This page contains more details for interested faculty.
Eligibility
- Be an appointed faculty member at the University of Toronto Graduate Department of Management or Graduate Department of Psychology. This includes graduate faculty from all campuses (Mississauga, Scarborough, & St. George) and has special support from the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Hospital.
- Have a desire to engage in outreach to increase representation of graduate students and faculty who are Black, Indigenous, or other Persons of Colour (BIPOC).
- If matched with an SROP student, complete a 2-hour anti-racism training session sometime in late April through mid-May 2024. The focus will be on research mentorship of students who identify as BIPOC.
Please note that not everyone will be matched with an SROP student. We have 15 student spots and expect considerably more faculty interest. We would like to put the names of mentors who are not matched with a student on a list of “Supportive Faculty” to showcase the overall strength of our values regarding racial justice.
Expectations for Faculty
The SROP 2024 will be operating on a hybrid model. We will ask you if you would prefer to do in-person supervision, remote supervision, or if you can accommodate either! Students are instructed to select faculty members they wish to work with based on this information and what their personal preferences/needs are.
The biggest part of the SROP is a small research project in the social sciences that SROP Students conduct in collaboration with a faculty mentor over the course of 8 weeks, from June 3 to July 26, 2024.
As a member of your lab, the SROP Student will have 20 hours per week to devote to their research project. The SROP Student’s Mentor is expected to provide direct mentorship to the student (e.g., weekly one-on-one meetings) and to generally know how the research project is progressing.
We ask that all SROP Faculty complete a 2-hour anti-racism training session before the start of the SROP. The students really value knowing that this occurred. In the past, we have worked with Dr. Christopher Taylor and the University of Toronto’s Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office (ARCDO) to conduct our mentor training.
We recognize and encourage the role of all lab members in mentorship, so it is fine if a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow acts as the main mentor for the SROP Student. When a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow will be mentoring an SROP Student, we ask that they complete the anti-racism training with you.
One last important note is that faculty members will not be able to interview their Canada SROP students before agreeing to mentor them. You will be able to review their application materials, but the way that our selection process works makes interviews difficult. We fully respect any of our colleagues who do not feel comfortable with this arrangement.
Programme Supports
The SROP is designed to give your SROP Student a rich experience, so you can focus on what you do best: Mentoring the next generation of researchers.
As shown in the example schedule to the right, you will have a great deal of support from the SROP. The SROP Students will be getting professional development geared toward graduate school applications and early success in graduate school, in addition to community building among the SROP Students. They also are offered an optional GRE Preparation Course that can be completed through self-paced learning.
Although the use of these materials will be entirely optional, we will also provide all faculty who sign up for the SROP with worksheets and exercises to support their roles as a mentor. These materials will be available through a Faculty section of the website and you are welcome to use them both inside and outside the context of the SROP!
Get Involved!
Want to be a part of this initiative? Sign up by Wednesday, January 31, 2024! We would love as many faculty to sign up as possible, because that will give applicants to the SROP more options that may pique their interests!
Please note that the SROP cohort will be smaller than the number of faculty we expect to sign up. This means that not all faculty who sign up will be matched with an SROP Student.
Before you apply, you will need to:
- Compose a 250-word description of your Faculty Research Project. This should be a small project that a student could conduct as an independent research project within an 8-week time frame.
- Compose a 150-word Faculty Mentorship Statement that briefly describes your mentorship philosophy and why you want to be a part of the SROP.
- Gather an image file that we may use as a headshot on our website.
- Indicate whether your research project will be in-person, remote, or can be either.
Faculty members who signed up for the 2021, 2022, or 2023 Canada SROP are welcome to reuse their Project Descriptions or Mentorship Statements from last year.
FAQ for Faculty
What will faculty members be asked to do?
Your primary role as an SROP Faculty is to mentor an SROP Student on an independent research project. This will involve you or another member of your lab helping the student identify next steps and plan research tasks for the week. For the most part, we will leave faculty mentors to do their own thing.…
Detailed instructions for the Faculty Mentorship Statement
The Faculty Mentorship Statement asks you to describe two main things: Your mentorship philosophy Why you want to be involved in the SROP In many cases, the SROP will be students’ first mentorship experience with a faculty member. These mentorship statements will help students get a sense of fit with each advisor. Furthermore, we believe…
Detailed instructions for the Faculty Research Project Description
The most important component of the SROP is an independent research project. The student is expected to work on the project 15 hours/week. This time will be built into the SROP schedule. Given this time frame, we ask faculty to identify a small, stand-alone project that could feasibly be completed within the SROP. We then…