UMBC’s COMPASS (Community on Optimizing Mentoring Practices and Advancing Student Success), formerly known as MORE, is a faculty-led initiative focused on graduate student mentoring. Our COMPASS fellows engage with faculty and graduate students to foster conversations about mentoring. Specifically, COMPASS provides faculty with effective tools and practices for mentoring graduate students in an effort to improve retention, productivity, and overall student success. The COMPASS fellows include the Associate Dean of the Graduate School, the Associate Dean of COEIT, and four faculty members with appointments across the colleges at UMBC.
Our Mission and Our Values
“UMBC’s COMPASS strives to enhance the graduate experience through intentional conversations between faculty and students on mentorship”
Now Accepting Applications for the COMPASS Fall 2025 Workshop on October 10, noon – 3:45 p.m.!!!
Click here for more details and registration information. Questions? Please contact Lauren Edwards
Resources for Graduate Programs
The COMPASS faculty fellows are available to facilitate departmental mentoring workshops and offer program consultations upon request. The department’s graduate program leadership will identify the motivation for the workshop, challenges to be addressed, and the desired outcomes that departments wish to see as a result of working closely with the COMPASS fellows. The workshops can be tailored to meet the needs of the program while offering faculty an opportunity to discuss norms for faculty-graduate mentoring within their field(s), and to discover the range of strategies that faculty use in mentoring graduate students.
Resources for Faculty and Graduate Students
Additional Mentoring Resources
Council of Graduate Schools Resources on Culturally Aware Mentoring
National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN)
[UMBC’s COMPASS mentoring program is adapted from the University of Michigan’s Faculty Committee on Mentoring]