Introduction

Building and maintaining strong professional networks represents an essential part of developing one’s career. Connections with colleagues—whether they are peers, mentors, or collaborators—can facilitate valuable guidance through career transitions, helpful feedback, invitations to collaborate, and the ability to stay informed about developments in the field. However, many emerging scholars face barriers that make it difficult to build meaningful connections. These challenges may include having limited access to senior scholars in their field of study, lacking comfort or experience in approaching potential mentors, and finding academic spaces intimidating. Structured mentoring events, however, can provide opportunities to forge meaningful connections by focusing on community-building among researchers with shared research interests and creating safe spaces to talk openly about career development and emerging areas of research.

For more than a decade, the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (the Center) has hosted a series of mentoring and networking events at professional conferences aimed at connecting emerging scholars with mid- to late-career scholars who share similar research interests, with the goal of offering mentorship and guidance on career development, discussing emerging topics in the field, and building community. In this guide, we draw on our experience and lessons learned from hosting 18 events with more than 1,300 attendees to provide suggestions and tools to help other entities interested in facilitating similar efforts.

About This Guide

This guide provides an overview of the planning process for hosting mentoring and networking events and offers guidance on facilitating them. The appendices include a comprehensive set of tools and resources to support planning and facilitation, including timeline templates, sample promotional materials, email templates, and sample discussion guides. While we have hosted both in-person and virtual events, this guide focuses primarily on in-person events while offering select insights into the potential benefits and tradeoffs of virtual events.