OVERVIEW

The Cato T. Laurencin Institute for Regenerative Engineering and the Office of the Provost partner collaboratively to run the Presidential M1 Mentorship Award Program for UConn faculty.

The program has as its intent to create a national model for best practices in mentorship and formalize mentorship as an academic discipline. The Presidential M1 Mentorship Award Program aims to establish a cadre of accomplished UConn faculty who deliver mentorship to racial and ethnic underrepresented individuals along the biomedical science pipeline.

Award recipients utilize program funds in support of efforts encompassing recruitment and mentorship of racial and ethnic underrepresented trainees at all stages of the pipeline from middle, high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to junior faculty. Awardees also publish outcome results and experiences in scholarly journals and electronic media, attend national mentorship conferences, and convene in a bi-annual symposium.

In addition, each M1 Mentor provides direct mentorship to Young Innovative Investigator Program (YIIP) Scholars accepted into the highly competitive pipeline program. YIIP focuses on the development and diversification of the next generation of biomedical scientists and medical practitioners. This relationship has been a key to the success of the program participants. The M1 mentors maintain effective communication through regular mentee interaction to promote the professional development of their mentees. The process requires alignment of expectations and establishment of accountability and ownership of training, a true bi-directional learning between mentor and mentee recognizing the power balance of the interaction.