Written by Stephanie House (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
To help meet a growing demand for mentorship programming, NRMN recruited a cadre of Master Facilitators who provide mentor, mentee, and facilitator training for diverse populations across career stages in Science, Technology, Engineer, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM). They include 35 faculty and staff representing 16 institutions across 11 states from diverse disciplines in the basic and health sciences. This year they have implemented over 60 workshops, ranging from 1 to 12 hours (averaging 5 hours), and reaching over 1,200 mentors and mentees. The trainings were held at institutions large and small, everywhere from New York to California and South Dakota to the Virgin Islands, as well as at national conferences including the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). These workshops included:
• 47 Research Mentor Training Workshops – evidence-based training to help improve mentoring skills for mentors of undergraduates through junior faculty across STEMM disciplines
• 9 Research Mentee Training Workshops – evidence-based training to help undergraduates through junior faculty mentees across STEMM disciplines effectively navigate their mentoring relationships
• 7 Facilitator Training Workshops – evidence-based training to teach participants how to effectively implement mentor and/or mentee training at their respective institutions.
The map below includes all the sites where these trainings were held, as well as the locations where there are now trained facilitators.
Master Facilitators are working closely with NIH Diversity Consortium partners, including the Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) sites and the NRMN Supplement and Pilot Awardees.
NRMN Master Facilitators
Participants from all 10 BUILD sites attended facilitator training workshops last year and this year two 10-week sessions of synchronous online research mentor training were offered to mentors at these sites. Master Facilitators also provided facilitator, mentor, and mentee training for the NRMN Committee on Institutional Cooperation Academic Network (NRMN-CAN), which aims to leverage the 15-institution network of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). In addition, they led facilitator training for the Northeast Evidence-Based Mentoring Training Consortium to foster a regional peer mentoring consortium for institutional leaders. Master Facilitators also led mentee training at the Compact for Faculty Diversity’s Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, which is a four-day conference that has become the largest gathering of underrepresented doctoral scholars in the country. Further collaborations are planned for the year to come.
If you are interested in requesting that a Master Facilitator lead training at your institution or event, please email mentoring@med.wisc.edu.
