Mentee evaluation

Evaluating mentorship and making mentorship a part of the assessment. This is especially relevant for PIs, and aims to look at the mentorship and culture created with the applicants.
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Experiments in Assessment WG

Last updated

March 10, 2026

WarningObjectives and potential outcome

Embedding mentee evaluation in assessment may lead to:

  • Evaluative and supportive impact on leaders in academia
  • Increase leadership competences and skills - e.g. better leaders in research
  • Better transparency in leadership expectations - knowing what is needed to become a leader/manager
  • Make it easier for people to transition into leadership positions - helping people in the transition
  • More diversity in academic leadership (e.g. 1st generation researchers, gender diversity, etc.)

Research domains

This idea can lend itself to any context where it can be targeted towards leaders. It is expected that this is especially applicable to research institutions, but it could also apply to funders in relation to grants that support leadership and group management.

Context and considerations

Experiments on mentee evaluation can take different forms and target numerous elements of the leadership cycle, including:

  • Mentee evaluations for hiring, promotion, and tenure assessment
  • Top down evaluation on leadership
  • 360 degree evaluations for leaders (i.e., where evaluation takes input from individuals in supervising, equal, and supervised roles - above, middle, below)
  • Training/coaching for leaders as parts of grants/institutional positions/etc.
  • Competence/skills frameworks and evaluations in grants/hiring/promotion
  • Funds in grants/team budgets for leadership training and development

Challenges and mitigations

Several challenges may impact this idea:

Challenge: Resistance from leaders – Research leaders think they are already great leaders, and this isn’t relevant.
Mitigation: Make it mandatory for new leaders

Challenge: Creating evaluations for all staff (even if it doesn’t exist)
Mitigation: Embrace a reduced frequency of assessment (See related idea)

Challenge: Mitigation: Monitoring improvement and how effective this is
Mitigation: Increased importance of HR staff - bring them into the process

Challenge: Selection bias – Mentors select people they know will be positive
Mitigation: Make the template clear enough to allow to ‘read between the lines’
Mitigation: Assessor training (i.e., Qualitative evaluation in Pep-CV could be relevant to this, but not open in itself)

Evaluating success

Employment satisfaction surveys will show improvement Reduction in people leaving teams/research groups due to poor leadership Leaders feel more comfortable in the role Evaluations will have more leadership components to them when applicable (e.g. hiring leaders, promotion to leadership, grants around leading groups)

Relevant resources and literature

This section includes resources, literature, and reports relevant to this specific experimental idea.

Vitae Reseacher Development Framework - competence framework for researchers Competence frameworks for research managers - (https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/jobs-research/rm-comp-european-competence-framework-research-managers_en#other-eu-competence-frameworks)[https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/jobs-research/rm-comp-european-competence-framework-research-managers_en#other-eu-competence-frameworks]

Templates from funders and institutions

Case examples and literature

FNR Mentee evaluation provides gender balanced list of former mentees, FNR decides on two, sends them an evaluation template to them - (https://www.researchluxembourg.org/en/research-landscape/research-culture/mentorship-charter/)[https://www.researchluxembourg.org/en/research-landscape/research-culture/mentorship-charter/]

Other resources

Comments/lived examples