Background: For most people, taking on new roles increases the likelihood of experiencing the impostor phenomenon (IP), defined as feelings of self-doubt about accomplishments and skill competence, and the fear of being exposed as a fraud1. Students in summer research programs may be especially susceptible to IP if they subscribe to the common belief that only brilliant people can succeed in STEM, suggesting a fixed mindset of ability2,3. For students pursuing research careers, having a fixed mindset and experiencing IP more often than others may have a negative impact on developing a strong identity as a scientist, an important predictor of career intention3,4. However, little research has focused on the relationship between IP, mindset, and formation of identity as a scientist, and no study, to our knowledge, has examined changes in trainees’ mindsets and scientist identity following a short-term research experience. 
Purpose: To evaluate the influence of participation in a summer research program in cancer prevention and control; specifically, we examine the degree to which trainees, with low or high IP feelings at entry into the program, reported changes in mindset and in scientist identity by the end of the summer. 
Methods: Summer research program activities included raising awareness about IP and growth mindset throughout, including an interactive workshop on strategies for recognizing and combating IP, a mid-summer senior scientist panel discussion on IP-related experiences, and an end-of-summer workshop to identify barriers and build supports to career advancement. A series of repeated-measures ANOVA was used to examine changes in ability mindset and scientist identity, comparing men and women with either low or high IP feelings at entry into the program. Data for this preliminary analysis were collected from 51 trainees over 2 summers who completed pre- and post-summer online surveys with three IP items1,5 and four mindset items2. 
Results: At entry into the summer program, 6 of 16 men (38%) and 7 of 35 women trainees (20%) were in the high IP group. 
There were no differences in fixed ability mindset between women/men, low/high IP groups, or entry/end of the program. Trainees with low IP at entry had a strong growth ability mindset, regardless of gender. However, men with high IP had significantly lower growth mindset than men with low IP at entry; by the end of the summer, high IP men increased their growth mindset to the same level as men with low IP. Women with high IP did not change their growth mindset by the end of the summer. As for changes in IP, men with high IP at entry had lower IP by the end of the program, but IP feelings for women did not change significantly by the end of the program. 
Women with low IP at entry had stronger scientist identity than women with high IP. Conversely and curiously, men with low IP at entry had significantly lower scientist identity than men with high IP, who had the highest scientist identity of all. Over the short summer experience, scientist identity did not change overall nor by gender. 
Conclusions: Participation in our summer program was effective in helping students increase their growth mindset and decrease their IP feelings after the program, but these improvements varied by both gender and report of IP upon entry. Gains in mindset and scientist identity were greatest for men with initially high IP feelings. These results show that changes can occur even in a 10-week program and with subsequent summer student cohorts, next steps will seek to expand impact across student subgroups.

Speaker bio:Hwa Young Lee, Ph.D., is a program manager of the Cancer Prevention Research Training Program (CPRTP) at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is trained as an educational psychologist with deep expertise in quantitative methods (structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, and latent class models) and program evaluation. Her research interests include analysis of factors that influence trainees’ career intentions and promoting under-represented students in academia. In addition, as an insider-researcher, she is interested in helping non-native English-speaking trainees (L2) persist in their careers in academia, as well as helping mentors mentor their L2 trainees. Her favorite hobbies include watching movies, listening to rock music, traveling, eating diverse food, and having a good time with family and close friends.

Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Effects of a summer research program designed to address trainees’ IP feelings and improve their growth mindset

Background: The ability to communicate and disseminate research findings via publications and presentations is widely acknowledged to be critical to trainees’ career success in STEM disciplines1,2. What has been little appreciated until recently, however, is the social, psychological, and cognitive roles that scientific communication skill development and mentoring play in building intention to persist in research careers. Our scientific communication (SciComm) model, adapted from social cognitive career theory, showed that self-efficacy and outcome expectations in SciComm, along with scientist identity, influence trainees’ research career intentions. Active mentoring of SciComm skills influences trainees’ SciComm productivity (writing, presenting, and speaking), resulting in increased career intentions through trainee self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and science identity3. Based on these findings, we developed mentor-training workshops, “Scientific Communication Advances Research Excellence (SCOARE),” as an intervention to provide faculty mentors with strategies and tools for SciComm mentoring. 
Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the SCOARE workshops of the first year were effective in reducing mentors’ self-barriers to mentoring SciComm and in increasing mentors’ self-efficacy in SciComm and research and their actual SciComm skills. In addition, we examined whether these improvements were the same according to race/ethnicity and gender.
Methods: Half-day SCOARE workshops, held in 2018-19 and funded by an NIGMS “Innovative Programs to Enhance Research Training” (IPERT) grant, were delivered at 4 sites including Georgia State University in Atlanta, the Gulf Coast Consortia in Houston, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Big Ten in Chicago. In the workshop, mentors learned why and how to help their doctoral or postdoctoral trainees improve their SciComm skills. Moreover, the workshop helped mentors themselves reduce their own barriers and improve their self-efficacy to mentor their trainees by obtaining more and better strategies for SciComm mentoring skills. Mentors who were willing to participate in our research project completed a survey 2 weeks before the workshop and 6 months after the workshop. A series of repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine changes in self-efficacy, in self-barriers, and in mentoring practices before and after the workshop. Gender, race (white vs. non-White), and use of strategies were compared. Of the 60 mentors who registered for the study participation, 46 attended the workshop and completed both surveys. Mentor participants’ responses were collected from four sites (Atlanta, Colorado, Chicago, and Houston) in 2018 and 2019. Among the mentors who attended the workshop, 65% were female, and 67% had been mentoring for more than 7 years; 61% were White. About half of the participants were currently working in basic science.
Results: Repeated-measure ANOVA results revealed that after the workshop, in general, mentors’ self-efficacy and mentoring practices in SciComm had increased, and their own barriers to mentoring SciComm had decreased. These changes were not significantly different by gender or race/ethnicity. Furthermore, mentors who used “adapted new” strategies based on what they learned in the workshop reported increased self-efficacy, improved mentoring practices and satisfaction with their mentoring practices, and a decrease in their own barriers, compared with mentors who continued to use the same strategies.
Conclusions: Preliminary evidence indicates that the SCOARE workshop is helping mentors increase their confidence in mentoring their trainees in SciComm skills and stimulating their engagement in mentoring trainees’ SciComm tasks. Further studies will examine the effects of the workshop on subsequent trainee’ self-efficacy, scientist identity, and career intention. The SCOARE workshop will continue over 5 years at 4 sites and will collect responses from both mentors and their corresponding trainees. 


Speaker bio:Hwa Young Lee, Ph.D., is a program manager of the Cancer Prevention Research Training Program (CPRTP) at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is trained as an educational psychologist with deep expertise in quantitative methods (structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, and latent class models) and program evaluation. Her research interests include analysis of factors that influence trainees’ career intentions and promoting under-represented students in academia. In addition, as an insider-researcher, she is interested in helping non-native English-speaking trainees (L2) persist in their careers in academia, as well as helping mentors mentor their L2 trainees. Her favorite hobbies include watching movies, listening to rock music, traveling, eating diverse food, and having a good time with family and close friends.

Effectiveness of the SCOARE workshop designed to improve mentoring skills in scientific communication

Symposium Title: Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce - Overview.

Authors: Shine Chang, Carrie Cameron, Kava Lewis, Hwa Young Lee, Cheryl Anderson

Broadening participation in research careers entails not only attracting and welcoming students to research but also retaining trainees who have embarked on the research career path. To enable this goal, NIH has provided funding to universities across the country to increase student interest in research careers. Such programs are mandated to recruit diverse groups of qualified students and typically provide mentored research experiences to spark career interest and also professional development that assists success in pursuit of such careers. Funded by multiple NIH awards, the Cancer Prevention Research Training Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center uses a tailored curriculum of mentored research, bioethics, career exploration, and professional development to encourage and facilitate diverse groups of students to pursue research careers. This symposium aims to describe the influence of our 10-week summer program on trainees’ psychosocial cognitive constructs related to research career intention. The symposium abstracts include:
1) Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Training Programming Impact on Career Intent and Related Social Cognitive Constructs
2) Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Effects of a summer research program designed to address trainees’ IP feelings and improve their growth mindset
3) Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Combating Impostor Phenomenon (IP): A Preliminary Qualitative Evaluation of a Workshop for Diverse Summer Research Students
These findings will be interpreted in light of their implications for possible interventions to help sustain interest in research careers.


Speaker bio:Kava Lewis, B.A., is a Program Manager in the Cancer Prevention Research Training Program (CPRTP) at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She earned her BA in Communication Studies from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and received a partial scholarship from Texas Tech University to pursue an MA in Strategic Communication & Innovation. After relocating from St. Louis, Missouri in 2009, she joined MD Anderson CPRTP and began managing the program website, social media, marketing, trainee statistical data, and the postdoctoral and NCI summer fellowship programs. Her professional background includes healthcare, telecommunications, and information technology. She has research and career interests in social media practice, integrated media, crisis communication, and communication within organizations. Recently, she began working with the CPRTP research scientists and collaborators to evaluate growth mindset, imposter phenomenon, and career outcomes of CPRTP fellows. In her spare time, she enjoys acrylic painting, cooking, baking, movies/television, and spending time with family.

Research into Action to Diversity the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Overview

Background: Impostor experiences can occur as early as in high school,1 making it a pervasive phenomenon during scientific training. If experiencing IP (particularly by those historically underrepresented in the STEM and bioscience workforce)2,3 impedes progress in research careers,4 designing effective interventions to reduce its impact are warranted. 
Purpose: To examine the effectiveness of a workshop on raising awareness and empowering diverse summer research students to recognize and process impostor-feelings.
Methods: For the summer program, a 90-minute, research-based, interactive workshop addressed IP experiences, bias, and resilience. Data were analyzed from 25 racially/ethnically diverse students (5 African-American, 5 Latinx, 8 Asian, 7 white; 8 undergraduate, 13 graduate, 4 medical) who participated in an orientation workshop and attended a mid-summer panel presentation by senior faculty on failure, rejection, and IP. Using qualitative, open-ended reviews of student surveys, we identified themes about the impact of the workshop activities on coping with IP over the summer experience.
Results: Students strongly endorsed scheduling the workshop, at the beginning of the 10-week program. Formally learning about IP, with a common vocabulary to describe it, increased awareness and appreciation of the issue. They valued sharing personal stories that validated their own IP experiences and relieved anxiety by learning about this common experience; students described “feeling relief.,” Some felt more comfortable with themselves and with others through a sense of bonding over shared experiences. They also felt supported by the training program for recognizing the value of offering the workshop to trainees.
To increase resilience in dealing with IP, one workshop activity had students brainstorm coping strategies together after discussing IP triggers. Students appreciated working on solutions together and they seemed to recognize the long-term/usefulness of the material covered. Many reported using methods learned from the workshop during their summer experiences to deal with IP and reported using positive self-talk, focus their thinking on facts about themselves and the situation, grounding them firmly against potentially persuasive and confidence-eroding impostor-feelings (e.g., “I reminded myself that despite those feelings of doubt, there is little to negate the fact that my name is on that poster.”).
Knowledge and skill gained from the workshop, when reinforced by key supporters at moments of struggle, may enable students’ ability to combat impostor feelings: “Since the workshop, I am better able to identify and acknowledge when I am feeling like an impostor. For example, as I was preparing for my Elevator Speech, I felt a little nervous and my lab member reminded me that I am the expert of this project and I needed to own it. After that discussion, I saw a big improvement in my subsequent rehearsals!” Not all impostor feelings were addressed, but students reported being more able to manage their feelings and persist towards goals and challenging tasks. A small number of students, mostly men, reported not experiencing IP, describing comfort with status as a student who inherently has less knowledge, embracing the experience as an opportunity to learn, not being afraid of not knowing, and not being afraid to ask questions. Some students reported disappointment from suboptimal performance but no impostor feelings.
Conclusion: A brief, theory-based workshop designed to help students recognize, prevent, and combat IP experiences can have positive impact on subsequent experience and successful management of IP during a summer research experience. Future research can improve understanding about IP with longer follow-up and enhanced measurement of IP triggers and experiences, as well as characterization of individuals who do not report experiencing or report lower levels of impostor feelings for further insight for interventions. 


Speaker bio:Shine Chang, Ph.D., is a University of Texas System Distinguished Teaching Professor, Ashbel Smith Professor, and tenured full professor in the Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is also director of a large, federally and state-funded multi-disciplinary research training program in cancer prevention. With more than 20 years of experience as a cancer epidemiologist and cancer prevention scientist, and as a nationally recognized cancer research training program director, she has extensive experience leading training programs, advising college, graduate and health professional students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty. Dedicated to diversifying the academic health workforce, she has published more than 75 original peer-reviewed journal articles and presented numerous seminars and workshops nationally and internationally on topics including cancer prevention education and training, workforce diversity, and academic health leadership. She has held leadership roles in several professional membership societies focused on cancer prevention, education, and cancer research, and received recognition for her work and mentorship, including an NIH Merit award for mentorship, and the 2017 MD Anderson President’s Leadership Award for Advancing Women and Minority Faculty, the institution’s highest honor for efforts to diversify and support faculty. Whenever possible, she enjoys swing dancing with her husband, which drives their three dogs crazy.

Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Combating Impostor Phenomenon (IP): A Preliminary Qualitative Evaluation of a Workshop for Diverse Summer Research Students

Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical & Behavioral Research Workforce

technical paper

UI is excited to announce the rescheduled 12th Annual Conference on Understanding Interventions December 10 & 12, 2020! As you may recall, the original conference scheduled back in March 2020 had to be cancelled due the worsening global conditions, and further declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay tuned for details regarding the virtual conference.

On December 10, 2020 from 12:00-5:00pm (EST), and December 12, 2020 from 11:00am-5:00pm (EST), UI will host the Virtual 12th Annual Understanding Interventions Conference powered by Underline. Attendees will experience plenaries, workshops, symposia, and poster presentations on hypothesis-based research on interventions and initiatives that broaden participation in STEM careers. The conference will continue to facilitate the dialogue among education, behavioral, and social science researchers, evaluators, and faculty in STEM fields who participate in intervention programs. Graduate students in these fields are strongly encouraged to attend. Workshops, sessions, and posters will communicate effective strategies from successful STEM intervention programs, present results from empirical research studies, and synthesize the translation of research findings into practice on STEM learning, undergraduate research, graduate education, and student retention.

12th Conference on Understanding Interventions 2020

12th Annual Understanding Interventions Conference continues to facilitate the dialogue among education, behavioral, and social science researchers, evaluators, and faculty in STEM fields who participate in intervention programs. Workshops, sessions, and posters communicate effective strategies from successful STEM intervention programs, present results from empirical research studies, and synthesize the translation of research findings into practice on STEM learning, undergraduate research, graduate education, and student retention.

Hwa Young Lee

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Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Effects of a summer research program designed to address trainees’ IP feelings and improve their growth mindset

Effectiveness of the SCOARE workshop designed to improve mentoring skills in scientific communication

Research into Action to Diversity the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Overview

Research into Action to Diversify the Biomedical and Behavioral Research Workforce: Combating Impostor Phenomenon (IP): A Preliminary Qualitative Evaluation of a Workshop for Diverse Summer Research Students

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