Mentors Without Borders

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.

A few days ago, one of my graduate students told me about a conversation with her friend. Her friend had recently heard about Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), an international organization that delivers medical aid in many countries.

“I wish I could volunteer to do something like that,” the friend said. “But I’m a social scientist, not a medical doctor.”

“But you can do something like that,” my graduate student replied. Then she told her friend about AuthorAID.

By being a mentor in AuthorAID, researchers in all fields can help other researchers. Mentors can come from any country and can be in any field. So can mentees.

Mentors (and mentees) also can be of any age. Originally, some people thought that mentors would be mainly senior researchers. But early-career and mid-career researchers can be excellent mentors too.

Recently a colleague gave postdoctoral fellows a talk about AuthorAID. Afterward, the postdoctoral fellows’ department head urged all the fellows to become AuthorAID mentors, even though they were early in their careers.

The department head noted that being an AuthorAID mentor can help the mentor as well as the mentee. Being a mentor increases one’s own understanding (for example, of how to write a journal article). It also adds to the service section of one’s curriculum vitae (CV).

Becoming an AuthorAID mentor is easy. For more information, please see the mentoring section of the AuthorAID website.

Through AuthorAID, we have mentors without borders!

Wishing you a good week—

Barbara