SRMPCon: bringing together leaders of high school Science Research Mentoring Programs

SRMPCon is a gathering for people who run Science Research Mentoring Programs for high school youth from backgrounds that are underrepresented and historically excluded in STEM. It is designed to build relationships and create opportunities for collaboration around a specific shared challenge: creating a culture in STEM workspaces that prioritizes and encourages evidence-based, inclusive mentorship.

Together, we aim to impact the culture of STEM institutions so they are more conducive to youth mentoring.

SRMPCon will take place over the course of 3 sessions: a virtual introduction meeting, a 3-day in-person meeting, and a wrap-up virtual meeting. While we call this a conference, all meetings will be a collaborative, think-tank environment. It will be full of workshops and planning sessions in small groups, not a series of presentations. 

Institutions across the United States offer mentored  science research learning experiences for high school youth who have been historically underrepresented in STEM spaces, including those that have experienced systemic exclusion due to race, gender, immigrant status, socio-economic status or geography. 

Critically, these programs often work in isolation from each other, hindering the opportunity to learn about and develop shared solutions to problems of practice that are inherent in a mentored program design. 

One major challenge for such programs is creating environments that promote and sustain evidence-based, inclusive mentorship, as the structures and expectations of STEM research settings do not always support such mentorship.

Creating better environments for youth to learn how to do STEM research under the guidance of scientist mentors can lead to a more inclusive and effective culture of STEM for everyone: effective mentorship fosters more effective mentorship, shifting institutional priorities to recognize the value of mentorship. Ultimately, this contributes to the broadening of participation in STEM academic and work spaces.

So: how can we work together to make our institutions better places for youth to experience great mentorship in STEM research?

This type of mentorship is grounded in knowledge of how people learn and develop, uses techniques that are supported by research, and centers diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of its practice.

Through SRMPCon, mentored science research programs for high school youth will collectively address institutional barriers that limit the implementation of evidence-based, inclusive mentorship. In bringing together the leaders of mentored science research programs for high school youth from across the country, we aim to move this vision for change forward by:

1. Sharing current understandings on the research of effective mentoring practices.
2. Identifying and defining problems of practice around mentorship in individual programs.
3. Uncovering the institutional drivers that shape mentorship across the programs and act as both barriers and enablers to implementing evidence-based, inclusive STEM mentorship.
4. Designing concrete strategies that build on collective assets to address shared institutional barriers, including initiating partnership groups to collaboratively address challenges and implement solutions.

The details will depend on the particular challenges and barriers that participants identify! For example, based on our experience and research we anticipate there may be some common themes that arise:

• – We may find that there is a common challenge of disengaged mentors, driven by underlying institutional priorities that do not include quality mentorship for youth. Participants may address this by finding ways to financially compensate mentors to communicate the value of their work and set the expectation of accountability and professionalism. One outcome of SRMPCon could be the strategic partnering of multiple programs to pursue joint funding to provide mentor compensation.
• – A shared challenge of inconsistent mentorship within a given program or institution may be addressed by co-creating explicit and comprehensive guiding principles for mentorship of youth in STEM research programs.
• – A shared challenge of a lack of buy-in from institutions towards youth mentorship may lead participants to initiate new research studies on the institutional impact that mentorship can have.

Through SRMPCon, program leaders will work together to explore other shared challenges in their programs, and will work together to understand the institutional contexts that shape these challenges and devise appropriate strategic interventions.

SRMPCon will have three required components:

1. Preparation Meeting (Virtual; 2-3 people per institution)
2.  a 3-day In-Person Meeting (at AMNH in NYC; 1 person per institution)
3. Closing/Next Steps Meeting (Virtual; 2-3 people per institution)

The virtual components will allow multiple staff from an institution to contribute to the goals of the conference without the burden and expense of traveling to an in-person meeting.

1. The Virtual Preparation Meeting will set the stage for the in-person meeting, facilitate participants to meet and build relationships with colleagues from other institutions, and start to explore the challenges of mentorship together.
2. The In-Person Meeting is the central component of SRMPCon, in which participants identify institutional barriers to mentorship and work towards collective action. This 3-day meeting will be hosted at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This will consist of workshops, group work, and roundtable discussions.
3. After allowing participants time to debrief with their program teams and revisit their individual priorities, the virtual Closing/Next Steps Meeting will reconvene all participants from Meetings #1 & #2 to share learnings and solidify plans for collective implementation, dissemination, and next steps.

All three meetings will be required for SRMPCon participants:

• – Virtual Meeting: March 5, 2025; 2-4pm ET
• – In Person Meeting: April 30-May 2, 2024 (with April 29 as a travel day)
• – Virtual Meeting: August 28, 2025; 2-4pm ET (date and time subject to change)

• – A deeper understanding of what evidence-based, inclusive research mentorship can look like.
• – A deeper understanding of the factors that shape the implementation of such mentorship in your program and institution.
• – A new network of professionals leading STEM research programs for youth.
• – Concrete plans for addressing barriers to effective mentorship together with peers from programs with shared goals.

Through funding from NSF INCLUDES #2432355, the following will be covered for one individual per program:

• – Flight to NYC
• – Hotel for the nights of April 29 (check in Tuesday). April 30, May 1 (with check out Friday May 2)
• – Breakfast and Lunch during the conference (Breakfast on April 30-May 2; lunch on April 30-May 1)

Please note: dinners and transportation within NYC will not be included.

SRMPCon will bring together a set of programs from across the country that all provide free or stipended mentored research experiences to high school students, in which students work directly with scientist mentors on scientific research projects for 50+ hours. We are explicitly looking for programs that value diversity and equity, and work with youth audiences from backgrounds that have been historically and persistently excluded from STEM, such as Black, Latine, Indigenous, and low income youth.

We are looking for programs where students work directly with professional scientists on scientific research projects and science researchers serve as direct and primary mentors for the students as they guide them through scientific research projects.

Because we are trying to impact the culture of science research to be more conducive to youth mentoring, we are interested in programs where students work on science research in science research environments.

Each participating organization will identify a team of two to three staff members to participate in SRMPCon. While smaller organizations may have individuals that hold more than one role, we encourage each program to include people performing the following functions:

• – one scientist who serves as a mentor for youth
• – one person who manages and handles the day to day problems of practice focused on topics such as youth and mentor recruitment, mentor preparation, content delivery, and other similar issues
• – one person with decision-making power on program design and joint funding opportunities.

From the programs’ groups of participants, each program will select one person to attend the in-person component of SRMPCon.

Program leaders from across the USA are invited to apply. We particularly encourage programs from EPSCoR jurisdictions (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, US Virgin Islands, West Virginia, and Wyoming).

SRMPCon is limited to programs within the USA.

• – Students spend a significant amount of time (50+ hours) directly with their research mentors learning how to conduct scientific research.
• – The program addresses barriers to participation by offering the program free of cost or or providing a monetary stipend to youth participants
• – The program prioritizes youth with marginalized identities, particularly Black, Latine, and Indigenous students and/or from low income families
• – The program has been in operation for at least three years and can reflect on persistent research mentorship challenges
• – The program has explicit goals and structures that shape student experience

There are so many fantastic youth STEM programs out there, yet SRMPCon is designed for a subset of programs that share many similarities. 

The following types of programs are not the focus of SRMPCon and will not be accepted for participation. However, we will share outcomes from the meeting broadly and hope they can positively impact these programs as well:

• – Programs that are designed to focus on exposure to STEM rather than intensive skill building, such as 1-2 week summer camps, after school courses, or similar.
• – Shadowing clinicians or STEM professionals where the focus is on observation, not directly engaging in authentic research practices with mentors.
• – High school research classes or clubs that connect students to scientists yet do not work directly with the scientists or oversee the mentorship.
• – Classroom-based programs where teachers or staff lead large groups of students in experiments and labs.
• – Programs in which high school youth interact primarily with non-research staff or near-peer mentors such as college students, and professional researchers are minimally involved.
• – Research mentoring programs for college students.

Not sure if you should apply? Feel free to contact us at nycsrmc@amnh.org to chat.

We aim to bring together programs that are similar enough that they have shared challenges and can design ways to approach those challenges collectively. Because our goal is to create environments in STEM institutions that foster mentorship for youth, we will bring together program leaders who are directly connected with STEM institutions where research is conducted.

This first meeting will be on March 5, 2025 and will serve to

1. Establish awareness of programs and people and begin to build trusting relationships and
2. Identify and define common challenges around creating environments for positive mentorship.

The in-person meeting will be on April 30-May 2, 2025 in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History. At this 3 day meeting, we will

1. Share current understandings on the research of effective mentoring practices.
2. Identify the institutional drivers that are linked to the individual program challenges of implementing evidence-based, inclusive STEM mentorship.
3. Design concrete strategies that build on collective assets to address these institutional barriers and deeper root causes.
4. Develop explicit plans and subgroups that will implement strategies, including working towards shared funding opportunities.

At the final meeting on August 28, 2025, we will

1. Reflect on ideas from the in-person conference with all team members from participating institutions
2. Create explicit plans for implementation of the strategies identified in previous meetings

Every program will prepare a single slide summary of their program, but programs will not be asked to create full presentations. Select programs may be invited to share more detail about how their programs are structured during the in-person meeting.

We will create opportunities for collaboration during the three meetings, and we hope that programs will continue to work together to implement the strategies designed in the meetings

Participants will also be asked to respond to surveys from our evaluation team and may be invited to participate in focus group conversations.