2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Effective mentorship has been linked to improving research skills and productivity, reducing the risk of anxiety and depression, and maintaining students' academic persistence in STEM fields. Recognizing the enormous effect of mentoring on students’ academic careers and confidence, many universities and research institutions provide training programs to faculty to enhance their mentoring skills and knowledge and strengthen mentoring relationships. Many existing mentor programs for faculty adopt the evidence-based Entering Mentoring training curriculum, originally developed by a team of researchers and practitioners at the University of Wisconsin Madison for research faculty in STEM disciplines [1]. From the program evaluation perspective, measuring a training program's results and determining whether intended outcomes are achieved (i.e., the outcome evaluation) can tell whether a program achieves its goals. The results of the evaluation further inform program organizers of needed improvements. Therefore, having good knowledge of these assessment tools and their appropriate usage is essential to planning and evaluating mentoring programs. After the Entering Mentoring training curriculum was launched, various assessment tools and approaches have been utilized by different training program evaluations. This study systematically and thoroughly reviews the extant empirical studies in STEM fields (including intervention and program evaluation studies) that used the Entering Mentoring training curriculum since it was first introduced (2005 to 2023). The goal is to examine: (1) what outcome variables have been assessed to indicate the effectiveness of the Entering Mentoring training curriculum, and (2) what measurement instruments have been used to quantify the outcome variables? Finally, a further discussion is provided, particularly on selecting the appropriate tool based on research goals and resources. The findings of this study not only offer timely insight into research trends on the evaluation of the Entering Mentoring training curriculum in STEM fields but also guide professionals of mentoring training evaluation in identifying important outcome variables and selecting appropriate instrument tools.

[1] J. Handelsman, C. Pfund, S. Miller Lauffer, and C. Maidl Pribbenow, "Entering mentoring: A seminar to train a new generation of scientists," 2011.