Your UVA mentor. All new faculty are assigned a senior faculty  mentor.  Mentors offer advice and insight into activities such as orientation, research (including grant proposals and review of manuscripts), evaluation of teaching, and preparation of your faculty portfolio.  If your job expectations include the conduct of research, your initial mentor may not be most appropriate for your research goals.  You are encouraged to identify either a more appropriate mentor or an unofficial mentor who will focus on your development as an independent investigator.  A research mentor might help with structuring and managing your research group, internal pre-review of proposals, strategies for publication, locating collaborators at UVA, and so on.  The book Making the Right Moves:  A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty, co-published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has an excellent section titled "How to get the mentoring you need."

Cheap laboratory and clinical supplies (M.E.R.C.I. recycling program). Medical Equipment Recovery of Clean Inventory, run by a volunteer staff, accepts unused supplies and small equipment and makes them available to the UVA community.  If you are starting a lab, check them out.  If you are closing a lab, consider sending your unused items to M.E.R.C.I.  Some of the items they stock:

• Surgical (sutures, gowns, gloves, drapes, dressings, towels)
• Surgical tools (clamps, scalpels, forceps and scissors)
• Small medical (vacutainers, butterflies, needles, syringes)
• Tissue culture plates, tubes, flasks, etc.
• Solutions (normal saline and sterile water)
• Freezer boxes, vials, tubing, microscope slides, pipettes
• Molecular biology supplies
• Office supplies
• Small clean working equipment (no items with asset tags)

Location:  ground floor of the Primary Care Building, across from the gamma knife facility
Hours:  Thursdays, 9 AM to 4 PM
Contact:  Thursdays, 982-4499; other days, phone Trena Berg, RN, BSN (982-0559)
To volunteer for M.E.R.C.I.:  contact Health System Volunteer Services