As a Postdoctoral Researcher with a habilitation project or a junior research group leadership, you make important contributions in research for the advancement of science and solutions for current and future challenges in business and society.
Due to your role and responsibilities that come with your position of leadership, the University of Stuttgart would like to support you in your career phase with the newly designed mentoring program AdvanceScience.
AdvanceScience is a two-year mentoring program specifically for Postdocs, Habilitations and Junior Research Group Leaders. The mentoring program brings you, the mentee, together with potential mentors such as experienced colleagues or external leaders from business and society. The mentoring relationship allows you to be paired with a mentor in which the chemistry is the best fit. The partnership is hierarchy-free and the working method is individualized between the tandems. This means each partnership decides when and how often to meet, with which platform (online, in person, telephone, etc.) they choose to meet and what topics they choose to discuss. The mentoring team will support you in contacting the mentor of your choice. We are also happy to help you find a suitable mentor, if you do not have one in mind.
AdvanceScience not only pairs you with an excellent mentor, but also allows you the opportunity to broaden your network. The mentoring program offers diverse networking opportunities within and outside the University of Stuttgart in the context of your current career phase. These opportunities make it easier for you to exchange ideas with professors and leaders in business and society, intergenerationally and across disciplinary boundaries. Additionally, the transfer of informal knowledge passed on to you is invaluable, thus promoting the culture of openness, cooperation, mutual support, and ultimately shared responsibility for the further development of our university.
In addition to the existing qualification and support offered by GRADUS, we would like to contribute to your personal and professional development through additional trainings and thus lay the foundation for further successful applications in the Excellence Strategy and in federal-state programs for young scientists.
The AdvanceScience mentoring program is aimed at postdocs with and without a habilitation project, as well as junior research group leaders at the University of Stuttgart. Participation in the mentoring program extends over two years and usually begins in the spring. The group size is limited to 20 participants; therefore, selection interviews take place after the application phase. The University of Stuttgart would like to significantly increase the proportion of women in all status groups, which is why half of the places are reserved for women.
If you would like to participate in the two-year program, you should be willing to proactively establish and maintain a mentoring partnership. In addition, mentoring includes mandatory participation in the following side events: Kick-off meeting; reflection meeting and a closing event.
Benefits
The AdvanceScience mentoring program offers you the following benefits as a mentee:
- You become aware of your strengths and your own impact
- You gain clarity about your own career path
- You will receive support in career-relevant decision-making processes
- You will receive encouragement and inspiration for the realization of your own goals
- You will get to know work structures and processes
- You will tap into relevant networks
- After successful participation you will receive a certificate
Application and Participation
The application round for AdvanceScience is between Monday, February 15th and Sunday, March 7th 2021.
If you are interested in applying for the first AdvanceScience cohort for spring 2021, please download the application materials here.
The following timeline gives you an overview of what to expect from the start of the application to successful completion of the mentoring program, should you become selected as a mentee.
The application round is opened from Monday, February 15th to Sunday, March 2021. Please fill out the application form and send to mentoring@gradus.uni-stuttgart.de by the deadline. Once applications have been received, they will be reviewed and selected candidates will be invited for an interview. A final selection will be made based on the interviews.
The next phase will consist of mentor matching. Once mentees and mentors have been matched the kick-off meeting will take place. The reflection meeting will take place during the half way point of the mentoring program, which is usually about 1 year after the kick-off.
The final event will be the closing event at the end of the 2-year mentoring program. You will receive your participation certificate of the mentoring program upon successful completion.
Timeline
| Application Round | 15. February 2021 – 07. March 2021 |
| Individual Interviews | Middle until end of March 2021 |
| Kick-off Meeting | May 2021 |
| Reflection Meeting | May 2022 (after one year from start) |
| Closing Meeting | May 2023 |
Should you have more questions about the AdvanceScience mentoring program, please contact the Mentoring Team.