Career development and paper publishing advice by Zoom

May 5, 2021

Late last year we announced our first group of e-mentors and e-mentees as part of our new E-mentoring Program. This program was launched to ensure that, despite COVID-19 and its travel and life restrictions, we could continue to help develop the technical and organisational skills and expertise of agricultural researchers, scientists and policy makers in developing countries.

This program builds on the success of our long term existing Mentoring Program, which has seen face-to-face interaction in overseas countries, backed up by electronic contact, and our conference scholar mentoring program, matching young NextGen researchers with experienced Australians who attend our conference.

We hope that these e-connections not only deliver positive and targeted skill-sharing outcomes, but also enduring connections between the Crawford Fund, the volunteering mentors and their mentees, and the institutions and countries involved.

Our latest e-mentoring pair reflecting on their experience are TJ Higgins, Honorary Fellow, CSIRO and his e-mentee Suhaina Supian, a Research Officer at the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) in Malaysia.

E-MENTOR/E-MENTEE PAIRING
TJ Higgins (Australia) and Suhaina Supian (Malaysia)

MENTOR
TJ Higgins
Honorary Fellow, CSIRO

What motivated you to be a mentor?
Seeing the effect of mentoring on junior colleagues in African collaborations.

What are the main goals you are focusing on from your agreed mentoring plan?
Career development and help with publishing papers.

What are the various ways you are communicating and what combination are you finding most useful?
Exclusively by Zoom for the foreseeable future.

What are you getting out of our e-mentoring program?
A sense that my mentee is getting something out of our interaction.

Any lessons you could share with the other e-mentors?
Work hard on getting beyond a discussion about publishing papers.

MENTEE
Suhaina Supian
Research Officer, MARDI

What motivated you to nominate to be a mentee?
To learn new things and experiences.

What are the main goals you are focusing on from your agreed mentoring plan?
To obtain knowledge and advice from my Mentor

How is the e-mentoring helping your development?
My mentor shares his experience and helps in giving advice on the career development, writing and publishing a scientific paper which I found it’s very interesting and helpful.

Any lessons you could share with the other e-mentees?
Learn knowledge as much as possible from your mentor and share your problem with him/her to get the best advice.