Frequently Asked Questions

This website provides a platform for research trainees to evaluate their past and present mentors in their mentoring styles, personalities, lab environment, and more. The intent of this website is to provide prospective trainees insightful information about research mentors, so they can make informed decisions regarding their research mentor. Get PhitteD provides one of many data points that should be considered to help facilitate compatible mentor-mentee matches.

This is not a platform for trainees to bash or excessively praise their mentors. We encourage sharing negative experiences while being respectful. Likewise, this is not a promotional site for your mentor; please try to be informative if describing your mentor’s attributes.

Two postdoctoral trainees from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus started this website and are responsible for its promotion and maintenance.

They have heard several stories about fellow trainees’ lab experiences. Independent of research content, they found that when the mentor and environment were more conducive to their values, potential problems were prevented, better relationships were established, and a more productive and enjoyable traineeships were obtained. However, a platform to facilitate these matches was missing. Here, we hope to fill in this gap to help both mentees and mentors find and establish desired research environments.

The information will only be used for verification purposes. The purpose of this platform is to provide true insight to help trainees find compatible research mentors and environments. This requires legitimate surveys. We want to verify that evaluations for any research mentors came from someone actually trained by that research mentor.

All identities of those providing evaluations will be kept ANONYMOUS. It will not be published on the website. Only the website administrators will have access to the identities of those providing evaluations, for verification purposes.

An average of evaluations will be made public once the minimum number of trainees have evaluated a mentor. The self-survey is made available once the mentor completes it.

This serves two purposes. First, it is to protect the identities of the trainees providing evaluations. Second, it is to provide a balanced evaluation of a mentor so that it is not based on just one or two trainees’ experiences.