2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training at Scale (IMPACTS) inclusive mentoring hub brings together Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the American Society for Engineering Education, and T-STEM Inc. to develop, implement, study, and evaluate an evolving mentoring model in engineering academia. The IMPACTS hub is sponsored by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Engineering award (#22-17745) and builds on the success of two prior NSF awards (BPE: #15-42524 and INCLUDES #17-44500). The program was initially intended to be an innovative strategy to complement prevailing approaches that support career mentorship opportunities for engineering faculty of color while boosting the career longevity of emeriti faculty who served as mentors; the current award includes white women as mentees.

The IMPACTS hub was developed through an extensive review of the literature with a targeted focus on diverse mentoring relationships in STEM academia (Kram, 1985; Lechuga, 2014; Zambrana et al., 2015). The primary goal is to strategically match mentors with mentees as they navigate the promotion and tenure process and establish a greater professional presence in their field. Distinct from other mentoring models, this program moves beyond career development to include professional networking and advocacy by renowned emeriti faculty positioned to provide these resources and who have the flexibility, time, and desire to mentor. This ASEE NSF Grantee Poster reports on the results of a satisfaction survey focused on the efficacy of the IMPACTS inclusive mentoring hub.

In the summer of 2024, an anonymous satisfaction survey was administered with the seven current mentor-mentee matches to study and evaluate the efficacy of the IMPACTS inclusive mentoring hub. Four mentees and six mentors responded. All mentees and five of the six mentors rated the mentoring hub as “excellent” (one mentor rated it as “very good”). All respondents indicated that they are enjoying their mentoring experience. The majority shared that their time together is beneficial and that their time is sufficient. While most mentors indicated that no additional mentoring training was needed and their mentoring responsibilities were clear, a few suggested that mentors gather to “discuss strategies” to best support their mentees. One also shared that it would be valuable for mentees to meet so they could engage in “cohort-building and collaboration” activities. One mentee echoed this suggestion and indicated that connecting the mentee-mentor matches with others in the hub would “improve the impact of the program…[and] could be tremendous for building a supportive community outside of the individual mentor-mentee relationship.” Based on these recommendations, the IMPACTS coordinating team is organizing opportunities for mentees and mentors to meet respectively together and for the mentoring hub to gather as a whole.