Utilizing mentorship education to promote a culturally responsive research training environment in the biomedical sciences.

There is an urgent and compelling need for systemic change to achieve diversity and inclusion goals in the biomedical sciences. Because faculty hold great influence in shaping research training environments, faculty development is a key aspect in building institutional capacity to create climates in which persons excluded because of their ethnicity or race (PEERs) can succeed. We present a mixed methods case study of one institution's efforts to improve mentorship of PEER doctoral students through mentorship education workshops for faculty. These workshops were one strategy among others intended to improve graduate trainees' experiences, and positively affect institutional climate with respect to racial and ethnic diversity. Surveys of 108 faculty mentors revealed that about 80% overall agreed or strongly agreed with the value of culturally responsive mentoring behaviors but about 63% overall agreed or strongly agreed that they were confident in their ability to enact those behaviors. Through a series of three focus groups, PEER doctoral students reported that they noticed mentors' efforts to address cultural diversity matters and identified some guidance for how to approach such topics. We discuss future directions and implications for using mentorship education to activate systemic change toward inclusive research training environments and promoting the value of mentorship within institutions.

Mentoring up for early career investigators: Empowering mentees to proactively engage in their mentoring relationships.

Introduction: Effective mentorship is recognized as critical for the professional development of clinical and translational investigators. Evidence-based mentorship training prompted the development of training for mentees at early career stages who are navigating both mentor and mentee roles. The curriculum titled, Mentoring Up for Early Career Investigators, recognizes the importance of building mentee self-efficacy across proactive mentorship skills and competencies. Methods: Mentoring Up for Early Career Investigators curriculum is based on the research mentor training approach in Entering Mentoring. Pilot implementations of Mentoring Up at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Pennsylvania had positive training outcomes for KL2 Scholars. Subsequently, Mentoring Up was implemented and evaluated at several other institutions. For 26 implementations longer than 4 hours, data were collected on trainee demographics, satisfaction with training, skill gains across mentorship competencies, and the intent to change mentoring behaviors following training. Results: 88% of participants rated the mentee training as valuable. Significant skill gains were reported across all mentorship competencies following training. 77% reported specific plans to change or augment their mentoring behaviors because of the training. The majority aligned with mentorship skill competencies (aligning expectations, effective communications) or mentoring up strategies (voicing needs, setting boundaries, communicating proactively). Conclusion: Mentoring Up training is effective in advancing mentee skills and promoting strategies to be more proactive in getting their mentoring needs met. Mentoring Up offers an expansion to the suite of mentorship education and resources to support the career advancement of all in the translational science workforce.

Advancing the Science of Mentorship: Future Directions for Sustainable Implementation and Evaluation of Mentorship Education for the Clinical and Translational Science Workforce.

The Advancing the Science of Mentorship: Future Directions for Sustainable Implementation and Evaluation of Mentorship Education for the Clinical and Translational Science Workforce conference was held in Madison, Wisconsin, in April 2023. The conference provided an engaging and scholarly forum for clinical and translational researchers from diverse backgrounds and career stages (including leaders at Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs and affiliated institutions) with a professional interest and commitment to improving and diversifying workforce development and fostering a climate of inclusive excellence through best practices in mentorship. Outcomes from the conference include an online resource and a new Community of Practice.

Fostering Success and Promoting Professional Development of Clinician Educator Mentees: A Workshop for Mentors.

Introduction: The goal of academic mentoring relationships is to enable the mentee to identify/achieve professional advancement. Although mentors of clinician educators (CEs) must understand the criteria for successful career advancement, few have received formal CE mentor training. Methods: The National Research Mentoring Network convened an expert panel to develop a 90-minute module for training CE mentors. This module included individual development plans, case studies involving challenges for CE faculty, and examples of the broadened scope of scholarly activity. The workshop was delivered to 26 participants across four institutions and evaluated by a retrospective pre/post survey. Results: Using a 7-point scale (1 = very low, 4 = average, 7 = very high), participants rated the overall quality of their CE mentoring as slightly below average preworkshop (M = 3.9) and as above average postworkshop (M = 5.2, p < .001). Areas of greatest self-perceived change in skills on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all skilled, 4 = moderately skilled, 7 = extremely skilled ) included setting clear expectations of the mentoring relationship (pre M = 3.6, post M = 5.1, p < .001), aligning mentor expectations with those of mentees (pre M = 3.6, post M = 5.0, p < .001), and helping mentees set career goals (pre M = 3.9, post M = 5.4, p < .001). Discussion: This module trains CE mentors using an interactive and collective problem-solving approach. Workshop participants better defined demonstrable markers for CE progression with potential to impact tailored guidance for mentees.

A randomized controlled trial of an intervention to increase cultural diversity awareness of research mentors of undergraduate students.

Cultural diversity variables like race and/or ethnicity influence research mentoring relationships, but mentors may not know how to address such variables with their mentees. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we tested a mentor training intervention to increase mentors' awareness and skill in addressing cultural diversity in research mentoring relationships, documenting its impact on mentors and their undergraduate mentees' ratings of mentor effectiveness. Participants were a national sample of 216 mentors and 117 mentees from 32 undergraduate research training programs in the United States. Mentors in the experimental condition reported greater gains than those in the comparison condition regarding the relevance of their racial/ethnic identity to mentoring and their confidence to mentor students across diverse cultural identities. Paired mentees of mentors in the experimental group rated their mentors higher at respectfully broaching and creating opportunities to address race/ethnicity matters than those with mentors in the comparison group. Our results support the efficacy of culturally focused mentorship education.

Comparing the Outcomes of Face-to-Face and Synchronous Online Research Mentor Training Using Propensity Score Matching.

In this study, propensity score matching (PSM) was conducted to examine differences in the effectiveness of research mentor training (RMT) implemented using two modes-face-to-face or synchronous online training. This study investigated each training mode and assessed participants' perceived gains in mentoring skills, ability to meet mentees' expectations, and overall quality of mentoring, as well as intention to make changes to their mentoring practices. Additional factors that may contribute to participant outcomes were also examined. In total, 152 mentors trained using a synchronous online platform and 655 mentors trained in in-person workshops were analyzed using the PSM method. Mentors were matched based on similar characteristics, including mentee's career stage, mentor's title, mentor's prior mentoring experience, mentor's race/ethnicity and sex, and mentor's years of experience; results show that both face-to-face and synchronous online modes of RMT are effective. Findings indicated that the training mode did not significantly impact the mentors' perceived training outcomes. Factors associated with the reported training outcomes included dosage (hours of training), facilitator effectiveness, race/ethnicity, and previous mentoring experience. The results of this study demonstrate that mentors' perceived training outcomes are comparable regardless of the training modality used-online versus face-to-face.

Evaluation of a Culturally Responsive Mentorship Education Program for the Advisers of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Program Graduate Students.

Effective mentorship is critical to the success of trainees in research career pathways, significantly impacting their research productivity, academic and research self-efficacy, and career satisfaction. Research faculty may be unaware of or unprepared to address mentor-mentee dynamics in mentoring relationships, especially those that go beyond traditional scientific skill development. Addressing mentorship dynamics can be even more challenging for mentors from well-represented backgrounds working with mentees from historically excluded racial/ethnic groups. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute supports programmatic interventions, like the Mentorship Skills Development (MSD) course, an innovative program that aims to advance the mentorship competencies and cultural diversity awareness of mentors. Between 2015 and 2020, more than 200 faculty mentors participated in the MSD. Quantitative and qualitative data reveal significant gains in mentorship skills and cultural awareness, with mentors reporting increases in their confidence to have conversations around race and culture with their mentees. More than 85% reported actual or intended changes to their cultural responsiveness or mentorship behaviors. Importantly, behavioral changes were also observed by their mentees. These data indicate that culturally responsive mentorship education can increase knowledge and efficacy in effective mentorship practices and improve mentorship experiences of both mentors and mentees.

Revalidation of the Mentoring Competency Assessment to evaluate skills of research mentors: The MCA-21.

Introduction: The Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA) is an example of a validated instrument for measuring mentor skills for postsecondary Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine research. The purpose of this study was to revalidate the MCA scale using a larger, more diverse population since the original MCA was validated on a small sample of predominantly senior white male faculty. Methods: The MCA was completed by 1626 mentors from a survey data set of 1759 respondents who participated in eight or more hours of face-to-face Entering Mentoring-based training between 2010 and 2019. We conducted principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation to investigate the internal structure of the MCA and Hatcher's criteria were applied. After a team of mentoring experts independently interpreted the PCA results and reached a consensus on the interpretations of the components, factor analysis and internal consistency reliability analysis were applied to assess the construct validity and the reliability. Results: While the 26-item MCA instrument was originally validated with six subscales, through the factor and reliability analyses, all the parameter estimates for each item of seven components of 24-item MCA were significant and had relatively high internal consistency; the alpha coefficient for the components ranged from 0.77 to 0.86. Conclusions: Five items from the MCA have been dropped, leaving a condensed 21 item scale (MCA-21) which loads onto six competencies, and should now be used to effectively measure mentoring skills. We provide recommendations for furthering the scale development and validation of common measures.

A system-wide health sciences faculty mentor training program is associated with improved effective mentoring and institutional climate.

Introduction: Mentorship is critical for faculty success, satisfaction, and engagement. However, many faculty, particularly underrepresented racial/ethnic (UR) faculty, lack access to high-quality mentoring. In an effort to improve mentoring for all faculty, we developed and implemented a formally structured faculty mentor training program (FMTP) across UC San Diego Health Sciences, which included institutional support, mentorship training, and department/division mentorship programs. Methods: FMTP impact was evaluated using three primary outcome variables: mentoring quality, mentoring behaviors, and institutional climate. Participants' self-assessed mentoring competencies were measured using validated instruments. Results: A total of 391 (23%) of Health Sciences faculty participated in FMTP. Participation rate was higher for women than men (30% versus 17%) and highest for UR faculty (39%). FMTP was implemented in 16 of 19 departments. Self-reported mentoring improved for FMTP participants with mentoring quality (p = 0.009) and meeting mentees' expectations (p = 0.01) continuing to improve for up to 2 years after training. However, participants were unsure if they were meeting UR mentees' expectations. FMTP participants were significantly more satisfied with mentoring quality (p < 0.001) compared to non-participants, with the greatest increase in satisfaction reported by UR faculty (38-61%). UR faculty reported improved overall morale (51-61%) and a perception that the environment was supportive for UR faculty (48-70%). Conclusion: The implementation of a system-wide formal structured FMTP was associated with improved faculty satisfaction, quality of mentoring, and institutional climate, especially for UR faculty.