Leveraging a collaborative consortium model of mentee/mentor training to foster career progression of underrepresented postdoctoral researchers and promote institutional diversity and inclusion

Abstract

Changing institutional culture to be more diverse and inclusive within the biomedical academic community is difficult for many reasons. Herein we present evidence that a collaborative model involving multiple institutions of higher education can initiate and execute individual institutional change directed at enhancing diversity and inclusion at the postdoctoral researcher (postdoc) and junior faculty level by implementing evidence-based mentoring practices. A higher education consortium, the Big Ten Academic Alliance, invited individual member institutions to send participants to one of two types of annual mentor training: 1) "Mentoring-Up" training for postdocs, a majority of whom were from underrepresented groups; 2) Mentor Facilitator training-a train-the-trainer model-for faculty and senior leadership. From 2016 to 2019, 102 postdocs and 160 senior faculty and administrative leaders participated. Postdocs reported improvements in their mentoring proficiency (87%) and improved relationships with their PIs (71%). 29% of postdoc respondents transitioned to faculty positions, and 85% of these were underrepresented and 75% were female. 59 out of the 120 faculty and administrators (49%) trained in the first three years provided mentor training on their campuses to over 3000 undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs and faculty within the project period. We conclude that early stage biomedical professionals as well as individual institutions of higher education benefited significantly from this collaborative mentee/mentor training model.

Fig 1. Overall postdoc mentor satisfaction.

Surveyed NRMN-CAN postdocs were asked to rate their level of overall satisfaction with their postdoctoral mentor on a 7-point Likert scale. Results are shown as percentages of postdoc responses.

Fig 2. Postdoc satisfaction with specific attributes of their mentor.

NRMN-CAN postdocs were asked to rate satisfaction levels for several attributes of their postdoc mentor on a 7-point Likert scale (completely satisfied, mostly satisfied, moderately satisfied, mixed satisfaction, moderately unsatisfied, mostly unsatisfied, or extremely unsatisfied). For ease of presentation, Completely to Moderately Satisfied represents the three “satisfied” categories, Mixed Satisfaction represented the middle rating, and Extremely to Moderately Unsatisfied represents the three “unsatisfied” categories.

Fig 3. Postdoc characteristics and overall satisfaction with their mentor.

Surveyed NRMN-CAN postdocs were asked to rate their level of overall satisfaction with their postdoctoral Mentor on a 7-point Likert scale, and results are shown as the average rating for all postdoc respondents, then separated as averages for each of the four cohorts and for different demographic categories of postdocs. Satisfied and Unsatisfied responses were combined as described in the legend for Fig 2. The UR designation includes postdocs from racial or ethnic backgrounds defined by NIH to be underrepresented in the biomedical science workforce. As presented in Table 1, for this program, these categories include Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian, or multi-racial that includes at least one of these backgrounds.

Fig 4. Mentor training impact on relationship with mentor.

Postdoc participants were asked to report on their satisfaction after the NRMN-CAN “Mentoring-Up” workshop on their relationship with their postdoc mentor, based on a 7-point Likert scale: very negative impact, moderate negative impact, slight negative impact, no impact at all, slight positive impact, moderate positive impact, or very positive impact. No postdoc reported slight, moderate or very negative impacts, which were combined in the Negative Impact column in the Figure.

Fig 5. Consortium model for creating and sustaining a collaborative mentor training initiative.