InterMine Obligations

InterMine will support all mentors throughout their mentorship period, providing both guidance and technical support.

All non-Cambridge based mentors will be matched with a mentor from the InterMine core team for support and backup.

Mentor Obligations

During the application period

  • Mentors will communicate with applicants and help them create relevant proposals.

  • CC any co-mentors when responding to communication from students via email.

During student selection

  • Mentors will discuss with their co-mentor to identify promising students.

  • Be aware that there are often more good students than there are slots the organisation can support. This means we may not be able to take on your favourite student.

During the community bonding and coding phases

Mentors should:

  • Make sure they speak to their student at least weekly.

  • Inform the organisation administrators if any issues arise, or seem likely to arise, including:

    • Mentor is unable to continue mentoring or experiencing too high workload.

    • Student is under performing or non responsive.

  • Complete all evaluations as early as possible in agreement with their co-mentor and encourage students to complete them early as well.

  • Coordinate vacation and out-of-office periods to ensure at least one mentor is available to respond to their student at all times. If both mentors are likely to be unavailable at the same time, please speak to an organisation administrator to arrange backup. This is particularly important around evaluation periods!

GSoC Funds

What InterMine receives

Assuming the payment terms are the same as 2017, Google pays InterMine $500 USD per accepted student, $2,200 to send two mentors for organisation admins to the Mentor Summit (assuming no evaluations are missed by mentors or students), and another $500 to send a student or mentor to a relevant conference or meeting. These funds are disbursed after the project is completed, so September or October, after which the University takes time to process them.

What InterMine will spend the money on

Conferences

The InterMine Cambridge team will decide how to allocate these funds.

Student & Mentor Gifts

InterMine will send gifts to all InterMine mentors and GSoC students who pass their evaluations. It is also possible a small amount of this funding will be allocated to summer students who were not accepted as GSoC students but worked for InterMine anyway. In 2017, this came out at around £276.48 for gifts, plus postage to those students and mentors who were not based in the UK. This year’s gifts will be decided upon as a group amongst the mentors and as such the nature and ultimate cost of this expense may change.

Mentor Summit Places

At least one mentor summit place will be reserved for a core InterMine member. Other mentors are welcome to apply as well.

Mentor Stipends

After the funds have been disbursed as detailed above, remaining funds will be distributed evenly amongst all mentors who mentored at least one student.

Please note these terms are subject to change without notice at the discretion of the InterMine team.

What to do if there is a problem

Please contact an organisation administrator. In the first instance, this is Yo Yehudi - yo@intermine.org. If she’s non-responsive, or your issue is with her, please speak to Daniela Butano - daniela@intermine.org