Mentoring

An important aspect of the CHAT Track is the high level of involvement of the CHAT faculty in mentoring the CHAT residents. Understanding that residency in general can be a stressful time with competing demands, the roles of the CHAT faculty will primarily be as follows:

• To advise the residents on their projects
  
• To reflect on residents’ longitudinal experiences, including the applicability of those experiences to their clinical practices, and
  
• To offer academic and social support throughout residency. Each faculty member will mentor no more than three residents at one time, preferably one in each year.

During the PL-1 year, the faculty mentor will offer ideas and introduce the resident to the Mar Vista community. During the PL-2 and PL-3 years, the mentoring experience will be more intensive, including e-mail logs at least every other week. This will help the mentor assess the residents’ progress on their projects and offer reflections, advice, and answers to questions.

Each resident will have a research advisor, who will work with the resident on his or her longitudinal project. This research advisor will help the resident conceive and implement a project, prepare for presentations at the quarterly Project Seminars, and prepare the CATCH grant and APA or other conference submissions. The research advisor will be available to the resident to provide guidance on program design, data collection and analysis, and writing-up of results. Research advisors and residents should make contact (in-person, e-mail, or telephone) on a monthly basis to assess the progress of the longitudinal project.

The role of the program mentor differs from the research advisor, who will work with the resident on his or her longitudinal project. In some cases, the same faculty person may fulfill both roles.