Mentor Expectations
The Minority Ophthalmology Mentoring program includes a dynamic team of ophthalmologist mentors dedicated to working with students to reach their career goals. Mentors guide students through their formal education and help them become competitive ophthalmology residency applicants. This is a commitment of several years. As a mentor, we ask that you:
- Support your student's career development as they explore different areas of medicine.
- Demonstrate how ophthalmologists positively contribute to the healthcare community by preventing vision loss from diseases, such as diabetes and glaucoma.
- Illustrate how ophthalmologists help protect patients' valuable eyesight and ophthalmology is fulling to them, personally.
- Communicate by phone, email or in-person with your student three to four times each year, and more frequently when needed.
- Meet with your student at AAO 2019 in San Francisco on October 12 and 13.
Speaker Expectations
The Minority Ophthalmology Mentoring program, through a competitive application process, introduces medical and undergraduate college students to ophthalmology and guides them on their educational path. The goal of the program is to help students who are underrepresented minorities in medicine become competitive ophthalmology residency applicants. As a speaker, we ask that you:
- Learn about the Minority Ophthalmology Mentoring program so that they are comfortable speaking about it and answering questions.
- Reach out to local colleges and medical schools to tell their diversity officers and/or students who are underrepresented minorities in ophthalmology about the Minority Ophthalmology Mentoring program, encouraging them to apply.
- Use our library of PowerPoints, flyers and other resources to speak about the many facets of ophthalmology and why you love being an ophthalmologist.
We encourage speakers to schedule outreach opportunities between January and June 2019. The deadline for students to apply for the Class of 2019 is June 15, 2019.
Dates and Deadlines
- June 15, 2019: Student application due
- July 15, 2019: Mentor and/or speaker interest form due
- July 2019: Student acceptance notifications sent
- August 2019: Mentor status notifications sent
- October 12 and 13, 2019: Student Engagement Weekend at AAO 2019 (San Francisco, California)
If you have questions or would like additional information, please contact mentoring@aao.org.