Very few academic graduate or post-graduate programs provide formal instruction on how to become an effective mentor. Thus, many academics and clinicians feel underprepared to begin their role as a mentor. This pre-conference course is designed to empower mentors and trainees (i.e., future mentors) to identify the key aspects of mentorship shown to predict mentees’ future academic success, including aligning expectations, articulating your mentoring philosophy and plan, fostering wellbeing and independence, maintaining effective communication and promoting mentee research self-efficacy. The course draws from research and coursework developed by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, including an evidence-based mentor training that has been shown to increase mentoring effectiveness and focuses on culturally responsive interactions to help historically underrepresented mentees succeed in their research.

This pre-conference workshop will include a didactic and interactive/applied portion. The didactic portion will include an introduction to the theoretical models and empirical literature describing key attributes that predict a mentees’ persistence in academic careers and future academic success. Attendees will also learn about a mentee’s identity as a scientist, research self-efficacy, academic social capital, and navigational capital. Mechanisms for enhancing these attributes will be discussed for mentees at various levels, including undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and early career faculty. Attendees will also learn about an evidence-based intervention to improve mentorship skills that can be incorporated into offerings at their institutions. Finally, we will discuss strategies for protecting trainees from harmful mentorship. During the interactive portion, we will discuss hypothetical mentoring scenarios based on the didactic portion and reflect about the overall content of the workshop. Attendees will leave with evidence-based knowledge and training to help improve their mentor skills and will be encouraged to disseminate what they learned with their institutions or organizations.