Prior to submission of an initial or pilot developmental application, applicants will receive mentorship by senior CFAR faculty members who will provide guidance on the services available through the CFAR, development of the research plan and inclusion of the necessary documents for application submission.  Each applicant applying for initial or pilot funding must designate a mentor (or have one designated by CFAR).

Should the application be funded, those mentors will have two types of regular meetings with mentees. The first type of meeting are operational, problem solving meetings focused on the day to day work of completing the funded project and will occur at varying frequencies. The second type of meeting is expected to occur every six months, and is a more formal and structured interaction during which project progress is discussed; the mentor and mentee are both asked to complete written evaluations of these meetings that are reviewed by Developmental Core Directors.

In addition to this project-focused mentoring plan, one of the Core Directors will have either a telephone or face-to-face meeting with all domestic developmental grant awardee every six months to ensure that the awardee is getting sufficient support and mentoring and to make sure that intermediate term (6m to 2 years) plans for proposal writing are being made.