Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

Convened October 28–29, 2024

Mentorship, Well-Being, and Professional Development in Times of Societal Change and Institutional Disruptions
Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

INTRODUCTION

Critical supports and resources within the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) research ecosystem are shifting in reaction to rapid changes in institutional, regional, and national environments. National and global events, cultural shifts, and legal changes can have a dramatic and profound influence on the well-being, professional development, and interpersonal and mentoring relationships of graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty.

Building upon conversations held during two workshops convened November 1 and 2, 2023, and April 30, 2024, by the Roundtable on Mentorship, Well-being, and Professional Development, this third public workshop aimed to explore how individuals, departments and offices, and institutions are addressing these common challenges. The Morgridge Institute of Research in Madison, WI, hosted the workshop—a hybrid in-person and online event held October 28 and 29, 2024—with in-person satellite locations at the Morehouse School of Medicine; University of North Texas; University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Maryland. The majority of the attendees came from academia.

This final workshop ties to the Roundtable’s common framing of the relationship between mentoring, well-being, and professional development as intersecting circles. The larger context of higher education institutions and the unique norms, cultures, and ways of being in STEMM further inform how to think simultaneously about mentorship, well-being, and professional development. However, those dynamics are nested in historical, political, and social contexts, along with global political and social contexts that shape thinking on university campuses.

Many of the programs and interventions discussed show promise in more effectively supporting students; however, the structural changes needed to fully institutionalize these and similar programs were less robustly explored. To provide further context for this workshop, planning committee member Sana Nasim (Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School), defined disruption as when internal and external forces and pressures lead to change of the status quo. Disruption, she added, can bring challenges and also create new opportunities that can lead to new beginnings, both good and bad.

Welcome and Roundtable Goals

In the workshop’s opening remarks, Laura Lunsford (Campbell University), workshop co-chair, reviewed the workshop’s three goals:

1. Present an overview of the components critical to maintain and embed in interventions aimed at simultaneously addressing mentorship, well-being, and professional development.
2. Discuss how individuals, departments and offices, and institutions can adapt and adopt interventions that support the well-being and professional development of all members of the STEMM research ecosystem.
3. Explore how recent and proposed changes in policies and legislation may have altered overall well-being, professional development opportunities, and engagement of learners and early career STEMM professionals in the STEMM research ecosystem.

Paul Ahlquist (Morgridge Institute for Research) said mentorship, well-being, and professional development are crucial for the success of the nation’s STEMM trainees as they navigate a rapidly changing environment of diverse research practices and possibilities, societal goals and viewpoints, and economic realities. These same factors are also essential for U.S. colleges and universities, the nation’s STEMM agenda, and the crucial contributions science and technology make to the economy, public well-being, and national and international security. Addressing these issues is crucial for the United States to continue attracting the best and the brightest to serve the research needs of the nation and the world.

Roundtable co-chair Kimberly Griffin (University of Maryland) said the Roundtable’s first workshop addressed the gap between what is known and what is being done to activate this knowledge. One promising lever discussed at that workshop for turning knowledge into practice would be to engage leaders to achieve change at a structural and system level to support mentoring, well-being, and professional development simultaneously. The second workshop assembled a national network of leaders to begin a conversation about what needed to change at a structural and systemic level to support mentoring, well-being, and professional development simultaneously.

For this third workshop, the Roundtable sought to explore how things happening beyond the campus and beyond STEMM have implications for whether it is possible to engage in mentoring relationships, whether people feel well, and what they are considering regarding their professional development and career next steps. External factors that ultimately inform what is happening on U.S. campuses include the government and policy context and the sociohistorical context of the nation.

LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVES DURING DISRUPTION: A CONVERSATION

The workshop’s first session featured a conversation between Griffin and Sean Decatur (American Museum of National History). Decatur said his interest in engaging in close mentorship with students grew out of his interactions with faculty members in the chemistry department at Swarthmore University and the mentoring he received from them. This experience led him to realize that mentors can significantly affect students’ lives and the importance of arranging different mentoring experiences to guide them.

Decatur secured his first faculty position at Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college that infused mentoring into all the work faculty did with students. Later, as he assumed more administrative duties—eventually becoming president of Kenyon College—he came to appreciate how important a student’s experience outside the classroom was to their success and the importance of taking a holistic view of what was affecting students.

In that context, Griffin asked Decatur to discuss some of the social changes and institutional disruptions he had to navigate as an institutional leader. The most obvious one, Decatur replied, was the COVID-19 pandemic and how it suddenly disrupted every part of the student and faculty experience and every operation on his campus. The drive to adjust quickly to deal with the wide-spread disruption led to several successful changes, such as no longer expecting people to work when they are sick and having adequate support for when a person is ill. However, what got short-circuited were the larger conversations, buy-in, and co-creation that typically occur in academia before acting on a matter. When combined with the need to work remotely during the pandemic and an external disinformation campaign targeting higher education institutions, many academic communities and institutions fractured. “It undermined a sense of trust between

faculty, administration, and students that has been hard for institutions to recover from,” said Decatur.

Simultaneously, students, faculty, and staff were experiencing the trauma of the pandemic itself, the fear that permeated the nation in March and April of 2020 and not knowing where the health threat was and what it meant for friends and family. “This was a huge thing we were trying to navigate and that our students were navigating as well,” Decatur said, “but we could not give them the same support.” He was particularly concerned about the students and contingent faculty and staff who were already on the margins, who were already at risk of food and housing insecurity, had inadequate access to technology, and were concerned about their own access to health care.

When Griffin asked if he was observing whether some of the changes and disruptions could affect higher education in general and science specifically, Decatur said the intentional and rapid circulation of disinformation and its effectiveness in undermining trust and confidence in institutions is troubling. His concern is the increasing difficulty in distinguishing between trustful information, information that is a random person’s opinion on social media, and information intentionally seeded to lead people to accept false hypotheses or constructions. The developments around artificial intelligence and its effect on public discourse also concerns him.

Taking an optimistic view, Decatur said these broader external disruptions come in cycles. As an example, he noted a piece in 1964 in the journal Daedalus written by a collection of university presidents and administrators in which a group of faculty talked about how favorable the situation was for American universities. Six years later, almost the same group of writers wrote a second piece about all the hardships American universities were facing. “I often reflect that we have gone through these cycles before where there are going to be times where I think things are just looking really optimistic for both science and higher education but then external forces kind of go in the other direction, and then we recover,” said Decatur.

Decatur said higher education may be falling short in addressing discrepancies and threats to academic freedom and creating more inclusive campus environments, both of which affect teaching and the practice of science. There are, however, individual campuses, departments, and faculty that continue to commit to this work despite the backlash regarding efforts around diversity and equity. That there are places and people stepping up to the challenge and pushing back gives him some confidence that academia and science will swing through this part of the cycle eventually.

Decatur also believes in academic leadership nurturing today’s students’ positive disruptions and creating space for ideas to develop, incubate, and move ahead. Decatur said one lesson from the pandemic is how important and interconnected mentorship, well-being, and professional development are and how they should be central to the work of academia. “Finding ways that we can both be a part of that as mentors for those who are seeking that mentoring and have institutions that create that broader culture of mentoring that centers a sense of well-being is important,” he said.

DISRUPTION BUFFERS: STUDENT RESILIENCE AND POWER SKILLS

In the second session, workshop co-chair Jabril Johnson (Morehouse School of Medicine) engaged in a fireside chat with Ofelia Olivero (National Institutes of Health, NIH) about disruption buffers, student resilience, and power skills. Olivero, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute for 30 years, transitioned at NIH to work on training and education because she reached a point where she wanted to train and mentor people. “It was clear to me there was a subset of trainees that were not receiving the same attention and resources as others, and they were not that successful,” she said. “I wanted to help correct that imbalance by generating programs and mentoring minorities.”

One such program, the Diversity Career Development Program (DCDP), was a 10-month leadership program in which a cohort of 10 to 15 postdoctoral scholars and trainees from underrepresented backgrounds met twice monthly for various activities such as workshops. Each participant shared a dedicated, certified professional coach, but was required to secure their own individual mentor. The most important feature of the program, she explained, was showing the trainees that somebody cared

about them and that they had a community—their coach, mentor, principal investigator (PI), and Olivero—supporting them.

Although they received no formal training, one activity Olivero conducted with mentors was to have them think about why they agreed to be a mentor, a concept she calls the mentor within, rather than giving them a list of qualities good mentors have. The reasons are unique to every mentor, as are how a mentor-mentee relationship develops and works. “[Mentoring] is not a check-the-box effort,” said Olivero. “It is an effort implemented because the need is genuine, people care and they want to do it, and they believe in the trainees and in the training and in the mentoring. If you start with those parameters, then whatever classes, workshops, and activities you do, they are going to come together to deliver an effective and successful program.” Olivero said that, unlike the PIs, the mentors could be external to NIH and received credit for supervisory hours or letters for their participation.

Johnson, an early program trainee, said participating in DCDP was when he learned about the importance of communicating and dealing effectively with the intangibles his future students would face. Olivero said NIH assumes trainees will be exposed to the best science possible but pays little attention to the interpersonal skills that are rarely considered part of a scientist’s pedigree. In fact, many NIH PIs were initially resistant to their trainees participating in the program because it took them out of the laboratory for a few hours a month. Soon, however, the PIs realized these interventions mattered, that they had a positive effect on trainees, their productivity, and the lab environment. PIs bought into the program because they saw increased productivity, engagement, creativity, and collegiality among program participants toward their lab mates. In fact, PIs were soon promoting the program to their trainees, which is how Johnson came to enroll in DCDP. “As a trainee, I know what the program did for me and my career trajectory,” said Johnson, who credited the soft skills or power skills, he learned in the program as particularly important. Olivero agreed those power skills are critical to develop in the STEMM ecosystem.

Olivero said emotional intelligence is the most important power skill for a graduate student or postdoc to build. Emotional intelligence requires knowing oneself, how to read a room and others, and adapting. “Being in tune with your emotions will help you understand others,” she said. Knowing oneself and understanding one’s intentions, as she noted earlier, is also key to being a good mentor. So, to, is actively listening, absorbing what the mentee is saying, and establishing trust. “Once you establish trust with your mentee, conversation flows,” she explained.

Olivero said asking where to start is the critical first step because it shows the motivation needed to succeed. Johnson suggested PIs should look for programs that enhance power skills in postdocs or professional students and then implement some of their strategies. Acquiring the DCDP curriculum and leveraging aspects of that program would be one example to enhance the STEMM ecosystem. Olivero recommended that institutions start small with efforts that do not cost money, like PIs and other faculty mentors meeting weekly for an hour with perhaps five students at different stages of their training (e.g., postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates) to create a culture of mentoring and power skills. Another important step is to find and cultivate program champions that can help get buy-in by promoting the program with their colleagues by talking about their experiences. Above all, make nothing mandatory because that backfires.

Olivero also recommended looking at what the Myerhoff program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has done. If acquiring an existing curriculum is too difficult, Johnson suggested contacting people who have gone through this type of program and see how they could act as a consultant.

LEVERAGING THE SCIENCE OF WELL-BEING

Following the fireside chat, the next presentation focused on positive emotions as another possible well-being buffer in times of change. Positive emotions, said Barbara Fredrickson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) are fleeting, lasting seconds to minutes, and they are embodied in that they are both mind and body experiences. Positive emotions are variable, with joy and amusement being high energy emotions, awe and hope

being more cognitive, serenity a quieter emotion, and gratitude and love more social. Bad emotions, she said, are stronger than good emotions, which is relevant to mentoring, where bad emotions can leave a person less likely to see good things and more likely to latch onto bad things.

Well-being, said Fredrickson, is more than experiencing positive emotions. When people feel uplifted with positive emotions, they are more likely to experience things as meaningful and psychologically rich. “Positive emotions are springboards to these other forms of the good life,” she said, stressing that she is talking about authentically and contextually appropriate positive emotions, not false projections of happiness associated with the concept of positive psychology. In fact, she added, humans are exquisite sincerity detectors and can easily spot when someone displays insincere positive emotions.

Though fleeting, positive emotions change how the human brain works, making it more likely a person can take in a variety of perceptions, connect the dots, and be more creative when they experience positive emotions more frequently, Fredrickson explained.

In addition, the more a person experiences positive emotions, the more likely they are to experience them going forward. For example, people who build their resilience are more likely to avoid getting stuck in a rut of negativity when facing a hurdle. Instead, they rebound and are more likely to experience positive emotions soon after dealing with that difficulty. Similarly, a friendship formed through experiences of shared positive emotion can later become a source of more positive emotions. “There is an upward spiral dynamic that is important about positive emotions, with the broadened mindsets and built resources all supporting one another,” said Fredrickson.

Positive emotions collaboratively experienced with other people function as a super nutrient, she explained, a phenomenon she calls positivity resonance because the positivity of one person resonates between people. She defined positivity resonance as an interpersonally situated collective experience marked by a momentary increase in three aspects of emotion:

1. The subjective aspect, where the experiential aspect of emotions shows up as co-experienced positive affect, an uplifted, pleasant state that both people feel.
2. Cross-person synchrony and caring, nonverbal behaviors, where two people are connected with and focused on one another.
3. Cross-person synchrony in biological responses. Some of the synchrony characteristics of positivity resonance are not visible but are biological responses. Autonomic nervous activity is more likely to be in sync during a shared positive experience rather than a negative experience.

Smiling at a baby is the cleanest example of positivity resonance, said Fredrickson. It represents connecting with a pre-verbal human with great attunement because if the adult comes on too strongly, the baby will cry rather than smile. Another example of positivity resonance is laughing or celebrating success with a friend or colleague. Expressing compassion can trigger positivity resonance because there is a thread of shared positivity when one person supports another. The positive emotions two people co-experience may not be identical, but there is a warmth, mutual engagement, and shared positivity.

Fredrickson considers moments of co-experienced positive emotions to be the smallest element of love. This is not necessarily romantic or familial love, she said, but the kind of care and warmth one could have in a mentee-mentor relationship or with collaborators and coworkers. Over time, these moments build a sense of chemistry or connection, social bonds, mutual commitment, loyalty, and trust, all important to a successful mentoring relationship.

In experiments in which she and her collaborators measured positivity resonance, Fredrickson found strong correlations with well-being and flourishing mental health and lower levels of depression, loneliness, and self-reported illness symptoms. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were having fewer face-to-face social interactions, the ones they did have were associated with flourishing mental health, resilience, and find-

ing meaning in life and fewer aspects of negative mental health, such a depression, anxiety, and stress.

Another study of long-term married couples found that couples who had above average levels of positivity resonance during a 15-minute conversation about an area of conflict in their marriage experienced a less steep increase in chronic illness symptoms over a 13-year period. In fact, said Fredrickson, high positivity resonance during that conversation predicted longevity over a 30-year period independent of other longevity predictors such as demographics and marriage satisfaction.

From her research, Fredrickson concludes that positive resonance is a health behavior—one all humans need to live stronger and be healthy. She noted the concept of positivity resonance applies beyond close relationships. While not as intense between acquaintances or work colleagues, it correlates just as much with a sense of belonging and positive mental health. Her studies have shown that teaching people about positivity resonance and having them try to have more of it in their daily lives makes them kinder, gentler, and more oriented toward the feelings of others. During the pandemic, that led people to be more likely to wash their hands, wear a mask, and have a more favorable view of vaccination. “Prosocial tendencies that emerge from positivity resonance do not just sit there,” said Fredrickson. “They affect people’s behaviors and affect public health.”

Her research has shown that positivity resonance makes people more likely to listen to someone with a viewpoint different from theirs. However, it is not something that can be forced in oneself or in others. Conducive conditions to developing positive resonance include real-time sensory connection, whether face-to-face or via shared voice or video; trust, empathy, high-quality listening, and reduced inequality.

One way to increase positivity resonance is to ask when, where, and how one can prioritize connection. “If I am meeting with a mentee, I will ask how their weekend was rather than just diving into work,” she said as an example. Unstructured time—a PI taking their research group to lunch, for example—is a big contributor to the ability to experience positive emotions collaboratively. “It communicates to people that we care about their whole selves and not just their work selves and offers the chance for these authentic, contextually appropriate positive emotions to emerge,” said Fredrickson.

Fredrickson commented on the role identity can play in the ability to experience positivity resonance. Identities come into play as people move through situations where they anticipate more or less discrimination and perceive the possibility of discrimination as they enter into conversations. Frederickson explained the importance of this relational communication in its capacity to increase positivity resonance. “That gives me hope that once people have experience in a particular context or with a particular mentor, they will realize it is a safe situation, that this person has my best interest at heart, so they can leave their anticipated discrimination at the door,” she said.

It is difficult to foster positive relationships when working remotely is more common, Fredrickson said, even though real-time sensory connection is conducive to positivity resonance. For her, shared voice can sometimes work better than shared video because people often listen better without being on camera. However, she would also try to engage in in-person activities given that many relationships can sustain via a virtual connection if there is also plenty of in-person interaction.

REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS

To end the first day, workshop participants spent 25 minutes in small groups discussing what they had heard so far. In summarizing those group discussions, Lunsford said participants voiced concerns that U.S. culture is being transactionalized, which is severely eroding the sense of community essential to mentorship, well-being, and professional development. She noted that although this is a national issue requiring institutional change, much of what she heard during the day was about small wins. Questions that various participant groups raised included how mentees can deal with power dynamics and gain agency in interactions with their own lab colleagues; what tools can be used by both mentors and mentees to gain skills, how to navigate different identities when campuses are banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; and how to build trust in low-trust environments.

Regarding new ideas they heard, workshop participants noted that emotional intelligence was the most important power skill, that there is scientific evidence on what produces positive relationships, that context and positive compassion are important, and that positivity resonance plays a critical role in well-being. Participants wondered if interest in developing power skills would be a useful metric for admissions and if it was possible to leverage the mentoring process to create more positive emotions. Another person highlighted that buy-in comes from starting small, and participants felt that incorporating mindful moments into existing programs could work. They also suggested reminding people to connect with one another in unstructured ways.

Participants wanted to hear more about how to exercise positivity resonance in fraught environments, how the day’s topics are grounded in modes of mentorship, compassion as a form of positivity resonance, how to build power skills, navigating different identities in the context of safety and support, how to make mental health and well-being more of an integral part of engineering programs and faculty and staff training, and how these concepts allow for long-term mentoring relationships to thrive in STEMM. They also wanted more examples of how to do this work, how mentors can model a healthy work-life balance, and how to include opportunities to bring more intentionality to a mentor’s work with their mentees.

DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING RESILIENT PROGRAMS THROUGH DISRUPTIONS

While societal tension was a common thread, the presentations and discussions during the first day primarily focused on the importance of developing relationships and the level of trust that is essential to a more thriving STEMM research ecosystem. David Asai (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, HHMI, retired) commented that the nation is moving toward a culture based on exclusion rather than inclusion, with the U.S. Supreme Court taking steps to limit affirmative action in higher education admissions last year and about half of the states either enacting or considering policies and legislation to block certain diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. To move forward in what is a disruptive and sometimes paralyzing time, Asai said it is important to invest in people and the relationships they build with one another and to equip students, instructors, PIs, and administrators with skills to enable them to push forward amidst backlash and uncertainty. Science education should not be satisfied with approaches that aim to fix the students and teach them to how navigate barriers in a system that is not designed by or for them. Instead, he believes it important to build capacity for inclusion, focusing on collective action, and ensuring people have time to reflect, learn, share, and reimagine the system.

Asai discussed the HHMI Gilliam Fellows program, which supported leadership in STEMM to advance equity and inclusion. Fellows shared their grant with their advisor, who was required to complete a year-long, online, culturally appropriate mentorship skills program. He noted that researchers who were not part of the program asked to take the course because they heard how good it was. The program emphasized professional development for both the fellow and mentor and made a difference in how they thought about themselves and their future in science.

HHMI’s Inclusive Excellence program aimed to increase an institution’s capacity for inclusion. This program established seven learning community clusters between the institutions that participated during the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ Each cluster focused on a particular challenge, such as making an institution’s introductory curriculum inclusive, measuring and rewarding inclusive teaching, or how to make going from a two-year to a four-year school inclusive. At the end of two years, each cluster developed one collaborative proposal, which HHMI funded. Instead of an annual report, each cluster developed a single reflection on what happened, what the cluster learned, what changed, and next steps. This process, said Asai, is not perfect, but it is a different approach to building capacity for inclusion, one that recognizes that the culture of STEMM is often about competition and that focuses instead on accountability to one another rather than the funder.

Asai said these programs are not an endpoint but one step in the never-ending process of building a more inclusive STEMM culture. Because progress will be slow,

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regularly documenting and reflecting on successes, however small, is important. A hallmark of HHMI’s programs is that they build communities that will work to increase inclusivity even if there are limits on speaking about diversity, equity, and inclusion on a college campus. Individuals can still figure out how to teach and run labs in a more equitable and inclusive way, said Asai.

INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND PROGRAMS TO ADVANCE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, MENTORING, AND WELL-BEING

The next panel gave faculty researchers and administrators at three different types of institutions the opportunity to discuss how they intentionally developed research and programs to address professional development, mentoring, and well-being during times of challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic led Walter Conwell (Morehouse School of Medicine, MSM) and his colleagues to rethink how they addressed long-standing, systemic issues related to workforce diversity, faculty development, and student training. They utilized virtual reality (VR) course simulations to provide standardized patient experiences for their medical students through taking sensitive patient sexual histories, specifically focused on fostering inclusion and belonging. These students interacted with avatars from different groups in different scenarios. Faculty members served as facilitators to help with critical reflection so that students could get the most out of the experience.

In partnership with CommonSpirit Health, MSM also established a 10-year, $115 million initiative to open five new regional medical school campuses across the nation and create upwards of 24 new residency and fellowship programs.² Although this is an incredible opportunity, it comes with its own challenges of faculty development and delivering scalable services to meet the needs at these newly established regional campuses. The medical students are rotating and training at MSM’s campus in Atlanta, GA, and then finishing their training in Chattanooga, TN; Seattle, WA; or Bakersfield, CA—the three new campuses established to date.

To address the challenge of how to expand and distribute MSM’s model for creating culturally humble and diverse providers at scale and across space and time, MSM developed a cultural humility learning journey. Conwell explained that cultural humility differs from cultural competence. Cultural competence focuses on a checklist of items one needs to know about certain groups, whereas cultural humility is about a journey predicated on lifelong learning and self-reflection, identifying and addressing power imbalances, developing mutually beneficial dynamics, and ensuring institutional accountability.

MSM, said Conwell, has used different pedagogical approaches and technologies, including virtual reality simulations and real-time coaching, to build the capacity of its faculty, residents, fellows, students, and staff, starting with knowledge and skill acquisition related to identity, power and privilege, fostering a speak-up environment, mitigating microaggressions, and more. MSM, has used other platforms, learning from Morehouse College and its pioneering metaversity³ to recreate the MSM campus virtually and enable students, residents, and faculty on remote campuses to engage with faculty in Atlanta in a real and tangible way, said Conwell.

He noted the response to the virtual reality system has been overwhelmingly positive from both students and faculty. It helps users develop effective skills, with one study showing that cortisol levels—a sign of stress—are lower when students learn these skills in a virtual environment compared to an in-person environment.⁴ Virtual reality simulation reduces risk and allows individuals to engage and learn in a less threatening and more psychologically safe environment. Restorative justice is another modality MSM is using to foster inclusion at its main campus and as a foundational piece of its new sites across the country. For example, as part of the initial foundational training for faculty and residents at its Santa Cruz, CA, location, MSM conducted restorative justice facilitator training that has already caused a culture shift toward a more inclusive and equitable environment.

Getting faculty buy-in for these approaches started with going to the communities surrounding the remote campuses and listening to the those with a stake in the process. MSM is exploring feedback to establish a

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matriculation pipeline from the community college in Bakersfield, CA, to an undergraduate institution within the Atlanta University Center Consortium (AUCC), then to their medical school, and back to serve as a doctor in the Bakersfield community. Conwell noted that while MSM focuses on Black communities in Georgia, the focus in the Pacific Northwest is on Indigenous and Asian and Pacific Islander communities, while in California the focus is on Latino and migrant communities.

The second panelist, Brian Burt (University of Wisconsin-Madison) said advising and mentoring are not simple, on-the-job learning activities. Rather, they require intentionality, strategy, planning, and resources. However, many faculty do not receive such training and implement advising and mentoring practices based on their own graduate school experiences, both negative and positive. As a result, students may receive status quo advising or worse.

To better understand how students characterize their advising, Burt and his collaborators enrolled 42 Black men in engineering graduate programs at large, predominantly White institutions. Burt stated, “Three themes emerged from the analysis: (1) strong advising practices are rooted in care and promote wholeness; (2) basic advising offers helpful assistance to students and partial care and wholeness; and (3) weak advising is empty of care and is harmful to students’ academic progress, psychological well-being, and wholeness.”⁵

From these results, Burt and his collaborators created a model of wholeness in graduate advising to illustrate examples of strong to weak advising and their associated benefits to students, from wholeness to empty care. Students with positive experiences said they felt cared for both inside and outside the classroom and laboratory, where there was an established vulnerability and rapport. Students with bad experiences noted their conversations focused on their advisor’s work and topics the advisor wanted to discuss, not theirs. Here, the students felt like machines who were not to bring their whole selves and their humanity to the research laboratory.

While many people have forgotten about the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the continued attacks on students of color, Burt said, the nation’s students have not. This means when advising with care, it is crucial to understand that students are whole beings with whole lives. “Just as what goes on in the nation and in the world impacts us as faculty or supervisors, so too does it impact the students we are advising, depending on our identities, our financial stability, and our positions of power,” said Burt. “To go on with scholarly business as usual may be felt and experienced by our advisees as us being clueless, cold, and uncaring.”

The third and final panelist, Shobhina Chheda (University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) said when her institution launched its new medical school curriculum in 2016, it included three advising and mentoring programs to develop professionalism and cultivate a lifelong learning attitude in its students. The first program is a longitudinal teacher/coach program built into the curriculum that allows students to develop a one-on-one relationship with faculty over the four years of medical education. This involves dedicating a third of a student’s learning time to small groups of eight students working with their teacher/coach. Much of this learning focuses on teaching clinical skills. It uses inquiry-based learning activities and exercises, allowing students to reflect on who they are and what their biases may be, and to share those in a safe environment with the community they have developed. Students meet twice a semester with their teacher/coach to self-assess their performance and develop specific learning goals for the next steps in the curriculum. Built into this program is intentional, ongoing, annual faculty development and FTE support for those who participate in the program.

A second career advising program assigns entering students to groups of 36 and pairs them with faculty leadership. This is where much of the wellness programming and activities occur in a co-curricular manner, explained Chheda. Students have one-on-one advising meetings with faculty to address academic challenges and help them consider specific residency options and career selection. The third program builds equitable access to mentorship and focuses on faculty, scholars, and students underrepresented in medicine. It is designed to create a cohesive and supportive community and includes evidence-based mentorship training for faculty.

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The institution modified their promotion guidelines to include participation in these programs.

Panel Discussion

One thing that distinguishes her institutions programs, said Chheda, is that they formalize efforts to create supportive communities among the students and faculty rather than leaving that to chance. These programs create safer spaces for peers to come together and enable a consistent group of peers to work together. Burt seconded the importance of creating these peer communities and helping students accept the support they can get from their peers. Chheda added that if an institution feels such programs are important, it needs to be intentional in its support for them.

Burt raised the importance of developing institutional hiring, tenure, and promotion policies and associated metrics that recognize the value of good mentoring and advising. He also said graduate STEMM education needs to integrate training in mentoring and advising rather than leaving this for post-degree employers. He called for such training to be included in the curriculum in a standardized manner, given that how faculty advise and interact with students has lasting, generational effects and that the formal curriculum can be viewed as the institution’s commitment to these efforts.

IN ACTION: LIGHTNING TALKS

During the workshop session, two panelists each provided short (5- to 7-minute) “lightning” talks. First, Afiya Fredericks (University of the District of Columbia) explained that a growth mindset is the belief that one can develop their intelligence and abilities, which are malleable, and that challenges present opportunities for growth. When operating from a growth mindset, an individual is likely to embrace challenges, be more learning oriented, view effort as something positive, and see others’ successes as inspiration. Growth accompanies achievement and produces higher levels of mental well-being.

In contrast, said Fredericks, a fixed mindset is the belief that one’s intelligence and abilities are fixed, traits with which one is born. When someone operates from a fixed mindset, they want to perform and demonstrate their fixed ability and intelligence. They are more likely to avoid challenges, view effort as something negative because it indicates some ability is lacking and see others’ success as a threat. When responding to challenges, criticisms, or mistakes, someone with a fixed mindset is more likely to engage in helpless behavior, get defensive, and see failures and mistakes as proof of one’s fixed abilities and intelligence. Stagnation, anxiety, and depression can result.

Fredericks said mindsets often occur in a continuum and are context specific, so the way someone responds to a challenge in one context may differ from another context. Resilience and the knowledge that one can recover and grow from a challenge or life’s downturns builds from a growth mindset. She added it is now clear that the mindsets of mentors and educators are as important as those of their students. A mentor operating from a growth mindset is more likely to implement practices and policies that support student growth and bolster their mentee’s growth mindset.

Research is now focusing on identifying ways of supporting educators and leaders in their efforts to cultivate cultures of growth where the norm is that intelligence and abilities are malleable and can be developed, Fredericks said. In a culture of growth, messages and practices focus on process and how to go from point A to B, not solely the end result. A culture of growth uses challenges, mistakes, and feedback in the service of learning and normalizes the experience of difficulty and challenge as part of the growth process. Ultimately, individuals in a culture of growth feel they belong and that their leaders genuinely care about their well-being and success.

The second presenter, Mica Estrada (University of California, San Francisco), defined kindness as acts that affirm the dignity of another person. In a recent study to assess the influence of kindness on well-being, stress, and self-identification with one’s institution,⁶ she and her collaborators found that people who receive kindness are more likely to identify with their institution. This identification mediates the relationship between receiving kindness and experiencing well-being. In another study, Estrada found that receiving micro affirmations helps cultivate a scientific identity, which increases an individual’s intention to persist in science.

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At a time when there is a great deal of chaos in the world that serves to increase allosteric load—events that cause stress and affect self-regulation—it is important to bolster and strengthen elements of kindness in the environment to provide the support people need to better regulate themselves in the face of so many stressors.

To advance kindness and belonging in academic institutions, Estrada said it is important to recognize that scholars are whole people. Excellent institutions support the whole person by tending to the heart through experiences of kindness and belonging, to the mind by promoting academic excellence, to the body by engaging a wide range of voices at all institutional levels, and to the spirit by encouraging creativity and finding meaning. To deal with the stress of today’s world, it is important to cultivate community, with research showing that a person in a group handles stress better than a person alone. She encourages her mentees to create an ecosystem map of people who support them and convey kindness and belonging, whether serving in a professional capacity, providing an intellectual community, acting as sponsors, supporting their well-being, sharing their values, or in other ways. From her work, Estrada proposed that people can experience things that cause stress, such as macro or micro aggressions, but they also have opportunities for affirming each other.

CREATING AND SUSTAINING COMMUNITY DURING SOCIETAL DISRUPTION

Jeremy Waisome (University of Florida) moderated a discussion with Wesley Marner (Morgridge Institute for Research) and Lunsford about strategies they use to foster community within their research groups. Lunsford said an important thing she does is prepare students to think about their “must haves” and “cannot stands” before attending their first group meeting. They are asked to bring those responses to share and discuss during the meeting. This helps to create an environment where they are expected to contribute and provide feedback. She also starts every lab meeting with each member citing one good thing that happened that week and provides a “no-judgment hat” so that anyone can ask a question without feeling stupid. These activities build sustainable communities, she said. Some groups engage in activities outside of the lab to build community, but what is most important is creating a welcoming and supportive environment, which can help create resilience.

Marner, who runs professional and career development programs, said one of his tasks is to build community among the graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who come from different research groups, each with its own environment. The goal is to ensure that no matter what they experience in their research group, they have a community of peers and staff with whom they can interact, have positive experiences, and build positivity resonance. Waisome said she has taken several trainings on how to cultivate safe spaces, be an ally, and create supportive and sustaining communities. Aside from engaging in professional development activities, she recommended faculty share personal experiences with their students so they understand that faculty are humans, too.

When asked how to navigate the tension between the scholarly independence the system rewards and data showing that interdependence and community are the keys to thriving, Lunsford said she comes at mentorship from a talent development framework. This framework does not exclude community but recognizes how one can contribute as an individual. Marner said it is important to ensure that the emphasis on individual contribution fosters a cooperative environment, not a zero-sum competitive one, with institutional milieu and senior faculty behavior playing a key role in creating the right environment. Lunsford agreed, adding that not all competition is bad, because it can push people to develop new ideas.

A workshop participant asked how faculty, particularly women, can balance professionalism and personal life when sharing failures and foibles with others. Waisome said that is an individual decision based on what a person feels comfortable sharing. It is important to remember, though, that everyone fails. Acknowledging failure is okay, but including how one overcame the situation will help avoid any negative judgments. Lunsford added that women faculty need to learn to say no and “toot their own horn” more.

Regarding where they send students for support, Marner said he sends students to campus resources, such as mental health resources. If the student needs conflict resolution, he sends them to their department office. For the Institute’s postdocs, employee assistance programs

are a good resource. The important thing is for people to know these resources exist before they need them, so he works with faculty—usually the first point of contact—to make them aware of the available resources. At a university, said Lunsford, offices of faculty affairs and the provost’s office can contribute to making faculty aware of available resources. Waisome added that losing resources such as diversity, equity, and inclusion offices that support individuals based on their identities makes addressing challenges more difficult for students.

There was a short discussion on the need for institutions to better account for mentoring in faculty hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions, with the three panel members agreeing that something needs to be done. Marner said those are important time points, but institutions should emphasize measuring mentoring quality regularly and having systems in place to reward people for improving their practice, helping others, and building communities. Lunsford and Marner both noted it is unreasonable to expect one person to provide all the support a student or postdoc might need. “You need to build a whole cabinet of mentors and others who can help you go in the direction that you want to go,” said Marner.

To find the supportive environment a new student needs to thrive, Marner tells graduate students to observe the lab to see if it has a culture of positive mentorship, to talk to other students and scientists in the lab, talk to the PI to see how they communicate, and ask them what their philosophy is around mentoring. He also encourages faculty and staff not to be shy about talking about their mentorship practices.

LEARNING DURING DISRUPTION: STUDENT AND POSTDOC REFLECTIONS

Sarah Dann (University of Texas Medical Branch) said her institution has a chief well-being officer who creates curriculum for students, faculty, and staff. For example, she recently completed a 20-month faculty and scholars healing program focused on well-being centered leadership and changing the culture of science to be more supportive. The institution also developed an online behavioral skills training program to enable faculty to address known issues in team science. This program is available free for anyone to use.⁷

Dann recounted how the research community and professional organizations in the Houston-Galveston area banded together to help their colleagues, students, and postdocs in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Ike. She noted how pulling together created those positive emotions and emotional connections that previous speakers had discussed.

Jay Cunningham (University of Washington) said a major challenge for his institution beginning in 2023 was trying to manage student and faculty concerns with the unrest occurring both on campus and in the surrounding community. To address these concerns, the administration began holding monthly dialogue sessions, with each dedicated to a specific topic, such as the Israel-Hamas war. For students specifically, Cunningham introduced the sustained dialogue initiative run by the Sustained Dialogue Institute, a nonprofit organization specializing in promoting campus dialogue around social change. These efforts established psychologically safe spaces where people could voice their opinions while respecting those of others with whom they disagreed.

Cunningham said mentors should recognize that their mentees come with life experiences and concerns that may differ from their own. Acknowledging that to one’s mentees is an important step for building trust. It is important for mentors to engage in conversations that can help them understand where their mentees are coming from and what their concerns and issues are, and how mentors can best be a resource for their mentees.

REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS

Lunsford concluded the workshop by summarizing attendees’ responses to a series of questions. Regarding something new they heard, the attendees mentioned positive resonance, that relationships have generational effects, and that kindness and respect matter when talking about belonging. Attendees wanted to hear more about the metrics of accountability regarding mentoring, how to balance the desire for accommodations and flexibility with mentorship, disruptions, and well-being, and how to promote a culture of transparency.

Regarding next steps, attendees mentioned creating awards for mentoring, embracing and leading change on their campus, seeking research mentorship training, and establishing a shared mission related to mentoring and

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well-being with input from the entire academic community. Lunsford noted the need to create more infrastructure to sustainably support mentorship in a manner that intersects with well-being and professional development in the face of disruptions.

DISCLAIMER This Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was prepared by Joe Alper and Melissa E. Wynn as a factual summary of what occurred at the meeting. The statements made are those of the author or individual meeting participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all meeting participants; the planning committee; or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

PLANNING COMMITTEE Jabril Johnson (Co-Chair), Morehouse School of Medicine; Laura Lunsford (Co-Chair), Campbell University and the National Science Foundation; Daniel Eisenberg, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Kimberly Griffin, University of Maryland; Wesley D. Marner II, Morgridge Institute for Research; Joi-Lynn Mondisa, University of Michigan; Sana Nasim, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; and Fatima Sancheznieto, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

REVIEWERS To ensure that it meets institutional standards for quality and objectivity, this Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was reviewed by Suzanne Barbour, Duke University; Debra Stewart, NORC at the University of Chicago; and Justin Wang, NJ Department of Children and Families. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the process. Marilyn Baker, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, served as the review coordinator.

STAFF Melissa E. Wynn, Program Officer; Rian Lund Dahlberg, Board Director; and Andrea Dalagan, Senior Program Assistant

SPONSORS This workshop was supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

For additional information about the workshop, visit https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/mentorship-well-being-and-professional-development-in-times-of-societal-change-and-institutional-disruptions-a-workshop

SUGGESTED CITATION National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Mentorship, Well-Being, and Professional Development in Times of Societal Change and Institutional Disruptions: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/29093.

Policy and Global Affairs Copyright 2025 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.