The ATBC will be sponsoring its third Mentoring Circle program this year during its annual conference held in Antananarivo, Madagascar in July 2019. The last two years of the program were very successful, proving to be a very helpful experience to both mentors and mentees.
The ATBC Mentoring Circle program is designed to bring together groups of 8-10 mentees with two mentors with similar career interests to promote career development in tropical biology and conservation. Specifically, we aim to support early career tropical biologists (i.e. graduate students and post-docs) by providing a network of individuals that can offer advice, best practices, and tools to achieve success.
Mentors and mentees will be assigned to their circles and attend a 2-hour meeting on Tuesday, July 30 before the opening ceremony of the ATBC 2019 annual meeting in Antananarivo, Madagascar. They will discuss each mentee’s and mentor’s objectives and desired outcomes. The mentoring circles will convene again at least once more in the course of the meeting during one pre-arranged lunch (Friday, Aug 2). They will then meet virtually (e.g. via Skype or Zoom) once a month throughout the rest of the year to develop a strong and continuing relationship.
If you wish to learn more about ATBC’s mentoring program from the perspective of a mentee, check out the piece written by a PhD student about her own experience, called “ATBC Mentoring: Networking for a Future in Tropical Biology”.
To participate this year, mentees and mentors should be:
- current members of ATBC,
- giving an oral or poster presentation at the ATBC meeting in Antananarivo,
- able to attend meetings on Tuesday, July 30th and Friday, August 2,
- committed to participating in the Mentoring Circles throughout the year.
To apply to be a mentee, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/pCXubykG23pr5NZYA (Note that you should fill out this form even if you indicated on the registration page for the ATBC meeting that you would like to be a mentee.).
To apply to be a mentor, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/Gb6KUvivZgTT8vzR6 (Note that you should fill out this form even if you indicated on the registration page that you would like to be a mentor).
The deadline for applications is Monday, July 1. We will inform mentees and mentors of their selection by mid-June and will follow with an email with guidelines for mentees and mentors.
For more information, visit the ATBC 2019 Annual Meeting page . Please direct any questions about the Mentoring Circles to Edu Efiom (edu.efiom@biol.lu.se), Onja Razafindratsima (onja@ricealumni.edu) or Saara DeWalt (saarad@clemson.edu), Co-coordinators of the ATBC Mentoring Circle for 2019-20.
