Having Culturally Sensitive Mentoring Conversations: Faculty Session

High quality mentoring is an important predictor of persistence for researchers pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and can influence the confidence of historically underrepresented trainees' ability to successfully conduct research. Despite this, mentors typically do not receive any training on how to optimize their mentoring relationships. In this interactive workshop for faculty mentors, we will engage in group discussions around a case study addressing cultural diversity and inclusion. Mentors will share how they might approach the case study, and share suggestions on how they have worked to build trust in mentoring relationships. Furthermore, stories from student mentees from historically underrepresented backgrounds will be shared to learn from their perspectives. Through the workshop, participating mentors will learn new approaches from each other as they work through mentoring challenges, reflect upon their mentoring experiences, and refine their individual approaches to mentoring. Workshop leaders will provide concrete tools and strategies mentors can incorporate into their practice and extrapolate to their own context. Through this process, participants are expected to gain confidence in proactively working with students from diverse backgrounds. This session will continue from the framework and concepts from the previous sessions (Key Strategies for Mentoring: Parts I and II), but attendance at these previous sessions is not required.