Advancing Inclusive Mentoring Through an Online Mentor Training Program and Coordinated Discussion Group

Abstract

Mentoring is key to ensure success of the high impact practice of undergraduate-led research and scholarly activities; however, most faculty and staff members are not trained in the best practices of mentoring undergraduate students. The National Institutes of Health-funded Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (NIH BUILD) Initiative at California State University Long Beach is developing an online mentor training program with a coordinated discussion group to refine mentoring skills across faculty and staff from all disciplines. Faculty and staff members participated in two pilots of the Advancing Inclusive Mentoring (AIM) Program, where participants watched training videos and came together to discuss mentoring: either face-to-face (spring 2020) or virtually (fall 2020). Participants indicated that the videos and discussion were engaging and reported that AIM provided useful information on communicating with their own mentees as well as with any student on campus. Participants also reported that AIM provided strategies to work with students from diverse backgrounds and strengthened their commitment to inclusive mentoring. Finally, participants indicated that they would recommend AIM to colleagues and that the program was not only beneficial to their mentoring, but also that they would put into practice techniques that they had learned. There were some differences in usage, but no significant differences in participants' ratings of the program across the two delivery formats. Thus, the AIM Program with facilitated discussion appears to provide a useful mentor training experience in both in-person and virtual formats. Because this unique program is intentionally inclusive to faculty and staff mentors across all disciplines, the goal is that this training will ultimately benefit student success across campus.

Keywords: Faculty development; Mentor training; Online learning.

Fig. 1.

Timing of video viewing by spring 2020 (n = 15) and fall 2020 (n = 16) participants relative to date of discussion for Module I, Communicating with your Mentees, and Module II, Inclusive Mentoring.

Fig. 2.

Number of participants who viewed the videos in the modules in one session, multiple sessions, or none by semester (spring 2020 or fall 2020) for Module I, Communicating with your Mentees, and Module II, Inclusive Mentoring.