Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A postdoc in a formal mentoring relationship with two named mentors (career and methods) under an institutional scheme
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A student who has occasional chats with a researcher with no agreed structure is not a mentee in the formal sense
Editorial commentary
In a research context, a mentee is a researcher — typically more junior — who receives career, intellectual, or professional guidance from a mentor within a defined or recognised mentoring relationship, such as an institutional scheme, a learned-society programme, or a funder-mandated mentoring plan tied to a training grant or fellowship. What distinguishes a mentee from a supervisee is that the relationship carries no formal evaluative authority: a mentor advises, but does not assess the mentee’s progress or make decisions about their funding or degree progression the way a doctoral supervisor does.
Note on scope: “Mentee” is also a common general-English word, and most searches for it are looking for a plain dictionary definition rather than research-specific guidance — this entry covers only the research-administration sense: a party to a formal or semi-formal mentoring relationship, typically documented in a mentoring agreement or an Individual Development Plan (IDP) as part of a training-grant requirement.
A postdoc assigned two named mentors under an institutional scheme — one for research methods, one for career development — with an agreed meeting cadence and goals, is a mentee in this formal sense; a student who occasionally chats informally with a more senior researcher, with no agreed structure, is not.
References
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM” (2019)
- Royal Society Résumé for Researchers (R4RI, 2020 v1, 2024 mandate)
Also known as
Protégé
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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