The Office for Supporting Female Researchers promotes a mentoring program to support research and daily life for newly hired faculty members in their third year of employment (F3).
On Monday, March 1st, we held our second lunchtime group mentoring session.
Nine female professors and associate professors from various fields within the university served as mentors, offering advice to the newly hired F3 faculty members who would be mentees (clients): Inhee Hwang (Graduate School of Engineering), Eri Sakuta (Faculty of Science), Yu Yamaguchi (Graduate School of Agriculture), and Yuka Morioka (Institute for Genetic Disease Control).
After introductions, the mentees consulted with their mentors over lunch, and the mentors began giving advice based on their own experiences.
Following the first group mentoring session on February 17th, this session also allowed mentors and mentees to learn more about each other's situations, and facilitated the exchange of information and opinions across different fields, not only between mentors and mentees but also among the mentors themselves. It was a very productive time.
The newly hired faculty members seem to have been able to further increase their motivation for research by learning about the efforts and achievements of their senior female faculty members.
In the support office, we plan to continue providing effective mentoring not only through one-on-one consultations but also by holding group meetings like this one.
