Career Development Education Resources
Career Development Education Resources
Core-Specific Job Families
Many U.S. Institutions have created job families specifically for directors, managers and staff working in core facilities. The rationale for specific job families is that these positions require advanced training and expertise in research technologies, above average interpersonal skills, business acumen and training, and are typically not soft-money positions. These job families have names like core scientist, core technician, core staff scientist, core research assistant, or core facility research professional. The following institutions have provided information with core-specific job families. If you would like to add your institution to the list, please send your information in a .pdf file to Phil Hockberger.
Mentoring
Update: Overview of ABRF Mentoring Program featuring Mentors and Mentees - April 13, 2022
Mentoring is a key element of career development. Established in 2016, the ABRF Mentoring Program has been a primary focus of the Career Development Committee. The goals of this program are several-fold:
- To provide career and professional development for ABRF members
- To make the program flexible enough that any mentee can establish their own objectives and work with a suitable mentor to meet those objectives
- To emphasize the benefits and challenges of diversity, inclusivity and culture within mentoring relationships
Between 2017-2019, 45 Mentor-Mentee pairs were matched. In 2019, to assess program strengths and weaknesses a comprehensive survey of all participants was conducted. Based on the feedback collected from past ‘alumni’ of the program through this survey, the program has been revamped in 2020, with the objectives of 1) providing better mentor/mentee pairing, and 2) stimulating more engagement between the pair through a better platform.
The new platform is sfgMentorNet.
Working with the sfgMentorNet team, the CDC has customized this platform to meet the specific needs of ABRF members. The functionality of the new platform underwent extensive testing in early 2021 with an initial “soft” launch of the revamped program. This new exciting platform offers:
- a website portal where mentors and mentees create profiles
- services for mentee-initiated keyword-based matching, or manual matching by an administrator
- support for optional guided virtual mentoring, via the custom prompts and resources the CDC developed
- in-platform communication tools, if desired, by the pair
- tools to capture program metrics
- ability for mentors to set themselves as temporarily unavailable for mentoring relationships
- ability for participants outside the U.S.
Below is the announcement of the launch of the new Mentoring Program at ABRF 2021, followed by an outline of how to participate for prospective mentors and mentees.
Program outline:
Training guides for getting the most out of a mentoring relationship (for Mentors and for Mentees) are available in the Resources > Useful Documents section of the website