Professional Development Workshops
Recognizing that scholar success depends on more than individual characteristics, we created the STRIDES model with two integral professional development components: one focused on faculty advisors and the other focused on scholars. The larger scale STRIDES programmatic activities will be implemented with the scholars on a quarterly basis. Specifically, each quarter, there will be a one-day (four to six hours) hands-on workshop covering one of the four prongs of the STRIDES scholar development model (research, teaching, entrepreneurship, leadership and administration). The workshops will rotate among the three alliance institutions.
Research. Research training will include the following topics: sponsored research and the administration of grants and contracts, grant proposal and initiation process and controls (pre-award), grant administration and financial process and controls (post-award), regulatory compliance considerations in research, and ethics and conflicts of interest disclosure detailed training modules.
Teaching. STRIDES Scholars will have the opportunity to engage in cross-institutional teaching and future faculty development activities that cover topics such as: the benefits of an academic career path versus the alternatives; preparing a portfolio to secure post-doctoral fellowships that are likely to transition to an academic job; the importance of networking, communications, and interpersonal skills; interviewing skills for faculty positions; guidelines to launch a successful academic career; creating an inclusive learning environment; active learning strategies; experiential learning in and out of the classroom; and how to find and read academic job ads.
Entrepreneurship. Recognizing the growing importance of technology transfer for faculty members, we created one set of workshops to engage STRIDES Scholars training on entrepreneurship that is based on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) I-Corps model. Certifies trainers will teach scholars how to discriminately review their technologies for commercial viability, develop business models that are validated by undergoing the customer development process, test the market to determine if there is a real need for their technologies, and what business models can generate revenues for the technology or service in a repeatable, sustainable, scalable way.
Leadership and Administration. The workshops on leadership in university administration will include topics such as positive academic leadership in changing your perspective, language, and style; the nature of leadership and leading in an academic setting; stress management for academic leaders; psychology and sociology of change, and the marketing and communication of changes; as well as promoting faculty and staff engagement.
Affinity Mentoring
We believe it is important to partner scholars with mentors with like identities who can share firsthand strategies they have employed for success, serve as champions for the scholars, and provide guidance for overcoming obstacles they encounter, both within and outside of their programs of study. To that end, we have garnered the commitment of several “affinity mentors” who are underrepresented minority (URM) faculty members and administrators at universities throughout the country.
Affinity mentors will form a virtual panel once per semester to share their experiences with the students and answer questions. Mentors will also be available for individual follow-up conversations with students. As time progresses, the mentoring will extend to more “sponsorship” types of relationships that will help scholars build and utilize the social capital needed to navigate their careers. To that end, these mentoring relationships will continue into the scholars’ initial appointments as faculty members.
