Track 3: Mentoring for the Formation of Research Careers in Engineering (M-FORCE)

NSF and many others have long recognized the need for more underrepresented minority (URM) participation at every level of the engineering workforce. While some progress has been made in the past decade, it is clear that URMs tend to encounter social and personal obstacles that their well-represented counterparts do not face as they navigate the road from undergraduate training to workforce participation and career development. We believe that key mentoring strategies at the graduate school level, along with targeted introductions to research and mentoring opportunities for undergraduates, will help increase both the quantity of URMs entering the engineering workforce and the quality of experiences URMs need to thrive in high-level engineering careers. In particular, we aim for “best practices” mentoring that enables URM engineering graduate students to better understand and envision 1) research-based engineering careers; 2) transdisciplinary, team-based approaches needed to solve complex problems; and 3) ways to translate solutions into the market through technology transfer. Having such an understanding and vision, typically achieved by effective mentorship, is crucial for developing the leadership, communications, and professional competencies that future technology leaders in industry, academia, and government need from graduate education. To accomplish our goals, we propose Mentoring for the Formation of Research Careers in Engineering, or M-FORCE. This innovative, inclusive, open-access mentoring hub is designed to meet the goals of Track 3 of NSF’s Broadening Participation in Engineering program (NSF 22-514). M-FORCE, which is a partnership between the University of Minnesota, Morgan State University, and the National GEM Consortium, will create belonging and inclusion for URM engineering graduate students that will enhance knowledge of the research enterprise and its career pathways. It will also provide a model for a collaborative community that can be adapted to any graduate program. Data collected through the M-FORCE hub will advance understanding of 1) the role that collective and individual mentoring can play in improving URM graduate school training and career development experiences; 2) how mentoring and network formation impacts graduate students’ perception of belonging and inclusion, which strongly influences their consideration of a research career in engineering; 3) how early exposure to research career concepts impact URM graduate student motivation to pursue and complete terminal degrees; and 4) how exposure to research and graduate school preparation activities influences URM undergraduates’ interest in and decisions about research careers in engineering. M-FORCE will leverage the best practices of minority serving institutions like HBCUs, which have been exceptional at providing community and a sense of belonging to URM engineering undergraduate and graduate students. It will also leverage best practices of very high-research R1 (and predominately white) universities that have been transitioning research from siloed to convergent approaches that are needed to solve today’s complex problems. Finally, M-FORCE will give URM undergraduates exposure to research and formal graduate school preparation and the rare opportunity to meet a critical mass of URM graduate students performing research and preparing to become leaders in technology fields. After five years, our hub model will be customizable for any campus research community to support and prepare URM engineering graduate students, especially first-generation college students. It will also provide a model of fairness and equity in institutional and program structures that can supplement formal academic training for engineering graduate students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.