• Opportunity for students to discuss non-technical topics
• Break out into small, informal groups for discussion
• Work/life balance
• Switching departments
• Diversifying your research; growing beyond your advisor
• 2-body problem
• Power dynamics in academia; how to deal with your advisor
• Working at a national lab
• Microagressions
• Starting a family
• Working remote
• How to avoid people
• Careers in academia
• Impostor syndrome

Future trends in HPC Interviewing tips Pursuing a career in a new country Science Policy Networking (with people) skills Working at an HPC center Fantastic theses & how to design them Working at an undergraduate-focused institution Dealing with hostile audience members How do I change fields? Things I wished I hand appreciated/known while attending my first (or second) SIAM or CSE conference. Best minor thing/process I did as an early career researcher that has had a surprisingly long effect throughout my career. Work life balance – balancing demands of work, family, and health. Combining career with children – balancing a research career with demands of parenthood and childcare. Adviser-advisee relationships – how to navigate the sometimes tricky relationship with your advisor Impostor syndrome – tips and guidance for dealing with imposter syndrome and the feeling that you may not belong Landing a postdoc Landing a faculty position Grant writing in your early career Time management – tips and tricks fro maintaining productivity and effective time management Applying for graduate school Funding graduate school Finding a research topic

4.6 Wednesday 16:30 – Career Breakout Sessions

• Brief introduction to career paths
• Breakouts:
  • Resume Review
  • Presentation Skills
  • Networking & Elevator Pitch
  • Interview tips

4.7 Thursday 11:30 – One-on-ones with Mentors

• 20 minutes to talk with each mentee in your group
• Your opportunity to really connect and do some mentoring
• Hopefully they have gotten to know you throughout the week and trust you enough to have some deep conversations

4.8 Friday 13:30 – Returning Mentor Lightning Talks

• 2 minute talks to review their career paths since leaving the summer school

5 Final Words

5.1 Impostor Syndrome

• Students feel like frauds and like they don't deserve to be here, or in research in general
• Doesn't matter what others tell them: success dismissed as luck, timing, not real, or deception
• May look like lacking ambition or claiming lack of expertise

5.2 Impostor Syndrome: Ways to Help

• Share that these thoughts of common and don't mean students don't belong
  • 70% of academics at some point; 40% of academics right now
• Help students become more aware of thought patterns: feeling like a failure does not make it true
• Ask students what they would tell someone in their position
• Some of you have personal experience with impostor syndrome – your perspective is powerful

5.3 Ask for Help

• It can be really powerful to tell your mentee that you don't have all the answers
• Use your network (everyone here) to help your mentee with things you don't know how to address
• Please don't hesitate to reach out to the mentoring committee, in person, on slack, or over email
  • Elsa Gonsiorowski <gonsie@me.com>
  • Scott Callaghan <scottcal@usc.edu>
  • Weronika Filinger <w.filinger@epcc.ed.ac.uk>
  • Ilya Zhukov <i.zhukov@fz-juelich.de>.

6 Credits

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