Now accepting nominations!
Purpose
The purpose of these awards is to recognize graduate students (both master's and PhD students) and postdoctoral scholars across all disciplines who consistently demonstrate qualities of exceptional mentors. These include actively supporting the professional growth and development of their mentees who may include graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, staff, and/or undergraduate and high school students visiting UCSF from other institutions.
These awards exemplify GEPA’s efforts to support a mentoring culture that benefits all by recognizing the contributions of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have formally or informally taken on some of the responsibilities of mentors, supervisors, and sponsors for a colleague.
Traditional definitions of these roles are:
- Mentors offer psychological and emotional support, teaching and training, career support, and role modeling.
- Supervisors set mentee research goals, assess baseline levels of knowledge and understanding, provide positive and corrective feedback, evaluate progress, manage conflicts, enforce consequences, and provide support to trainees.
- Sponsors actively connect mentees to opportunities and advocate for mentees to receive rewards and promotions.
UCSF graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are invaluable contributors to our mentor ecosystem. For example, many engage in:
Research Mentoring: providing hands-on training in laboratory or analytic techniques; teaching and advice related to experimental design and methodology; guidance on technical writing/presentation skills for manuscripts, talks, posters, grants or fellowship applications; developing their technical abilities and/or understanding to gain independence in a given area.
Career/Professional Mentoring: focusing on the career or professional development needs of mentee; helping a mentee assess their career interests, explore a specific career, connect with professionals in that career of interest, develop the relevant skills, set professional goals, apply and/or obtain positions
Social/Inspirational Mentoring: positively impacting a mentee’s ability to persist and succeed in their position; serving as a role model to inspire and motivate mentees to achieve personal goals, build confidence, choose a career, or persist through obstacles
The Dean’s Awards for Excellence in Mentoring for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars recognize these essential dimensions of mentorship, especially as they relate to the leadership roles that UCSF trainees so often assume.
Eligibility
The awards are open to:
- All currently enrolled UCSF master’s and PhD students who are registered at the time of nomination and through January 31, 2026. Students in joint programs must have UCSF as their home campus.
- All postdoctoral scholars who are in a UCSF postdoctoral scholar title code at the time of nomination and through January 31, 2026.
Nomination Procedure
- Nominations for the 2026 award cycle are currently being accepted through November 13!
- Current UCSF staff, faculty, students, and postdoctoral scholars may submit nominations. Student nominators in joint programs must have UCSF as their home campus.
- There is no limit on the number of nominations per nominator.
- Nominations should describe the work of eligible mentors during their time at UCSF with graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, staff, interns, and/or volunteers, regardless of the mentees’ affiliation with UCSF.
- Nominations must be submitted through the online nomination form.
- The individual submitting the nomination will be designated as the primary nominator and point of contact for all communications.
- The form requires the nominator to upload a nomination statement (PDF) describing the mentoring qualities of nominee. There is a 6,000 character limit, including spaces. Note that the nominator does not have to be the mentee but should be able to describe the mentor’s role in sufficient detail.
- The nominator may include up to two additional support letters from other individuals, which should be uploaded as PDFs and submitted as part of their nomination. These support letters may come from anyone, within or outside of the UCSF community, who can further speak to the qualities described by the nominator and otherwise bolster their entry. (Two-page limit per letter.)
Nomination Information
In their nomination, nominators and supporters will be asked to describe how the nominee acted in the role of mentor, supervisor, or sponsor in providing any type of mentoring. In particular, nominations should describe the interactions and times spent with the mentee and the importance of their impact on the mentee’s professional or educational success. Specific examples and stories that illustrate the mentoring are encouraged.
We recognize that some of the trainees mentored by graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are not currently employed or directly affiliated with UCSF. We recommend that nominators include details on how the mentor has engaged with these trainees in their letter.
Questions? Contact [email protected].
Awards
Three graduate students and three postdoctoral scholars will be selected as awardees. Each award recipient will receive a $600 stipend and a certificate. They will also be recognized on the Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs websites, and at an awards event on January 27, 2026.
Awards will be made to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars have acted in the role of a mentor, supervisor or sponsor and have had an impact on the mentee’s educational/academic success, professional development and/or ability to succeed.
Award Selection
The six award recipients will be selected by a committee composed of postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, faculty members, and administrators. UCSF does not use race, gender, sex, or other protected categories or proxies for protected categories in the selection process.
Award Announcement
The selected award recipients and nominators will be notified by early January 2026.
We will hold an awards ceremony at Mission Bay on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, in celebration of National Mentoring Month. Awardees are also recognized on the GEPA website.
Questions? Contact [email protected].