Predoctoral Training in Quantitative Cell & Molecular Biology

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Project Summary Graduate students face a stressful transition to the job market, a national mental health crisis, and ongoing racial and gender bias – all issues that can be improved with faculty mentoring that follows best- practices. High quality mentoring experiences for graduate students result in an enhanced science identity, greater persistence in the field, higher research productivity and greater career satisfaction for graduate students in STEMM. High quality mentoring increases sense of belonging and self-efficacy, which have the potential to positively impact graduate student's mental health. High quality mentoring also enhances recruitment of underrepresented groups and can improve the graduate experience for minoritized students and those with intersectional identities by providing psychosocial support and increasing inclusion. Aim of this proposal is to ensure that faculty within Colorado State University (CSU) are providing the best quality mentoring to our graduate student participants of the NIH funded qCMB program, and other programs all through the university, and to also prepare our graduate students for mentoring roles as they progress through, and after they graduate, from this program. To do so we propose to develop a community of practice through intentional mentoring. Intentionality in mentoring incorporates purposeful efforts to improve relationships by utilizing best-practice mentoring behaviors, such as those supported through CIMER training. Community of practice suggests that membership in the community is developed through not only knowledge transfer, but skills, cultural norms, and social membership. The combination of intentional mentoring within the community of practice framework incorporates both standard research support of mentees and psychosocial support. We propose a three phase set of training activities in order to enhance the capacity for intentional mentoring and development of a community of practice within qCMB, that will also spillover to other training programs, and programs in general, at CSU. These phases focus on 1) qCMB faculty mentor training, 2) mentor training for graduate student qCMB trainees, and 3) development of a community of practice to allow for supported application of mentoring skills. These training activities will be capped with assessment and feedback of the learned and applied mentoring skills.