Assessing Institutional Assets, Vulnerabilities, and Synergies and using a STEM Mentoring Ecosystem Framework: A Multi-institution, Interdisciplinary Workshop

Many colleges and universities aspire to diversify their STEM student bodies and create more inclusive and equitable learning environments for the students. At the same time, many struggle with limited resources and less-than-optimal infrastructure. Using a system that integrates all components of an institutional STEM mentoring ecosystem can have greater potential for making substantive and lasting changes across a range of demographics.

This project builds upon a recently-developed STEM-Mentoring Ecosystems (STEM-ME) framework that facilitates self-assessment of institutional strengths, vulnerabilities, synergies and disconnects related to mentoring. Given that many mentoring programs targeted at students, staff, or faculty are siloed in nature, an ecosystems approach will facilitate a more sustainable and effective infrastructure.

The STEM-ME framework will facilitate the leveraging of resources, building of synergies and integration of best practices across a diverse and at times isolated set of institutional efforts. This project will convene workshops comprised of teams from multiple institutions who will engage in learning about and applying the STEM-ME framework to improve their local mentoring ecosystems.

Based on discussions, each campus team will revise the STEM-ME materials to make them applicable to their local situations. Outcomes of the workshop will include new insights for campuses, new resource materials, and new knowledge about common assets and vulnerabilities across a range of institutional types.

There is abundant extant research on barriers and outcomes of STEM mentoring at the individual relationship level, but less is known at the institutional and cross-institutional levels. A recent report on “The Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM” (2019) by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has brought increased attention to improving mentoring environments to retain STEM talent from all segments of the population.

This proposal will pilot a study that uses a STEM-Mentoring Ecosystems (STEM-ME) framework to effect changes in institutional practice towards a more inclusive and equitable environment. Sessions will be convened to provide teams from several campuses opportunities to learn about and craft their institution-specific blueprint of the STEM-ME framework.

The goals of this workshop are: (1) to improve the STEM mentoring ecosystems particularly for minoritized students across campus types; (2) to develop mechanisms (including a white paper and self-guided module) that helps campuses to assess their own campus infrastructure, identify connections/synergies, and strengthen their infrastructure for high-quality, inclusive STEM mentoring; (3) to assist participating campuses, and their leaders, begin this process and contribute to this process in a meaningful way; and, (4) to reflect back to stakeholders of STEM mentoring ecosystems where there are common vulnerabilities and areas of strength. The collaborative workshop will consist of two required sessions and an optional session.

The first session will involve an introduction of the STEM-ME framework and mapping worksheet and multi-institutional team introductions. The second session involves sharing of campus-specific mentoring ecosystem maps and discussions of commonalities and differences between campuses. Finally, the optional third session will allow each team to have a one-on-one consulting session with one of the facilitators.

The broader impacts of the proposal include the creation of tools (e.g. STEM-ME mapping worksheet, white paper, institutional action plans) that will help campuses enhance their STEM mentoring infrastructure. Multiple graduate and undergraduate students will gain research training on organizational change in STEM.

Undergraduate and graduate students from racially minoritized backgrounds on multiple campuses will benefit from improved STEM mentoring infrastructure. This award is supported by the Divisions of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB), Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS). Environmental Biology (DEB), and Biological Infrastructure (DBI) within the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities within the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.