Poster Abstracts

University of Wisconsin
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

The Diverse Benefits of Mentor Training

Undergraduates who participate in laboratory research benefit from engaging in the analytical and creative thinking promoted by experiential learning. A rewarding research experience can inspire students to engage in scientific research and can be a deciding factor in whether students pursue careers in science. Therefore, ensuring a positive experience for undergraduates engaged in laboratory research is crucial. Mentors play a key role in the quality of the research experience, yet they are rarely trained. Our work is focused on the improving the mentoring of the undergraduate researcher. We have developed and implemented a mentoring seminar to train graduate students and post doctoral researchers to be effective mentors. We evaluated the effectiveness of our training seminar by collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. Preliminary results indicate that trained mentors considered issues of diversity more often than mentors who were not trained. Our data also suggest that mentor training may impact the perceptions and attitudes of mentors in a number of ways.