Collaborative Research: EFRI-REM: Mentoring Catalyst Initiative

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STEM mentoring research shows that positive mentoring experiences have a significant impact on STEM retention and broadening participation of (e.g., underrepresented Minorities (URM), women and persons with disabilities) in STEM fields. Engineering is currently at a crossroad and everything that can be done to retain talented engineering students needs to be done. There are few studies that focus solely on engineering mentoring and none of these studies include a significant training component for the mentors. This project plans to use and measure the impact of mentor training on engineering researchers. The EFRI Research Experience and Mentoring (EFRI-REM) program will be used as a pilot program to measure the success of inclusion of mentor training and the building of an engineering focused mentoring community on outcomes of EFRI-REM students. While the EFRI-REM research participants will be used to pilot this program, the outcomes will have potentially far reaching impact throughout the engineering research community. For example, the proposed ?train the trainer? mentor training model will be broadly disseminated beyond the EFRI-REM community. Faculty trained to facilitate mentor training will be encouraged and supported to offer training to engineering faculty and students beyond the EFRI-REM program, with potential impacts reaching the entire engineering research spectrum. In addition, the developed online mentoring community will provide continued support for engineering mentors to discuss best practices and ongoing mentoring issues. The impact of well-mentored students could have large potential positive impacts on retention of graduate students in engineering and encourage undergraduate engineering students to pursue advanced degrees in engineering.