Lessons Learned From the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Implications for Pharmaceutical Graduate Education and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in changes in the way we teach at all levels of education globally. This chapter specifically focusses on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on MS and PhD programs in pharmaceutical sciences in schools/colleges of pharmacy in the United States. Potential expectations to bring the pandemic in control by rolling out the vaccine gives us hope, but there is an unmet need of medicines to treat patients affected by the disease. The impact of the pandemic on pharmaceutical sciences education has been on the pedagogy of teaching, research, mentoring, writing, and enrollment. This has also affected the progression of students in their programs as well as their stress levels and well-being. The role of administrators and accreditation agencies is critical in supporting graduate education by providing leadership and directions for the successful outcomes of these programs. Challenges and opportunities for these graduate programs are discussed in this chapter.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Gerontological Research Mentoring and Methodologies

With a rapid increase in our nation's diversity and in particular the diversity of the aging population, research focused on the well-being and quality of life for all older adults is imperative. Within GSA, The Minority Issue in Gerontology Advisory Panel is charged with providing support to the membership that ultimately will yield an increase in the quantity and quality of research related to minority aging issues. Therefore, understanding best practices for minority-focused gerontological research and gerontological education curriculum is warranted. The advancement of the field is predicated on the ability to have trained professionals with skills and competencies that effectively meet the needs of a diverse aging population. This symposium will include a presentation highlighting practical strategies for strengthening gerontology research by intentionally incorporating anti-racist methodological approaches. The second presentation will consist of recommendations on how to support, promote, and advance gerontology education in a manner that increases the diversity of those pursuing a research or an applied career in this area of study. Presenters will share an overview of the literature, findings from program implementation focus groups, and recommendations for tailoring strategies to fit your intended audience. This session will prove beneficial as we make strides to ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion remain a core value and an inherent practice of all gerontology professionals.

Partnerships to offer advanced learning for all students

Out-of-school programs can offer personalized and meaningful learning experiences that deepen students’ knowledge and cater to their passions and interests, but it has been a painful reality that many such programs have been available only to students and families with privilege and resources. Karen Hammerness, Anna MacPherson, Preeti Gupta, Tramia Jackson, and Rachel Chaffee describe how the Science Research Mentoring Consortium in New York City gives students from underserved communities opportunities to engage in STEM activities alongside researchers at sites throughout the city. Students with a strong interest in and aptitude for science take classes after school or on weekends and conduct their own research with the support of mentors. The authors share the principles that undergird the program and that can be applied to similar mentoring partnership programs in other disciplines.

A Global Crowdsourcing Open Call to Improve Research Mentorship in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Mixed Methods Analysis

Research mentoring programs are limited in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The TDR Global initiated a global crowdsourcing open call soliciting proposals on how to improve research mentorship in LMICs. The purpose of this study is to examine ideas submitted to this open call to identify the ways to improve research mentorship in LMICs. Open calls have a group of individuals solve all or part of a problem and then share solutions. A WHO/TDR/SESH crowdsourcing guide was used to structure the open call. Each submission was judged by three independent individuals on a 1–10 scale. Textual submissions were extracted from eligible proposals and qualitatively analyzed via inductive and deductive coding techniques to identify themes. The open call received 123 submissions from 40 countries in Asia (49), Africa (38), Latin America (26), and Europe (10). Among all participants, 108 (87%) had research experience. A total of 21 submissions received a mean score of 7/10 or higher. Our thematic analysis identified three overarching themes related to prementoring, facilitation, and evaluation. Prementoring establishes mentor–mentee compatibility to lay foundations for mentorship. Facilitation involves iterative cycles of planning, communication, and skill improvement. Evaluation creates commitment and accountability within a framework of monitoring. This global crowdsourcing open call generated numerous mentorship ideas, including LMIC-contextualized facilitation tools. The open call demonstrates a need for greater focus on mentorship. Our data may inform the development of formal and informal mentoring programs in LMIC settings.

Teaching Undergraduates to Communicate Science, Cultivate Mentoring Relationships, and Navigate Science Culture

To promote persistence in STEM, a course implemented for undergraduate researchers teaches in an integrated manner the skills for: 1) scientific communication; 2) maximizing the effectiveness of research mentoring relationships; and 3) navigating scientific culture and its interactions with multiple social identities.

NRMNet: Building a National Resource for Mentorship, Networking and Professional Development to Enhance Diversity

Background: To address the need for diver­sifying the biomedical research workforce, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established the Diversity Program Consor­tium (DPC) with the goal of developing, implementing, assessing, and disseminating interventions and programs to enhance the participation and persistence of individu­als from underrepresented backgrounds in biomedical research careers.Intervention: As part of the DPC initia­tive, the NIH funded the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), which aimed to increase diversity of the biomedical research workforce through culturally responsive mentorship, networking, and professional development. In 2015, the NRMNet portal was developed to provide a broad-based network of mentors who are accessible to diverse mentees across the country. The portal also provides network­ing and professional development resources that support mentee transitions from one career stage to the next.Results: NRMNet is the gateway for career stage-specific mentorship, networking, resources, and professional development programs for trainees across the biomedi­cal, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences. In the first five years, the NRMN strategic recruitment efforts resulted in an expanded network of nearly 13,000 diverse mentors and mentees with NRMN representation in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Consistently, over the first five years, racial and ethnic diversity was reflected in composition of mentee and mentor groups: 66% of 6,526 mentees and 33% of 3,866 mentors were from underrepresented groups.Conclusions: The NRMNet portal is a promising effort for enhancing participation and continued engagement of undrerepre­sented individuals in biomedical research careers by providing culturally responsive mentorship, networking, and professional development for individuals at all career stages.Ethn Dis. 2021;31(3):469-480; doi:10.18865/ed.31.3.469

Graduate students' voice and conceptions on the challenges of undertaking qualitative research within higher education context: a grounded theory approach

PurposeThis paper explores the challenges of conducting qualitative research from ELT (English Language Teaching) Ph.D. candidates' perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThe participants of the study consisted of 30 Iranian Ph.D. students majoring in ELT. The semi-structured interview was employed to investigate the heart of experiences, issues and concerns of participants with regard to conducting qualitative research (QLR) challenges. To analyze the collected data, the recorded interviews were transcribed, and then the grounded theory approach was employed (Charmaz, 2006).FindingsThe results revealed that the major challenges of the participants consist of the credibility of QLR in ELT contexts, hermeneutic and fuzzy nature of QLR, qualitative data analysis and interpretation, publishing qualitative findings and the system of measuring professors' productivity.Originality/valueThe findings may help professors, mainly EFL ones, in research mentoring and developing research syllabi for graduate students. In addition, it may motivate Ph.D. candidates to employ QLR methods in their research studies. The pedagogical and theoretical implications of the study are discussed at the end of the paper.

Measuring Research Mentors’ Cultural Diversity Awareness for Race/Ethnicity in STEM: Validity Evidence for a New Scale

There is a lack of measures to assess cultural diversity awareness (CDA) in research mentoring relationships. The development of and validity evidence for a new measure to assess CDA from the perspective of both mentors and mentees are reported with a summary of findings from a series of confirmatory factor analyses with national participant samples.