For Mentors

• Contributing as a visible, effective, and on-going professional development leader benefits the overall use of GIS in Montana, thereby strengthening communities across the state.
• Assisting with data production and documentation enables more data sharing and confidence in the use of data.
• Offering to assist in a Peer-to-Peer rapport can strengthen your own skill set.
• Mentoring can generate a feedback mechanism to MAGIP regarding the kinds of training resources MAGIP could offer to its membership (conferences, webinars, web site resources).
• If you mentor a student or a young professional, you may receive credit toward renewing your GISP certification. See the GISCI web site for details.

Effective mentors are good listeners and teachers. Part of the task of mentoring involves determining the kind of assistance needed. Is there another MAGIP member who can more easily or quickly assist this person for a particular task? Is the problem at hand one that can be solved by redirection to a Help file or online learning resource? Does this person need more training in general to accomplish their work tasks? Does the person need general guidance related to career development? Effective mentors should feel equally comfortable redirecting people to independent learning tools in addition to simply answering questions or walking someone through a process.

MAGIP members who are willing to serve as a GIS mentor, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the MAGIP site.
2. Navigate to the editing interface of your member profile: View Profile>Edit Profile.
3. Complete your member profile with as much detail as possible. Pay particular attention to setting Skills check boxes that represent areas that you can offer advice either with Peer-to-Peer networking or in a Mentor-to-Mentee relationship. Use the Bio text box to further describe the kind of work you do. The content of the Bio text box is text searchable by members. 
4. In the Skills section, set the "Am I willing to be identified as a Mentor?" field to Yes if you willing to assist others. This field enables others to find you during searches for a mentor or for Peer-to-Peer assistance. Set the "Am I currently accepting requests to mentor others?" field to Yes if you are available to assist members at this time.
   
5. Read the Getting Started, Mentoring Topics, Mentoring Code of Ethics, the MAGIP Mentoring Disclaimer pages.
6. When a member contacts you, consider if this person’s interests, skills, location, etc. are a good match for you as a mentor. If you are unavailable or you don’t think it’s a good fit, please communicate this to the member.
7. If you will be assisting this member, confirm via the MAGIP web site that this person is an active MAGIP member by searching for him or her in the member directory. Membership in MAGIP is required.
8. Update your availability as a mentor on your profile Skills section if it changes.
9. Maintain your MAGIP membership.      

Mentoring Resources

Mentoring Code of Ethics

Getting Started

Mentoring Topics

MAGIP FAQs

Request access to GoToMeeting (virtual meeting application)

Join.Me (free screen sharing application)

Skype (free video calling and conference calls)

GISCI Mentoring Program

Thoughts on Hiring Recent Grads with GIS Coursework (scan entries for topic)

Competencies: Ideal Student Outcomes from an Intro to GIS or Remote Sensing Course