Trainees’ scientific communication skills and how they are mentored are significant predictors of intention to persist in research careers, independently of research skills.1 As mentors to graduate and postdoctoral trainees in STEM, we know it’s important to provide them with a variety of skills and resources to sustain their goals of pursuing careers in research.
Investigators at MD Anderson Cancer Center will present an NIH-funded workshop for mentors in techniques for mentoring scientific communication skills efficiently and effectively. These techniques can be applied immediately without specialized knowledge and are designed to make your work easier. We welcome you to participate in the workshop itself and associated research study, along with your trainees (who will be generously compensated). This research will help us to identify new mentoring strategies that lead to STEM trainee retention and success.
The workshop will cover topics that are rarely discussed in mentoring and trainee development, such as:
- The mechanisms by which scientific communication skills build science identity and career commitment and how you can leverage them to your trainees’ benefit
- The role of linguistic diversity, including mentor perceptions of linguistic diversity, in skill development
- Understanding trainee barriers to productivity in scientific communication, and how to address them
- Why you should focus on getting trainees talking about research in a variety of situations and ways to achieve that
- How certain kinds of feedback about speaking and writing—that may seem innocuous--can stall motivation, and how to avoid them
Date: Thursday, August 23rd
Time: 10:00am to 2:00pm (lunch served)
Location: JSCBB B115
REGISTER HERE: https://is.gd/SCOARE
Registration is limited to 20 participants.
The “Scientific Communication Advances Research Excellence” workshops and study are funded by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Innovative Programs to Enhance Research Training R25 GM125640 (C Cameron & S Chang, MPI’s).
1. Cameron C, Lee HY, Anderson C, Byars-Winston A, Baldwin CD, Chang S. The role of scientific communication skills in trainees’ intention to pursue biomedical research careers: A social cognitive analysis. CBE Life Sciences Education. 2015;14(4).