Development of a near peer mentoring academy to provide guidance to PhD students and postdoctoral fellows participating in short-term research training programs

Abstract

Short-term research training programs for undergraduate scholars provide research opportunities, particularly in underserved research areas and to underrepresented scholars. These training programs benefit greatly from “near peers” serving as daily laboratory mentors and supervisors for the scholars. Near peers are defined as post-doctoral fellows, pre-doctoral students, and/or mentors’ laboratory staff. These near peers are usually associated with the research mentor’s laboratory and assist the undergraduate student or short-term scholar with day-to-day laboratory training, as well as professional and career development. The experience for many near peers and undergraduate scholars, has been shown to have a mutual and lasting impact on the development of their careers in research. Given the brief nature of these training programs, it is even more important for near peers to engage effectively with scholars, which leads to the formation of a ready community of scholars and near peers with the potential to positively impact their career development. Our short-term training program strives to develop and retain scholars in our kidney, urology, and non-malignant hematology (KUH) undergraduate research experience (KURE) community and larger KUH research community. Through the innovative ideas of near peers and program leadership, we developed a KUH Undergraduate Research Experience-Mentoring Academy (KURE-MA) to deepen engagement for near peers and early stage investigators (ESI) in the KUH community. Through focus group and survey analysis, along with a key administrative supplement from the NIH’s DEIA mentorship excellence fund, the KURE-MA was developed to train near peers on important elements of mentoring, particularly mentoring undergraduates interested in KUH research areas. By providing scholar-informed and ESI led mentor development training to near peers across research areas, the KURE-MA has engaged 20 ESI facilitators and 44 near peer participants. Of the 20 ESI faculty, 40% are underrepresented in medicine, and the near peers include 41% from underrepresented backgrounds. The near peer group consists of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in UAB T32 programs, prior short-term R25 program participants, gap year interns, as well as others throughout the KUH community at UAB. This presentation will show the opportunity provided through near peer input utilizing a focus group for program content development. In addition, we will address how the KURE-MA has broadened the reach of the KUH community through improving opportunities for continued engagement and professional development. NIH R25DK115353; R25DK115353-05S1 This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.