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🚀 Currently: Michigan Technological University
💼 Formerly: University of Michigan, UP Health System-Portage
🧰 Offering my time and talents to: NORDP2023 Conference (co-chair), NORDP Communications Working Group (co-chair), NORDP-GL Executive Committee, NORDP Mentoring Committee, Copper Country Ski Tigers (Level 1 coach)
Written by: Mentoring Committee Marketing and Communication Team (McMc)
A Big Thank You to all the volunteers who have dedicated their time and effort for the Mentoring Committee (MC) this past year! The MC sponsored a mentoring volunteer appreciation dinner at the 2024 NORDP Conference in Bellevue, WA, where 17 members were able to participate. In fact, the MC group photo was this year’s photo contest winner — many thanks to Hilda McMackin for instigating the photo-opp.
At the MC Lightning Storm, eight speakers shared a wide range of mentoring experiences, highlighting lessons learned about being a mentor or a mentee from thought-provoking perspectives and contexts. For example, Samarpita Sengupta presented her personal RD journey sharing unique challenges from an immigrant’s perspective and highlighted lessons learned for mentors with immigrant mentees; Kelsey Hassevoort shared how she developed her mentor network using informational interviews. Rounding out the speakers of the MC LIghting Storm are: Monica Castañeda-Kessel.Sonya Craig, Joanna Downer, David Hopfe, Hilda McMackin, and Sarah Robertson, with Hilda, David, and Elizabeth Lathrop as the moderators.
The conference breakfast on Monday 4/29 was a great time to connect with NORDP committee members and hear about the work done by the MC committee. The MC breakfast table was packed with conference attendees eager to learn how to join the committee sessions, events, and programs, and to meet the more experienced mentoring “veterans.” The committee members rose to the occasion and showed up early, ready to share experiences and advice. The extra chairs pulled from nearby tables to accommodate everyone joining the conversation were a great testimony to the committee’s hard work and dedication to communication, openness, and pure awesomeness!
The conversation in front of the MC poster during the Tuesday Poster Session was as lively as the breakfast talk from the previous day. Supported by visuals via the MC evergreen poster, we were able to recruit at least a dozen mentoring volunteers and new mentors/mentees. A heartfelt thank you to Jan Abramson who made mentoring buttons and provided a large box of chocolate truffles. She sent them via snail mail since she was unable to attend #NORDP2024. The chocolate treats definitely helped attract the crowd’s attention and interest.
Finally, we are so excited that MC co-cair Elizabeth Lathrop was recognized with a 2024 Rising Star Award during the Awards Ceremony. [Insert picture from photographer] We are so proud of everything you have done to lift the Mentoring Committee, Elizabeth! In addition, Mentor Training Team lead Paula Carney was also awarded the Mentoring Award along with Tisha Mullen this year – Congratulations!
The MC is looking forward to a new enriching mentoring season!
Inspired? You can learn more about MC committee work by reaching out to mentorprogram@nordp.org
Contributor: Kristin Boman, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
In academic settings, research mentoring and mentor training has traditionally been focused on faculty and trainees. NORDP collaborated with NIH-funded evidenced-based Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) to adapt the Enter Mentoring curricula for research development professionals. Since then, 100 + NORDP members (7% of members) through six cohorts have participated in mentor training for research development (RD) professionals offered by the NORDP Mentoring Committee.
The RD mentor training curricula is being adapted further for research professionals, i.e. program managers, clinical research coordinators, regulatory and compliance officers, etc. in collaboration with personnel from the University of Minnesota’s (UMN) Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Loyola University Chicago and CIMER. Once the curricula adaption is completed, it will be beta tested, assessed, and disseminated (see figure below).
One of the NORDP Mentoring Committee‘s goals is to contribute to the national scholarly discussion of mentoring and bring knowledge of the state-of-the-art in the science of mentoring to NORDP. With support from NORDP Mentoring Committee, UMN, and CIMER travel awards, Kristin Boman presented a poster on staff mentor training at the 2024 Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 3-5, 2024. Boman co-chairs the NORDP Mentor Training Team with Dr. Paula Carney and leads the UMN Primary Care Practice Based Research Network. The poster generated interest from training and workforce development leaders at several universities; in fact, conversations have begun about potential dissemination pathways.
Several members of the NORDP Mentor Training Team have laid the groundwork for this initiative by volunteering their time and skills, especially Paula Carney, Kathy Partlow and Jan Abramson who led the initial training adaptation for RDs. The most recent cohort was highlighted in a recent blog post. Feedback from NORDP participants has also been instrumental for continual improvements to the training curricula. The next NORDP Mentor Training Workshop is anticipated to launch in early 2025.For more information on the NORDP Mentoring Committee, including how to become involved, please contact the Mentoring Committee via mentorprogram@nordp.org. You can also visit the mentoring tag on NORDP news for any program updates.
Registration for the 2024-2025 Mentoring Program is currently open on Wisdom Share for all NORDP members to sign up as a mentor, a mentee, or both. New participants need to create an account on Wisdom Share. Returning participants should follow the instructions available online from the NORDP Mentoring Committee. Deadline to apply for the 2024-2025 mentoring program closes on Friday, May 17, 2024.
In this installment of the Mentoring Reflections, we caught up with mentee-mentor pair Sandra Arriaga (Mentee) and Julie Hawk (Mentor) from the 2023-2024 cohort of the Mentoring Program to share their experiences with NORDP.
Sandra Arriaga is a Research Development Specialist with the Stanford Research Development Office and has spent the entirety of her career working in higher education. After years of teaching college composition, running academic programs, and writing proposals on the side (with a brief stint living and working in Amman, Jordan), she transitioned to the field of research development full time. Sandra has a Master’s degree in English with a concentration in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and brings a background in education, social science, and applied linguistics to her work supporting STEM faculty from across the university on their proposals. Outside of work, Sandra enjoys traveling and yoga, and is learning to play drums.
Julie Hawk obtained her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2012 and spent the next few years teaching at Georgia Tech and then the University of West Georgia, where she discovered that she could translate the skills from her training to a Research Development context. Since 2016, she has been working with researchers on a variety of kinds and sizes of grants. She currently works at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics, where she deals mostly with large biomedical grants. However, her experience in both an emerging research institution and at an engineering powerhouse provides a wide skillset and range of disciplinary directions for grant seeking.
Q1: What influenced you to apply to be a mentor and a mentee for the 2023-2024 NORDP Mentoring Program?
SA: I am relatively new to research development, having started my current position in 2021 after a few years writing and editing proposals outside of my previous full-time role. Initially, I prioritized getting to know my immediate colleagues, supervisor, and institution while taking advantage of the many resources that NORDP offers. Once I had solid footing in my current role, I felt ready to join the NORDP’s mentoring program because I had heard wonderful things about it from my co-workers.
JH: I have been doing Research Development for several years, and last year I had a wonderful experience as a mentee in this program. Not only did the mentoring relationship provide a touchstone for learning more, but it also showed me that I was more ready to be a mentor than I thought. So I decided to pay it forward and sign up as a mentor.
Q2: What is your favorite part about your relationship?
SA: Julie offers great perspective and is just plain fun to talk to. We have a lot in common and both of us have our cats make a guest appearance more often than not. Her thoughtful advice and observations always make me feel energized after our calls, no matter what is going on for me in work and life.
JH: Sandra and I have a lot in common, including our educational backgrounds and our past teaching experience. These commonalities allow for easy analogies when we are talking through various experiences in our work lives. Sometimes I forget that I’m officially her mentor, as I certainly get as much out of the mentoring relationship as a mentee is supposed to. It truly is a bidirectional exchange.
Q3:How has participation in the Mentoring Program helped broaden your horizons about Research Development in general and/or affected your daily work in particular?
SA: Because I’ve only held one “official” RD position so far, I can sometimes lose sight of the fact that so many of us experience the same kinds of challenges and that others have dealt with them before me. Julie brings an outside point of view from within a similar professional culture, adding a voice of reason and experience which helps me reflect more deliberately. Through talking with Julie, I also learned more about her experience as an NORDP Consultant and became more interested in that type of work.
JH: Both as a mentee last year and a mentor this year, I have learned so much about the varied ways to approach RD work as well as the similarities that underlie all those variations. Working in a department as the sole RD professional, a network of colleagues is something I must intentionally cultivate. Participating in the mentoring program is one very important way that I do that, and it is extremely valuable.
Q4: What surprised you about being a mentor or a mentee?
SA: How much I needed one! It was the right time for me, and I was fortunate to be matched with the right mentor. While I have many opportunities to engage in professional development and mentoring within my organization, there’s nothing like talking to someone who “gets it” but isn’t steeped in the exact same context. It was also very beneficial to work through the MESHH Network framework with someone. Talking with Julie helped me see mentors and opportunities to find mentors where I hadn’t seen them previously.
JH: Like many others, I occasionally suffer from Imposter Syndrome, so I think I was most surprised by the fact that I actually know a lot more about RD than I realized. I was also surprised that the mentoring matching system seems to work so well. Both last year and this year, it matched me very well indeed!
Q5: What made you decide to maintain a longer-term mentoring relationship and how has it impacted you?
SA: When I reflect on my career so far, one theme that emerges is that whenever I’ve had the opportunity to learn from a mentor, I have thrived. In a previous career (teaching), I also served as a mentor after I had accumulated enough experience, and both sides of the mentoring relationship have been so valuable. Through the mentoring relationship, I have been able to appreciate how much I’ve learned and refined my own internal compass. I find mentoring especially important because I work remotely. I can intentionally build the type of connections that non-remote employees might be able to create more serendipitously.
JH: I have always benefitted from longer term mentoring relationships, whether they were formal or informal arrangements. After experiencing a great deal of benefit as a mentee in the program last year, I knew that any fears I had about not having enough time to participate were unfounded. Like the adage that one should meditate for at least 10 minutes every day unless you’re too busy, in which case you should meditate for 30 minutes, the mentoring relationship serves as a reflective experience that re-energizes my everyday work life.
Q6: Any words of wisdom or encouragement for those wanting to apply next year? Any other thoughts you would like to share?
SA: If you’re worried about having enough time, consider the “return on investment.” The way you’ll feel refreshed and re-charged after talking with your mentor will likely make managing your time easier in other aspects of your work. And by all accounts, NORDP does an excellent job with matching people. You won’t regret it!
JH: If you’ve been in RD for a while but think you aren’t advanced enough to be a mentor, that’s probably Imposter Syndrome. On the other hand, you could always start by being a mentee. Regardless of which you do (or both!), you will absolutely benefit from it.
Written by the Conference Committee Branding and Communications Working Group
NORDP has invited Dr. Marie Bernard, Rhonda Davis, and Dr. Travis York to deliver a keynote panel to kick-off the NORDP 2024 Conference on Monday, April 29, 2024. The structure of the panel will include opening remarks from each guest speaker outlining important diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Travis York, AAAS
“When I think about how to make meaningful change to increase access and opportunities for all people, research development professionals are well-positioned to build the capacity of institutions and organizations through thoughtful design.” — Travis York (AAAS)
Marie Bernard, NIH
“My role as the NIH Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity is to work across NIH, visioning at the 50,000-foot-level, to foster a diversity of perspectives in science.” — Marie Bernard (NIH)
Rhonda Davis, NSF
“I am excited to share how NSF thinks both about the research integrity space and about supporting researchers as they currently exist.” — Rhonda Davis (NSF)
All the speakers are looking forward to engaging with the NORDP audience. The keynote panel will feature a moderated discussion and include time for audience questions.
The invited panelists and the conference planning committee are so excited to share this conversation with #NORDP2024 attendees.
The NORDP Mentoring Committee’s Mentor Training Team held a mentor training workshop in January – March 2024. Nineteen NORDP members completed the 5-week workshop, covering the 9-module Entering Mentoring curriculum initially developed for research mentors and tailored by the NORDP Mentoring Committee for RD professionals in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). Over 100 NORDP members have completed the Entering Mentoring Workshop and received certificates.
RD professionals explored key mentoring competencies that can benefit RD mentors and mentees that have been associated with improved career outcomes, employee engagement and retention, and more inclusive work environments. The workshop was facilitated by NORDP members Jan Abramson, Kristin Boman, Paula Carney, Rachel Goff-Albritton, Melissa Li, Kathy Partlow, and Samar Sengupta. The NORDP Mentoring Committee is committed to equipping Research Development professionals for success by offering meaningful mentoring expertise, support, and resources. If you would like to be contacted when the next Mentor Training workshop series is scheduled, please email mentorprogram@nordp.org.
Congratulations to the following 2024 NORDP Mentor Training graduates!
Sowmya Anand
University of Illinois
Vinita Bharat
Stanford University
Sherri Burda
New York University
Cate Caldwell
Black Hills State University
Caitlin Charos
University of California, Santa Cruz
Kaylynn Coates
Cleveland Clinic
Mandy Davis
Texas A&M University, Texarkana
Palemon Gonzalez
Research Development Consultant, Mexico City
Stephanie Haddad
University of California, Santa Cruz
Angela Jordan
University of South Alabama
Keri Jupka
University of Missouri, St. Louis
Prapti Mody
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Kelly Anne Moore
Emory University
Hugo Moreno
Research Development Consultant, Mexico City
Aimee Oke
Colorado State University
Daniel Riechers
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Branden Ritter
Ohio State University
Claudia Scholz
University of Virginia
Ruth Sosnoff
University of Kansas Medical Center
Carol Thornber
University of Rhode Island
Monica Vidal
Stanford University School of Medicine
Nancy Walker
University of Missouri, Columbia
Kathryn Wrench
Lawrence Technological University
Kartik Yadav
University of California Irvine
Table: list of 2024 NORDP Mentor Training graduates and their respective organizations.
Contributors: Proposal Development Peer Mentoring Groups (PMG) Co-conveners — Sonya Craig, New York University, Grossman School of Medicine and Lindsay Ridpath, University of Arizona
The Proposal Development field is growing as proposals become more complex and as the competitiveness for obtaining research funding continues. Academic success is not achievable through the efforts of a solitary individual; the era of lone geniuses thriving in academia has passed, emphasizing the collaborative nature of contemporary academics that thrives on teamwork, be that with other investigators or with research development (RD) professionals.
To help RD professionals build a network of support, NORDP initiated the peer mentoring groups (PMGs) in 2019, out of what was then the Community of Practice Groups. As David Widmer stated for an earlier blog post about the PMGs: “We are never fully developed by a single mentor. If you think about your broader network, it’s clear that you are being mentored by multiple people.” Jan Abramson said PMGs developed “from a discussion about member needs, the importance of building a network of mentors, and making sure anyone who requests a mentor has one.” A driving factor in PMGs is NORDP members’ needs. Christina Howard, David Widmer, Jan Abramson, Kathy Partlow, Faye Farmer, Katie Shoaf, and other members of NORDP’s Mentoring Committee, are the brains behind the PMGs, orchestrating the programming that has proven to be a valuable resource for many. The Proposal Development PMG is one of six active groups.
Proposal development can be summarized as the process of advising, writing, editing, coordinating, and compiling grant applications. The RD specialist can have many roles within proposal development, including as an educator, a project manager, a writer/editor/illustrator, or an advisor and advocate. Many proposal development professionals give guidance on and coordinate writing of grant components (including budgets, letters of support, and research strategies), manage grants libraries and other institutional resources, and coordinate and manage peer or “Red Team” reviews.
The proposal/research development role has evolved over the last decade, leading to major growth in proposal development specialists in university settings. Now, innovations in generative Artificial Intelligence and graphic design have the potential to transform both proposal development and proposal evaluation, meaning that the roles of RD professionals are likely to change in the near future. Likewise, complex proposals and transformational initiatives, like ARPA-H, are transitioning grant writing from a solo experience to one requiring strategic planning from a group. Industry support in research is also increasing, as more government agencies are including industry participation in their proposals. Some examples of this are the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) and Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) programs, and the US Economic Development Association’s (EDA) Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs). Companies like Amazon are increasingly offering research awards (Amazon Research Awards) to test solutions. Industry understands the value academic research brings and is increasingly interested in research collaborations rather than developing an internal R&D arm.
By connecting with colleagues at other universities through our Proposal Development PMG, members are able to stay abreast of how other institutions are negotiating these new developments as they arise. Our PMG has active members from all over the US, in the medical, engineering, social science, and humanities fields. Some members are in leadership roles within their institutions working in large RD offices, while on the other extreme, we have colleagues who are independent consultants who work from home. We both joined the PMG for different reasons: Sonya was working within an academic unit as the sole grant writer and wanted to grow her RD professional network; whereas Lindsay joined the PMG as a Foundation Relations professional with the goal of cultivating connections and gaining a comprehensive understanding of the research enterprise. Whatever your office size or job classification, if you have an interest in discussing proposal development best practices and challenges, we invite you to join us for an informal conversation the first Tuesday of every month at 1 pm ET. See this site within WisdomShare for more information, or direct any questions by emailing the Mentoring Committee at mentorprogram@nordp.org.
Kayla Dryden • Research Development Officer for Arts and Humanities • The University of Texas at Austin
Kayla Dryden is the first-ever Research Development Officer for Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Austin. In this role, she provides major proposal development support for faculty, facilitates skill-building and team research, and leads arts and humanities strategy in the central Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Endeavors
Kayla holds an MA in Museum Studies from NYU and as an undergraduate, studied English and Art History at Cornell University. Within NORDP, she is a member-at-large of the Creative Arts, Social Science, and Humanities affinity group and the co-chair of the Membership Services Committee.
As an undergrad, Kayla wanted to be an arts journalist or critic, however, after a couple of lackluster media internships, she realized that wasn’t her path. A summer job working at the university art museum led her to a career at the intersection of arts management and philanthropy. Before joining UT Austin in 2021, she spent 15 years both in-house and as a consultant to arts and cultural organizations and artists, specializing in grants, communications, and project management. She has worked at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), The Museum of Modern Art (New York City), and other museums, galleries, and grant-makers in the U.S. and in Asia.
During a seven-year tenure with MoMA, she led the grants portfolio and administered the internal Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art together with leadership at the museum and at the Annenberg Foundation. The cutting-edge projects supported by this fund were deemed unlikey to receive external funding, often pushing the boundaries of what was possible to present in a public institutional space. Kayla credits this experience with honing her ability to break any concieveable proposal down to component parts for review, and to steward a diverse group of stakeholders to “get to yes.”
All these experiences led her to her first “capital R” Research Development position at UT Austin and a niche that suits her skills and abilities both as a writer and administrator and as a people person. In her current role, she works to earn trust from arts and humanities faculty members who may have had a range of experiences with the research enterprise. She is inspired by the opportunity to advocate for these faculty, and by the importance and impact of their work.
Here are some questions from the Career story that went unanswered:
Q. How big is your office? How many RD staff members work with you in support of the faculty?
A: I sit in UT Austin’s central Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Endeavors. Our Research Development team has about 20 staff members, including program staff for our three grand challenges, an operations and events team, limited submissions and competitive intelligence specialists, research administrators, and more. I’m part of a cohort of three other Research Development Officers, including our Deputy VP for Research and fearless leader, Jennifer Lyon Gardner.
Q: What should other universities do to better support arts & humanities faculty in research funding?
A: If you are serious about fostering a culture of arts and humanities research, there must be an investment in infrastructure like post-award support at the local level. Central offices should consider if their offerings truly serve all disciplines, and think about their terminology. Do you really need to ask for a biosketch when any short bio will do, or use the term team science when you mean team research? Not all art and humanities scholars are going to be interested in pursuing external funding. Find those that are already doing this work (perhaps outside of the university), those who want to do this work, and those who are curious about it.
Q: Are there other staff members (not in the central office) who support these faculty with research development? How do you coordinate with them?
A: Local support for arts and humanities research varies widely across UT Austin’s 19 colleges and schools. I work very closely with college-level research administrators, associate deans of research, and staff in units like our Humanities Institute, as well as foundation relations and development. Some of these colleagues serve formally or informally as research development specialists in their college, and in other cases I am more hands-on. My role entails a large amount of internal coordination and relationship-building! However, it’s been so helpful to have a birds-eye view of what’s happening across campus: I can connect RAs who are supporting PIs on the same opportunity, introduce potential collaborators, or refer folks to resources available in another college.
Kayla would love to answer any questions you have for her, so please feel free to email her at kayla.dryden@austin.utexas.edu
Sarah Robertson is the Director of Sponsored Research at Bryn Mawr College. In this Primary Undergrad Institution (PUI) environment, she strategizes to enhance sponsored research programs, through grant trainings, editing, internal competitions, and creating networks for collaborative efforts in research, as well as managing compliance and financial issues related to research.
Dr. Robertson is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College where she completed her AB before earning her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Pennsylvania studying intracellular trafficking. She is delighted to have returned to her alma mater where she is helping the faculty members develop their ideas, think like a reviewer and get funded; as this type of work is also essential to her growth and sanity!
After almost a decade at grant funding foundations, Dr. Robertson returned to academia to start her research development career after she successfully convinced the University of the Sciences that they are in urgent need of a Research Development position to assist the faculty members more their research to the next stage. She replaced their first director, only 6 weeks before the uniform guidance went live. UG implementation was successful thanks to self-taught skills and great mentorship.
Dr. Robertson brings an extensive professional background in grants, both in grant administration and research development, to her role at Bryn Mawr and her volunteer roles. She has extensive experience in thinking like a funder and reviewer. This is due to her roles with oversight of the Susan G. Komen® research grant portfolio, educational programs, and the community health grant portfolio. In addition, at the American Association for Cancer Research, she worked closely with some of the leading experts in cancer research planning educational events, writing grants, and participating in the Foundation’s grant application review. She has also served as a reviewer for the NSF, NIH, and CUR.
The exposure to different areas of research, bringing in new ideas, and wearing different hats inspires her to go to work every day as she likes being on the ground, and she firmly believes that the “dreaming stage changes the world”. Her experience in customer service from an early age while working at her mother’s business has helped her hone her outgoing, relationship building skills despite being an introvert that is happy alone. She believes there are no dumb questions no matter what stage of life one is in. In her experiences, even reviewers can get nervous and have doubts, so faculty members are no different, and our jobs as RD professionals is to make them successful by not judging, but helping and supporting. She also firmly believes that women should be ready to take risk and apply for jobs even if they don’t qualify for 100% of the job description, as one should not be defined by bullet points.
Being a member of NORDP since 2015, Dr. Robertson has benefited from its resources ever since. She has served as a member of the Program Committee in 2019, served as a member of the Nomination Committee from 2020-2023, and has been active in the Mid-Atlantic Region executive committee since 2020. Given her role at a PUI, she joined the PUI Affinity Group in its first year and is delighted to serve as its Co-Chair this year. Her collaboration with the others in the PUI Affinity Group leadership led to the development of a funded NSF GRANTED conference grant.
Dr. Robertson’s tips for new RD members are to network, learn from others, utilize NORDP’s mentoring program, and use their resources as NORDP site has a wealth of resources.
Dr. Robertson loves working at Bryn Mawr College and hopes to retire here. We wish Dr. Robertson all the best in her role that her diversity, experiences, and passion for the RD profession brings her.
Dr. Roberston would love to answer any questions you have for her, so please feel free to email her at serobertso@brynmawr.edu.
Collaboratively written by: Mentoring Committee Marketing and Communication (McMc) Communication subcommittee (Jessica Brassard, Vess Vassileva-Clarke, Brooke Gowl, Elizabeth Lathrop)
Mentoring Dyads and Mentoring Cohorts are paired in July and wrap up in June every year. That said, we are somewhere in the middle of the NORDP mentoring year. The “middle” is always a great time to touch base and check in with your mentoring groups and ask how things are going.
The NORDP Mentoring Roadmap is a useful tool to reflect on what you can focus on during this time. The Roadmap can be found on the NORDP WisdomShare Mentoring platform under Learning. (NOTE: the links in this blog post will forward you to WisdomShare where you will need to have an account.)
The Roadmap highlights using the MESHH Network and the Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP) as guides.
The MESHH (Mentorship Expertise Support and Helping Hands) Network encourages us to identify the personal, community, and professional social capital in our lives. The people we name in the MESHH Network are the individuals who can help us reach our goals. A fillable MESHH form can be downloaded here or in the WisdomShare library here for participants to develop their professional network mentors.
REFINE: Month 3-6 (excerpted from the NORDP Mentoring Relationship Roadmap)
Review My MESHH Network in-depth.
Think of types of people or position titles as appropriate.
Use of My MESHH Network can inspire a close(r) look at one’s professional, community and personal social capital and how that capital can be better exercised to meet one’s professional needs and goals.
The webinar (slides and video) and FAQ provide additional guidance.
The Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP) encourages reflection on strengths, challenges, setting SMART goals, and communication. If you have already used the IPDP this year, now is a great time to revisit and set some next steps for your growth. If you have not used the IPDP yet, now is a great time to open it up and see what you might focus on in the next few months. A fillable IPDP form can be downloaded here or in the WisdomShare library here for participants to develop their professional network mentors.
IMPLEMENT: Month 6-9 (excerpted from the NORDP Mentoring Relationship Roadmap)
Review the IPDP in-depth.
Use of the IPDP can strengthen overall outcomes by focusing efforts for both mentor and mentee.
The IPDP is excellent for action plan development and for structuring substantive future meetings.
The webinar (slides and video) and FAQ provide additional guidance.
Mark your calendars! There is a McHuddle coming up (Wednesday, February 7 at 1pm Eastern). McHuddles are informal gatherings hosted by the NORDP Mentoring Committee facilitators, and give our members an opportunity to reflect, share ideas, ask questions, and collectively learn from other mentees/mentors in breakout sessions.
Contributors: Mentor Training Team Paula Carney, Loyola University Chicago and Kristen Boman, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Mentor Training for Research Development Professionals – Registration forJanuary/February 2024 Workshop (UPDATE: Registration is closed and there is a waitlist)
Are you a mentor? A mentee? Do you find yourself formally or informally mentoring staff or faculty? Are you ready to explore mentoring competencies that can be utilized across the work of research development (RD)? This interactive workshop series covers the 9-module Entering Mentoring curriculum, initially developed for mentoring researchers and tailored for RD professionals.
“EXCELLENT training! The ideas presented are very applicable both to mentoring both within the research development profession and elsewhere in the research enterprise — the things I have learned and practiced in this course are incredibly valuable to me as I provide mentoring to faculty, particularly early stage investigators and junior faculty, in the area of grantsmanship.”
A recent workshop participant
Using evidence-based strategies, participants will build upon competencies crucial to the success of the mentoring relationship and expand mentor training across the research enterprise. Participants who complete the entire curriculum will receive a certificate of completion. The curriculum results from an association between the NORDP Mentoring committee and the University of Wisconsin Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) in collaboration with the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), organizations involved in developing and validating the original curriculum. RD professionals at all levels of mentoring will explore how mentoring (shown to improve career outcomes, impact employee engagement and retention, and lead to more inclusive work environments) can benefit mentors and mentees in RD.
Workshops will be presented and facilitated by the NORDP Mentoring Committee; many are certified CIMER Trained Facilitators.
Webinar Schedule:
Two (1.5-hour) sessions each week for 5 weeks (every Tuesday and Thursday) January 30 – February 29, 2024 2–3:30 pm EST/11 am–12:30 pm PST
If this workshop doesn’t fit in your schedule, share your scheduling preferences to help us plan for future Mentor Training by completing a survey of your preferences.
NORDP News 