Description

Students in research labs are developing their educational and career interests. This academic development for students is supported through a mentor-mentee relationship. Faculty research mentors are particularly suited to guide students as they are beginning their scientific journey. This mentor-mentee relationship requires communication between the faculty and the student mentee. Data suggests that faculty use different mechanisms of communication in their research lab (e.g., email, Zoom, Slack/Discord, in-person). Less is known about how the frequency of communication between faculty research mentors and their student mentees influence student experiences and outcomes in science. Given that communication is essential for mentees to feel supported, I investigated whether the frequency of communication between faculty mentors and student mentees in research labs influence the extent to which students feel like they are part of the scientific community. I hypothesize that students who are mentored by faculty that communicate more often are more likely to have a greater sense of being part of the scientific community (measured by student self-reported science identity and belonging uncertainty). To investigate my research question, I examined data from 45 research labs. First, we asked faculty research mentors how often they communicate with their team. We categorized their responses into four categories (monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, daily) which allows us to assess the frequency of communication in the lab. Second, we surveyed student mentees in each of these faculty members’ labs to measure students’ self-reported science identity and belonging uncertainty. To examine whether greater frequency of communication between the faculty mentor and the student mentee was associated with greater science identity and lower belonging uncertainty among students, we regressed students’ science identity and belonging uncertainty (separately) onto the frequency of communication indicated by the faculty. Analyses did not yield a significant association between faculty research mentor frequency of communication and science identity, F(1, 212) = 2.32, p = .129, R =.10, nor belonging uncertainty, F(1, 211) = 0.72, p = .394, R = .05. In my presentation, I will discuss the implications of these findings, including the importance of focusing on the quality of communication between faculty mentors and students