IGE: Enhancing Doctoral Research Training through Cascading Mentorship (Anteater Huddles)

IGE：通过级联指导加强博士研究培训（食蚁兽聚会）

• 批准号: 2105661
• 负责人: Barbara Sarnecka
• 金额: $ 42.03万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-06-15 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2105661&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IGE; Enhancing; Doctoral; Research; Training

This National Science Foundation Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of California-Irvine will test a cascading mentorship program for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral students. A centuries-old model of doctoral mentoring assumed that students learn by working alongside their faculty advisors at the lab bench. However, research as evolved into a team activity with advisors and students serving different roles and rarely working together at the same task. In this environment, students typically learn most research skills from advanced graduate students and postdoctoral researchers rather than their faculty advisors. Cascading mentorship describes such a model of mentoring from a rich network of faculty and peers. Doctoral students who receive cascading mentorship are much more likely to develop strong research skills than those who do not regardless of the quality of mentoring received from their primary faculty advisors. However, not all students are trained in large, well-functioning labs with ready-made cascading mentorship networks. In addition, factors such as shared or dissimilar cultural identity with the majority of faculty and differences in first-generation students’ access to faculty mentors, friends, or family members with doctoral degree experience may result in differences in the quality of mentoring. Thus, when doctoral programs fail to provide rich networks of cascading mentorship, it is the students from minority communities who are likely to suffer most.In this project, approximately 65 advanced graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in cognitive science will be trained to lead cascading mentorship groups of five to ten doctoral students each. The groups will use proven pedagogical methods to help members plan their research, organize their time, and learn to produce the forms of writing on which academic success depends such as: literature reviews, funding proposals, research reports, etc. This project will address research questions related to four scale-up challenges: 1) group leader effects, i.e., whether the approach works when these mentorship groups are led by advanced graduate students rather than by a faculty member; 2) implementation cost, i.e., whether these groups can be supported in a way that is affordable for most doctoral programs; 3) long-term effects of cascading mentorship over a period of years in a variety of domains including: writing quantity and quality; progress through the graduate program; mental health and well-being; and 4) broad suitability, i.e., whether the model is equally effective for all students or whether only a subset of students benefit. Results from this project will help departments decide whether to adopt a cascading mentorship model program-wide or offer this model as an option for a subset of students.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

加州大学欧文分校获得国家科学基金会研究生教育创新 (IGE) 奖项，将测试针对科学、技术、工程和数学 (STEM) 博士生的级联指导计划。具有数百年历史的博士生指导模式认为，学生通过在实验室工作台上与导师一起工作来学习。然而，研究逐渐演变成一项团队活动，顾问和学生扮演不同的角色，很少一起完成同一任务。在这种环境下，学生通常从高级研究生和博士后研究人员而不是他们的导师那里学习大部分研究技能。级联指导描述了这种来自丰富的教师和同行网络的指导模式。无论主要导师的指导质量如何，接受级联指导的博士生比那些没有接受级联指导的博士生更有可能发展出强大的研究技能。然而，并非所有学生都在大型、功能良好的实验室接受培训，并拥有现成的级联指导网络。此外，与大多数教师共享或不同的文化认同以及第一代学生与具有博士学位经验的教师导师、朋友或家庭成员的接触方式的差异等因素可能会导致指导质量的差异。因此，当博士项目无法提供丰富的级联导师网络时，来自少数群体的学生可能会受到最大的影响。在这个项目中，将培训大约65名认知科学领域的高级研究生和博士后研究人员，以领导由5到10名博士生组成的级联导师小组。这些小组将使用经过验证的教学方法来帮助成员计划他们的研究，安排他们的时间，并学习撰写学术成功所依赖的写作形式，例如：文献综述、资助提案、研究报告等。该项目将解决与四个扩大规模挑战相关的研究问题：1）小组领导效应，即当这些导师小组由高级研究生而不是教职人员领导时，该方法是否有效； 2）实施成本，即这些群体是否能够以大多数博士项目负担得起的方式得到支持； 3）多年来级联指导对各个领域的长期影响，包括：写作数量和质量；通过研究生课程取得进展；心理健康和福祉； 4）广泛的适用性，即该模型是否对所有学生同样有效，或者是否只有一小部分学生受益。该项目的结果将帮助各院系决定是在整个项目范围内采用级联指导模式，还是将该模式作为一部分学生的选择。研究生教育创新 (IGE) 项目专注于研究生教育研究。 IGE 的目标是试点、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推向更广泛社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。