Supervision by the Mentorate
The Promotion Regulations of BayNAT and the PEER Regulations both describe the mentorate in § 5.
The mentors for the dissertation project are already proposed at the time of registration for the program. Applicants, therefore, should as a first step contact potential mentors to discuss their professional qualification and their willingness to participate in the dissertation project. Officially the director of BayNAT appoints the mentorate after the application has been accepted.
Composition
As a rule the mentorate consists of three scientists, who are able to professionally supervise the research project from different view points.
- The supervisor of the planned dissertation project ("dissertation instructor") has to be a professor of the graduate school according to Art. 2 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 BayHSchPG, i.e. an authorized examiner (professor, junior professor, habilitated person or in the process of habilitation). He or she is the chair of the mentorate.
- Further mentors may be authorized examiners or (max. one) non-authorized examiners but members of BayNAT with a doctoral degree (assistants, postdocs).
- At least two members of the mentorate should take part in the promotion program PEER at the University of Bayreuth. Upon request to the director, who has to agree on admission, it is possible to have an external mentor. Members of BayNAT from other research fields (mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer sciences, geography ...) are not considered as "external".
If a mentor cannot attend to the dissertation any more, the director will nominate (by request of the doctoral student in accordance with the mentorate) a substitute member. The Regulations do not demand for presenting the reasons for the retreat from the mentorate.
Tasks
One task of the mentorate is to give advice to the doctoral student with respect to research. This is formally realized by discussing the research plan and the annual reports required for the doctoral program. But also in daily research routine the mentors - in particular the supervisor - should be available for discussing questions and problems.
The mentorate gives advice with regard to selecting the required achievements like courses, possible stays abroad and conferences. It takes care, that a balanced selection is chosen from the catalogue of achievements offered in the dissertation program in order to promote the candidate's professional and so-called "key skills".
The achievements are formally proposed by the mentorate (resp. the supervisor) at the admission to promotion and confirmed by the steering committee.
The mentorate also supervises the doctoral student during writing the dissertation. The target date to submit the dissertation should be arranged in agreement with the mentorate.
The doctoral student and the mentorate will meet regularly - it is reasonable to do so at least once per semester.