Call for UZH Mentoring Awards 2025

The mentoring of early career researchers is an essential aspect of the promotion of young talent at UZH. The Mentoring Awards provide early career researchers with the opportunity  to recognize supervisors for their particularly dedicated support and encouragement. 

• Does the supervisor provide a supportive and stimulating environment (situational and participative leadership, fostering a culture of constructive, open and forward-looking feedback, valuing and fulfilling the duty of care)?
• Are early career researchers inspired and guided to achieve excellence in academia (essential methods, concepts, and cultures of their discipline, but also openness to failure, learning from mistakes, and creative approaches to problems)?
• Does the supervisor convey the importance of academic integrity as well as good research practices based on Open Science principles?
• Does mentoring include advising, positioning, and connecting early career researchers for future careers within and/or outside of academia?
• The supervisor is committed to supporting early career researchers in ways that are open and transformative in addressing social exclusion and discrimination. (To ensure an inclusive and supportive work environment, the supervisor considers relevant experiences* that shape the academic and non-academic daily life of early career researchers).

The list of possible, but not necessary, considerations serves as a suggestion and is not exhaustive.

All documents to be submitted serve as the basis of assessment for the Mentoring Award. In making its decision, the jury is guided by the following vision for the mentoring of early career researchers at UZH:

Early career researchers perform their tasks in teaching, qualification and research in a phase of life that is associated with many uncertainties. UZH is therefore committed to transparent career and decision paths and enables early career researchers to plan their careers in the best possible way. Doctoral candidates should receive the best possible support to develop their skills according to their ambitions and to flourish in an intellectually stimulating environment. To provide an inclusive and supportive working environment, UZH takes into account relevant experiences* of social exclusion and discrimination that may shape the academic and non-academic daily life of early career researchers. UZH promotes a culture of appreciation and recognition of diversity and supports them in various possible career paths.

* Relevant experiences may include: racialization through socially ascribed stereotyping; the interaction of individual physical or mental impairments and disability through societal frameworks; gender as a socially ascribed gender characteristic and role based on biological sex; socioeconomic status (education, income, wealth) of the early career researcher or their social backgrounds.