NRMN is Proud to Announce its Partnership with The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF).
ABRF (online at ABRF.org) is a unique nationwide membership association comprising over 900 members working within or in the support of resource and research biotechnology laboratories.
The partnership has stemmed from an initiative by the ABRF Career Development Committee (CDC) to roll out a Mentoring program to its members, which will officially begin this March 2017 and will include an online mentoring component using NRMN’s MyNRMN and Guided Virtual Mentorships online applications.
One of the Committee’s members, Dr. Phil Hockberger of Northwestern University, became aware of NRMN when discussing the Committee’s Mentoring program with a colleague who was familiar with the network. The CDC had already discussed including some manner of virtual mentoring platform as part of the program, and were excited to learn that NRMN’s existing free applications would alleviate the CDC from having to invest in developing or licensing a new platform themselves.
After speaking with NRMN’s Executive Director Dr. Rafael Luna and staff at NRMN, Dr. Hockberger and CDC confirmed that NRMN’s MyNRMN app is well-built to support the creation of an online cohort of ABRF mentors through the MyNRMN Groups feature. Here, members can convene and have discussions within a closed group, responding to prompts and guidance from administrators and moderators at ABRF CDC.
They also identified the NRMN Guided Virtual Mentorships as an ideal platform to meet another component of the ABRF CDC’s designed program goals: assigning mentor-mentee “pairs” for 1-on-1 discussions as part of the Mentoring program.
ABRF members will begin testing these virtual mentoring tools later this month, in advance of a formal launch of the Mentoring program later in the semester.
