How to Find a Mentor

Mentor Role

The mentor’s role is to guide the students through the design and implementation of the project by providing advice and feedback based on disciplinary expertise and/or experiential knowledge. Because the Projects Hatchery is a multidisciplinary program, its staff are not equipped to help students with the specific details and processes each project requires. While Hatchery staff can provide general tasks that suit a wide array of projects, the mentor is able to tailor these general tasks to the team’s own project.

Project Hatchery mentors may be faculty, staff, or from an external source such as a private company or organization. However, each team is required to have at least one faculty mentor overseeing their project to ensure that the project is centered around education and research.

Mentor Duties and Expectations

  • Prioritize the students' educational growth
  • Listen to the student as they explain their idea for a project, and guide the development of forming the idea into a realistic project. Communicate with the student about the methodologies that are needed to develop the idea (literature review, customer discovery, budgeting, IRB approval, etc.).
  • Inform the student of the unpredictable nature of implementing a project; the need for individual initiative, accountability, and adaptability; the prospect that the project may not achieve expected results, even if the student performs at full capacity; and the process of responding to a failed experiment, a null hypothesis, or inconclusive results.
  • Inform the student of the expected time commitment for conducting the project and for writing the final document and assist the student with developing and adhering to a realistic timeline.
  • Assist the student in the discovery of resources, other researchers, and/or events that will help in the development of their project.
  • Establish timelines and expectations for periodic progress reports from the student and meet with the student on a regular basis, to monitor progress and offer support and guidance regarding research and creative activity.
  • Review drafts of any documentation, reports, and/or papers and provide feedback.
  • Assist the student in preparing oral or poster presentations of the project, and help the student to identify an appropriate venue for the presentations (e.g., discipline‐specific conference; CPP Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Conference; classroom setting; lab meeting; community event; etc.).

View Projects Hatchery Mentor Handbook (PDF)

How to Sign Up

Mentors who are willing to honor the duties and responsibilities of their position are invited to fill out a Mentor Commitment Form and attend our monthly Hatchery meetings.

A faculty mentor smiling.

Available Mentors


Below is a non-comprehensive list of CPP Faculty members who are available to mentor projects:

Dr. Giselle Navarro-Cruz is an assistant professor of Early Childhood Studies where she teaches courses on multilingualism, infant development, and early childhood education (ECE) teacher practicum. Dr. Navarro-Cruz’s research interest focus on enhancing access and quality to early childhood education (ECE) using a funds of knowledge framework. Currently, her research examines how institutions of higher education (IHE) support parenting students as they navigate childcare access and service on campus. In addition, Dr. Navarro-Cruz also conducts research that looks at how IHE are preparing ECE teachers to work with multilingual children and their families. She is an advocate for multilingual early childhood education, parenting students, and enhancing the well-being of children and families. 


Email: gnavarrocruz@cpp.edu

Dr. Shayda Kafai is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at 起点传媒’s Ethnic and Women’s Studies Department. She earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University. As a queer, disabled femme of color, she is committed to exploring the many ways we can reclaim our body minds from intersecting systems of oppression. Shayda is an educator-scholar who centers disability justice and collective care practices in the spaces she cultivates. She lives in Los Angeles with her wife, Amy. 
 

My research is primarily in the areas of epistemology and decision-making. I’m especially interested in understanding the relationship between our epistemic and practical lives. For example, how are the norms that govern our beliefs (i.e. what counts as a reasonable belief) affected by our practical goals? Is what we know sensitive to what the consequences of our beliefs might be? In recent years, these theoretical concerns have given way to more applied issues of philosophy. And I’m primarily focusing on two new areas of research. First, I’m interested in understanding the epistemic value of identity diversity. This connects up with my general area of research as I’m interested in the value that diverse groups have in our decision-making processes. Second, I’m interested in understanding how to construct automated decision makers (such as automated vehicles). With regards to this latter issues, I’ve become interested in trying to make sense of how we can teach (or program) these AI systems with the right values.