Research Mentor Training Program

CIMER Training at UT Southwestern

Mentoring is a privilege and an honor. Successful mentoring can be immensely rewarding and will propel life-long career success for our trainees. Because mentoring is critical to our academic mission, Alyssa Hasty, Ph.D., Vice Provost and Senior Associate Dean of the Office of Faculty Affairs and Career Development launched the new UT Southwestern Research Mentor Training Program fall of 2024. This program is a collaboration between the Office of Faculty Development and the Graduate School of Biomedical Science.

Our Research Mentor Training curriculum is adapted from Entering Mentoring developed by the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Improvement of Mentoring Experiences in Research (CIMER). The core session includes guided discussions, evidence-based practices, case studies, and interactive activities. Cases are based on both bench and clinical research settings. All concepts discussed are relevant and transferable for research mentorship and other types of training activities. Our CIMER-trained facilitators are faculty with expertise in basic science or clinical translational research.

The NIH and NSF now require evidence of structured mentorship education for training grant applications. In addition, our Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences also requires mentorship training for dissertation mentors.

We are offering 3.5-hour in-person interactive CIMER mentorship trainings.

Research Mentor Training: Supplemental Modules

We are excited to share an update on the UT Southwestern Research Mentor Training Program!  

Since launching the UT Southwestern Research Mentor Training Program in October of 2024, we have hosted 19 sessions and trained over 400 faculty members! Based on the evaluations provided by attendees, 93% reported that attending the session was a valuable use of their time and would recommend this training to their colleagues.  

Many participants also expressed a strong interest in additional topics to address other key aspects of mentoring. In response, we are excited to announce two supplemental web-based sessions (1 hour each):  

• Fostering Independence  

• Promoting Professional Development 

These new sessions will be presented back-to-back, giving you the flexibility to attend one or both. Although it would be preferable to have completed the core 3.5 hr. session first, we will accept applicants with or without this prior training.

Apply to the supplemental trainings here