Euraxess North America Issues a Mentoring Report

In December 2016, TASSA participated in EURAXESS North America’s 2nd Annual Meeting of European Scientific Diasporas in Washington, D.C. The meeting’s focus was on mentoring, where leaders discussed best practices, and opportunities and challenges of current mentoring programs run by various diaspora groups in North America. Meeting participants further discussed how they could join forces in establishing a Joint European Mentoring Initiative to support European researchers at home and abroad. TASSA’s managing director Dr. Tuba Fehr was an invited panelist at the meeting and talked about a vision for how a Joint Mentoring Initiative of this kind could look like under the Euraxess umbrella. The report from this meeting is available through this link: https://www.joomag.com/magazine/report-of-2nd-european-scientific-diasporas-in-north-america-meeting-2016/0301394001491588718?short

Some highlights from the meeting include the consensus around increased awareness of the significance of mentoring for young researchers, the need for mentoring programs to be all encompassing to teach younger scientists how to market themselves and their work while promoting their careers, and one-size-fits all is not the right approach in establishing a Joint European Mentoring Initiative. One recommendation suggested by the audience in moving forward in this joint effort was for EURAXESS to hold “Train the Trainer” workshops for interested and committed diasporas in 2017 as a tangible and achievable result. As of January 2017, EURAXESS North America has began the planning of a series of workshops to follow through on these recommendations. Funded by the European Commission, the objective of the EURAXESS North America initiative is to actively promote Europe as an attractive and open place for researchers and innovators. It provides a great networking platform mainly for European researchers working in North America but also North American researchers/innovators with the potential of moving to Europe. Membership is free. http://northamerica.euraxess.org