Students and Research Mentors Can Navigate Career Conversations Together

Raquel Y. Salinas offers advice for graduate students and research mentors on how to have better conversations about career planning.

“As a trained scientist, I had a fantastic research mentor. We talked about my research project, which experiments to prioritize and what the data meant, and we even sometimes discussed personal things like family and ties to home. When I joined his lab, I was open with my mentor about my interest in a teaching career and my desire to run a small research program working primarily with undergraduates. However, my career aspirations evolved over the course of my graduate training, and I found myself hesitant to share my new career goals. Though I recognized that my interactions with my mentor were quite positive and supportive, I still feared that sharing my non–academic scientist aspirations would somehow disappoint him, or worse, that I wouldn’t get the fullest support for my research training.

Now, as a career development professional who advises biomedical Ph.D. students, I see this same pattern often. Students express feeling comfortable discussing their research and academic endeavors with their research mentors but hesitate when it comes to discussing career plans outside academic research. They fear not receiving the same level of support and training, letting their mentor down, or being seen as less committed to their research and academic pursuits.”

Read more in Students and Research Mentors Can Navigate Career Conversations Together by Raquel Y. Salinas in Inside Higher Ed’s Carpe Careers, published January 13, 2025.

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By Laura Stark
Laura Stark Associate Director: Academic Careers & Pursuing the PhD