Written by Alexis Short

Throughout January, the Diversity Program Consortium came together through social media to celebrate “National Mentoring Month.” NRMN and BUILD sites provide a rich variety of mentoring opportunities, which might include offering career advice, helping foster professional networks, supervising research projects, and planning for the future. This social media campaign was an opportunity for every site to demonstrate their mentors’ great work.

To build interest in the campaign, a sub-committee consisting of Alexis Short (NRMN), Hansook Oh (CSUN BUILD PODER), Emiko Kobayashi (CEC) and Christa Reynolds (NIGMS) created promotional materials and guidance. DPC sites were encouraged to post throughout the month, focusing on two awareness days: “International Mentoring Day” on January 17, and “Thank Your Mentor Day” on January 25. The campaign culminated in a Twitter Chat, organized by NRMN, on January 26. Social media teams posted extensively throughout the day, using #myBUILDmentor, #NationalMentoringMonth and #NRMNmentoring.

By providing a glimpse into mentoring activities across the country, the collaborative social media campaign demonstrated both commonalities across the consortium and what makes every site unique. Whatever form it takes, it’s clear that mentorship is valued across the DPC. Posts ranged from videos about mentoring to photos showing close mentoring relationships to tweeting helpful advice. The social media teams did a great job of gathering information about mentoring and posting throughout the month, and some even created a mentoring month webpage!

To see some tweets and Facebook posts from this campaign, check out the DPC’s Storify: https://storify.com/nihbuild/mybuildmentor