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1. Perceptions of ethical behavior in ethical mentoring relationships between women graduate students and faculty in science and Engineering.

   Gelles, L. ( June 2018 , Proceedings of the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, Engineering Ethics Division)

   The purpose of this Work In Progress (WIP) qualitative study was to explore how underrepresented women graduate students and faculty in Science and Engineering understand and perceive what constitutes ethical behavior in a mentoring research relationship centered around the six ethical principles of Beneficence, Nonmaleficence, Autonomy, Fidelity, Fairness, and Privacy. This WIP paper focuses on the responses of eight graduate students and four faculty to six case studies that targeted a specific ethical mentoring principle, and it represents an expansion of a larger study currently under review. The goals of this WIP paper are to: (a) explore participant understanding of each ethical mentoring principle; (b) elucidate participant perceptions of ethical issues in six case studies; and (c) reveal what ethical behaviors participants expect from their respective mentor/mentee if they placed themselves in the situation of the case studies. 

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2. Advancing undergraduate research through regional community college partnerships at Portland State University

   Rice, A. ; Loikith, P. ; Murry, A. ( December 2023 , Transactions American Geophysical Union)

   Opportunities for undergraduate research in STEM programs at community colleges can be few where lower-division science curriculum emphasizes classroom and laboratory-based learning and research laboratories are limited in number. This is particularly true in the geosciences where specialized programs are extremely rare. Urban serving academic research institutions have a unique role and opportunity to partner with regional community college programs for undergraduate research early-on in student post-secondary educational experiences. Programs built for community college transfer students to urban serving undergraduate programs can serve to integrate students into major programs and help reduce transfer shock. The benefits of exploring research as an undergraduate scholar are numerous and include: building towards mastery of technical skills; developing problem-solving in a real-world environment; reading and digesting scientific literature; analyzing experimental and simulation data; working independently and as part of a team; developing a mentoring relationship with a research advisor; and building a sense of belonging and confidence in a scientific field. However, many undergraduate research internships are targeted towards junior-level STEM majors already engaged in upper-division coursework and considering graduate school which effectively excludes community college students from participating. The Center for Climate and Aerosol Research (CCAR) Research Experience for Undergraduate program at Portland State University serves to help build the future diverse research community. 10-week intern research experiences are paired with an expert faculty mentor are designed for students majoring in the natural/physical sciences but not necessarily with a background in climate or atmospheric science. Additional programmatic activities include: 1-week orientation and training using short courses, faculty research seminars, and hands-on group workshops; academic professional and career development workshops throughout summer; journal club activities; final presentations at end of summer CCAR symposium; opportunities for travel for student presentations at scientific conferences; and social activities. Open to all qualifying undergraduates, since 2014 the program recruits primarily from regional (Northwest) community colleges, rural schools, and Native American serving institutions; recruiting students who would be unlikely to be otherwise exposed to such opportunities at their home institution. Over the past 9 cohorts of REU interns (2014-2019), approximately one third of CCAR REU scholars are community colleges students. Here we present criteria employed for selection of REU scholars and an analysis of selection biases in a comparison of students from community colleges, 4-year colleges, and PhD granting universities. We further investigate differential outcomes in efficacy of the REU program using evaluation data to assess changes over the program including: knowledge, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, science identity, program satisfaction, and career aspirations. In this presentation, we present these findings along with supportive qualitative analyses and discuss their implications for community college students in undergraduate research programs in geosciences. 

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3. Postdocs’ lab engagement predicts trajectories of PhD students’ skill development

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912488116  

   Feldon, David F. ; Litson, Kaylee ; Jeong, Soojeong ; Blaney, Jennifer M. ; Kang, Jina ; Miller, Candace ; Griffin, Kimberly ; Roksa, Josipa ( October 2019 , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   The doctoral advisor—typically the principal investigator (PI)—is often characterized as a singular or primary mentor who guides students using a cognitive apprenticeship model. Alternatively, the “cascading mentorship” model describes the members of laboratories or research groups receiving mentorship from more senior laboratory members and providing it to more junior members (i.e., PIs mentor postdocs, postdocs mentor senior graduate students, senior students mentor junior students, etc.). Here we show that PIs’ laboratory and mentoring activities do not significantly predict students’ skill development trajectories, but the engagement of postdocs and senior graduate students in laboratory interactions do. We found that the cascading mentorship model accounts best for doctoral student skill development in a longitudinal study of 336 PhD students in the United States. Specifically, when postdocs and senior doctoral students actively participate in laboratory discussions, junior PhD students are over 4 times as likely to have positive skill development trajectories. Thus, postdocs disproportionately enhance the doctoral training enterprise, despite typically having no formal mentorship role. These findings also illustrate both the importance and the feasibility of identifying evidence-based practices in graduate education. 

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4. Fostering a sense of belonging in STEM mentoring of underrepresented minority (URM) students Through use of Common Factors. The Chronicles of Mentoring and Coaching

   Stallsmith V. and Chavez E. ( December 2022 , The chronicle of mentoring coaching)

   ABSTRACT Over the last 30 years over 30,000 articles and chapters have been published related to mentoring, with over 40% focused on mentoring students in STEM disciplines. What have we learned from this voluminous literature and what concepts stand out as needing further attention? A review of the literature indicates that mentoring of underrepresented minoritized (URM) students involve attention to the professional development of these students, active engagement in research activities, and a willingness and ability to develop a strong relationship that supersedes the aspects of traditional mentoring activities. Psychology graduate programs have long been known to teach and develop the skills necessary to help students foster strong therapeutic relationships. The foundational interpersonal skills taught in domains of psychology (e.g., counseling psychology, social psychology) are directly relevant to other relationship-building scenarios, such as mentor/mentee dyads. Budding psychologists typically learn therapeutic techniques that help build trusting relationships with clients that hold different identities than their own. But these skills apply beyond client/therapist relations and could be used to inform intensive/inclusive mentoring approaches with URM students, especially when the mentor holds a different identity. The training techniques proposed can be adapted for both formal and informal forms of mentoring and may enhance a student’s sense of belonging, which is the strongest predictor of science identity development and success in STEM. This paper will focus on elements necessary to develop a strong relationship between URM students and their mentors based on the development of a therapeutic relationship using concepts from theories related to the Common Factors (Rosenzweig, 1936). These theories posit that the development of a meaningful client/therapist relationship and behavior change requires attention to four common factors: therapist qualities or in this case mentor qualities, change processes or how students are trained, treatment structures which are specific techniques, and development of a strong relationship. These factors can easily be applied to create a truly inclusive mentoring model. 

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5. Developing a Culturally Adaptive Pathway to Success: Implementation Progress and Project Findings

   Kang, E. ; Dong, J. ; Jackson, M. ; Allen, E. ; Galvan, D. ( June 2020 , ASEE's Virtual Conference)

   With support from NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM), the Culturally Adaptive Pathway to Success (CAPS) program aims to build an inclusive pathway to accelerate the graduation for academically talented, low-income students in Engineering and Computer Science majors at [University Name], which traditionally serves the underrepresented and educationally disadvantaged minority students in the [City Name area]. CAPS focuses on progressively developing social and career competence in our students via three integrated interventions: (1) Mentor+, a relationally informed advising strategy that encourages students to see their academic work in relation to their families and communities; (2) peer cohorts, providing social support structure for students and enhancing their sense of belonging in engineering and computer science classrooms and beyond; and (3) professional development from faculty who have been trained in difference-education theory, so that they can support students with varying levels of understanding of the antecedents of college success. To ensure success of these interventions, the CAPS program places great emphasis on developing culturally responsive advisement methods and training faculty mentors to facilitate creating a culture of culturally adaptive advising. This paper presents the CAPS progress in the past two project years. In particular, we will share several changes that we have made after the first project year to improve several key components of the program - recruitment, cohort building, and mentor training. The program strengthened the recruitment by actively involving scholars and faculties in reaching out to students and successfully recruited more scholars for the second cohort (16 scholars) than the first cohort (12 scholars). Also, the program has initiated new activities for peer-mentoring and cohort gathering within each major. As continuous development of the mentor training, the program has added a training session focusing on various aspects of intersectionality as it relates to individual’s social identities, and how mentors can use these knowledge to better interact with mentees. In addition to these changes, we will also report findings on how the program impacted on scholars’ academic growth and mentors’ understanding about the culturally adaptive advisement to answer the CAPS research questions (a) how these interventions affect the development of social belonging and engineering identity of CAPS scholars, and (b) the impact of Mentor+ on academic resilience and progress to degree. The program conducted qualitative data collection and analysis via focus group meetings and interviews as well as quantitative data collection and analysis using academic records and surveys. Our findings will help enhance the CAPS program and establish a sustainable Scholars Support Program at the university, which can be implemented with scholarships funded by other sources, and which can be transferred to similar culturally diverse institutions to increase success for students who have socio-economic challenges. 

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