Intersection of Social Capital, Mentorship and Networking on Persistence, Engagement and Science Identity

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Project Summary Effective mentorship is essential to improving the success of trainees from diverse backgrounds, including those from under-represented (UR) groups in the biomedical sciences, from undergraduates to new professionals. The overarching objectives of this proposal are to test: 1) the effects of pre-existing social and contextual factors on participation of undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds in biomedical workforce, 2) test whether mentoring/networking intervention, mainly in freshmen and sophomore years, influence the persistence, engagement, and development of science identity of students from diverse backgrounds. Our proposal will focus on a set of HBCUs that are geographically distributed with different individual- and neighborhood- level socioeconomic factors. Based on historical data and background, we hypothesize that the preexisting social and contextual capital factors among diverse students mediates the persistence, engagement and overall success rate of students as an individual and as a group. This hypothesis will be tested in following specific aims: Specific aim 1: Determine the effects of active intervention through mentoring and networking on engagement and success of students – immediate post-intervention effects for freshmen and distal effects for sophomore and higher-level students. Specific aim 2: Determine the role personal and contextual factors play in the engagement and success of freshmen and sophomore and higher-level students. Specific aim 3: Determine whether the immediate post-intervention engagement and success of freshmen mediate the effect of active intervention through mentoring and networking on distal engagement and success of the students as sophomores and higher-level. This project relies on a mixed experimental design with random selection and assignment of participants to Active Intervention (test) and Control Intervention (control) groups. Pre-/Post-test data will be gathered in each cycle of participation, with ongoing monitoring of engagement with the intervention activities. Differences between groups will be minimized through the use of a small number of similar institutions, drawing both treatment and control groups from each institution, as well as examining the effect of various contextual factors, including social capital on group differences. Our test group will be freshmen who will participate in the mentoring and networking programs of NRMN, and in addition get active intervention at the institution through near-peer mentoring, peer mentoring, mentee training and coaching. The control group will be freshmen who participate in mentoring and networking programs of NRMN, but do not get active intervention. The comparison group will be all freshmen who did not participate in NRMN (institutional data). Our expected outcome of the interventions is increased persistence, engagement and science identity of the test group resulting in the successful transition to the next career stage. Our outcome measures are consistent with the DPC Hallmarks of Success. Based on baseline data from participating institutions, we will set an expected target for our outcomes. Outcomes from our studies will lead to a predictive model that can be translated to persistence and career transition of AA students in other HBCUs and majority institutions.