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FIRST ANNUAL FEDERAL FOCUS ED-MENTOR SYMPOSIUM

DR. CAROL MULLER

Biography

Dr. Muller is the founder and Executive Director of MentorNet at the College of Engineering, San Jose State University. She has 22 years in higher education. She holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. These degrees are in Philosophy and English, Education Administration and Policy Analysis, respectively. She served from 1987 to 1996 in Dartmouth's School of Engineering as an Associate Dean for the administration. Her previous work at Dartmouth and Stanford is outstanding. Her website is www.mentornet.net.

SLIDE 1

MentorNet:
Creating and Sustaining a
Large-Scale National Electronic
Mentoring Program

Carol B. Muller, Ph.D.
Executive Director, MentorNet
1st Annual Federal Focus Ed-Mentor
Symposium

September 27, 1999
Washington, D.C.

Presentation

What is MentorNet? MentorNet is a national nonprofit program which links undergraduate and graduate women studying engineering and related sciences with professionals in industry for year-long structured mentoring relationships conducted via email. We have a mission to improve the status of women in society and contribute to positive change for women's study and work in science and engineering through a revolutionary online mentoring system. We want to increase the numbers of women graduating with engineering, science and math degrees and technology-supported mentoring by scientific and technical professionals in industry help meet this goal. The program complements the kinds of mentoring and education that students receive on their college campuses.

I think something really important to ask when any mentoring program is concerned is, "What are the goals? What is the mission? How are we going to measure the outcomes?"

SLIDE 2

What is the Problem?

Although women represent 46% of the U.S. work force, they are

• less than 10% of the engineers
• barely 30% of the scientists

These low numbers mean talent is being lost for the technical work force, and

Women are less likely to be involved in fast-growing, rewarding, and influential sectors of the economy

SLIDE 3

Mentoring: Part of the Solution

• Mentoring is a proven strategy for retaining women in engineering and science
• Not all students currently have access to mentors
• Time and distance prevent more technical professionals from serving as mentors
• An electronic mentoring network can link students with mentors in disparate locations, with minimum commitments of time.

SLIDE 4

Retention of women in engineering and related sciences through provision of:

• Information
• Support and encouragement
• A sense that a real person cares about their success
• An opportunity to explore and visualize the future

A trajectory which moves the student from dependence to independence.

Establishing best practices in e-mentoring.

So it is not a static experience throughout the mentoring time frame. Also, because e-mentoring, telementoring, cybermentoring, virtual mentoring - whatever name you put to it - is fairly new, we were very interested in how to establish best practices in e-mentoring.

One of the reasons I want to begin with answering the question, "What is mentoring?" is because I've noticed that mentoring is used a lot these days. I know we are all here because we think we know what mentoring is. Mentoring is used in all kinds of contexts, sometimes very casually. I am not interested necessarily in establishing a rigid definition of mentoring, and saying this is mentoring and that is not. I think there are many different forms. This makes it all the more important that we each establish what mentoring is in the context we are using it.

SLIDE 5

What is Mentoring?

• Mentoring is the process by which an experienced person provides information, advice, support, and encouragement to a less experienced person. A mentor is a teacher or advisor who leads through guidance and example.
• Differentiated from a role model.
• Implies a relationship extending over time.

I differentiate this from a role model, who might be someone whom a student or a protégé sees from afar and with whom that student does not have an extended relationship. So, the implication exists of a relationship extending over time and some growth occurring because of it.

Some things are pretty straightforward. Email is a sort of stealth technology. It has been more widely adapted, more quickly than a whole lot of other technologies that are available.

SLIDE 6

What is E-Mentoring?

• E-mentoring ("tele mentoring," "cybermentoring," or "virtual mentoring"): mentoring which uses the tools of electronic communications, either to extend and enhance a mentoring relationship, or to create one where it would not otherwise exist.

SLIDE 7

Why E-Mentoring?

• Relatively easy, comfortable, and accessible mode of communication for regular computer users
Transcends geographical distance
Asynchronous quality allows for minimal disruption of daily schedule
Efficient: saves time, money, and logistics

SLIDE 7

Why E-Mentoring? continued

What I want to suggest is that there is more to it than the obvious things mentioned in the list above. It has a form and a quality of communication all to itself. It is different from face-to-face and other forms of communication in many ways, but it is not always "less than." There are other less obvious reasons found in research:

• The ease of thoughtful, deliberate communication. An individual can take time in composing a message, can edit the message, and really think about what he or she wants to say.
• There is a record of communication that often does not exist with oral communication or face-to-face conversation.
• There is attenuation of status differences. In our program, a freshman at a university can talk to a corporate executive without having to go through travel "downtown" to a ten-story building, or go through the secretaries and the security guards, or worry about what he or she is wearing. This applies in all kinds of settings, not just that example. It is much easier for someone in a lower position of status to talk to someone at a higher position of status.
• The restricted channel of communication really helps build relationships because it feels and is reasonably private. Although, email is not confidential, and we have to be careful that participants in e-mentoring programs recognize that.
• It builds on the Internet as a social technology which connects and affiliates people. This is something I am really interested in. There are a few researchers now looking at electronic communications, the Internet, and how they are affecting on a grand scale our daily lives and works.

Structured Mentoring Programs

I want to mention structured mentoring programs. These are usually created because naturally occurring or organic mentoring is not happening, not serving enough individuals, and/or most commonly serving only a particular group of individuals. One of the reasons we often have special structured programs for women or people of color is that the naturally occurring mentoring, tends to replicate those who are already involved in a certain profession or field. We tend to have white men mentoring white men. Not always, but that is the general trend. Consequently, these programs have been created so that the tacit knowledge and the informal interactions and the ways of doing work surrounding a profession or a field can all be communicated to everyone, not just to a specific cadre. These programs are typically designed to serve a target group. They require structure and staff; they are not without cost.

We have a staff, and I have an expert in mentoring on my staff, but I have given thought to what are best practices for electronic mentoring programs. This is a work in progress. Roughly speaking, we are breaking the best practices down into these areas: planning and design, resource development, and matching/training/coaching/closure.

You do not want to leave these mentoring relationships open-ended. People need to know:

• how long they are expected to mentor,
• what are expected outcomes, and
• what are the opportunities for continuing beyond the end of the program.

Mentoring relationships typically have a lifetime, whether or not you impose it. So, allowing people to recognize when this time has come and to gracefully exit the relationship or move on to another mentoring relationship is really important. And evaluation is really important. Leveraging and developing technology in support of all these aspects of structured mentoring programs is what e-mentoring is all about.

However, people start electronic or other mentoring programs with very good intentions. If they do not think through the process, it will be very difficult to know:

• Is the program worth investing in, worth supporting?
• Will the outcomes be measurable?
• Have we thought about what the outcomes will be? Mentoring creates all kinds of wonderful situations and scenarios, but you need to be able to define what you are trying to accomplish.
• Who are the target populations?
• Who are the stakeholders? All of these programs take resources. It may be that an organization has wonderful volunteers that can step up to the plate to do not only the mentoring, but also the program administration, the connecting, and the technical work supporting an e-mail program, etc. Those are your stakeholders in that case. In many other cases, you are looking at partnering with other organizations that have a specific interest in the outcomes of our programs. So, we need to know who they are, what resources they are willing to put behind this, what their expected outcomes are, the time frame for those outcomes, and what guidelines will govern the mentoring relationship. What will we tell prospective participants to help shape the program?

You have to think ahead of time about resource development.

SLIDE 8

Resource Development

• Knowledge of needs, culture, and communications of target populations, and technical expertise
• Human resources - mentors, proteges, staff
• Technology - access to internet for all participants, computer(s)/server, internet service, software, furnishings
• Location
• $ to support these resources, as needed

When we developed the strategic planning for MentorNet, this was the exercise we went through. Developing a business plan, really, for how this would work. It is a nonprofit organization, but it still needs resources and funding.

Thinking in terms of matching, what individual characteristics of the protégés and the mentors will make their mentoring relationships more likely to succeed. This is assuming a one-on-one program. Designing a process to include these criteria, whether it is allowing individuals to look at a pool in a database and sort through it, or engaging a person or computer program which actively matches people based on certain characteristics.

We do know that the research on effective mentoring programs suggests that you are much more likely to have success if the mentors and protégés are actively engaged in selecting their partners and determining matches.

SLIDE 9

Training

• Establishing and articulating program goals and guidelines
• Setting expectations for the mentoring experience, and between mentor and protégé
• Providing information and experience to guide participants, both protégés and mentors: e.g. suggested discussion topics, use of electronic communications, communicating across differences,

Training, establishing and articulating program goals and guidelines, setting expectations for the mentoring experience between mentor and protégé, providing information and experience to guide the participants, this is all part of the training that is involved.

In our program, we talked about the idea of coaching. Structured mentoring programs, whether electronic or otherwise, have found over and over again that it is extremely helpful, if you would like a high rate of success in these mentoring relationships, to do several things.

SLIDE 10

Coaching

• Regular reminders to participants to communicate with their partners
• Suggestions for communications content and process appropriate to program goals, and consistent with the development of a mentoring relationship
• Reinforcement of training
• Trouble-shooting

I think we have to remember we are putting together something that is not organic. People are well-intentioned, but they do have busy schedules. The coaching also serves to connects them with the program, reinforce the training, other information and give them a personal affiliation with the program. It allows you to troubleshoot. If you do have ongoing contact with participants and they have a problem, they are much more likely to tell you about it than if you have just turned them loose, and they have to rummage around for your contact information from 6 months ago.

I mentioned closure earlier. Establish a time frame and a process for concluding the structured mentoring relationship.

SLIDE 11

Closure

• Anticipate natural or configured points of closure, and establish a time frame for conclusion of the structured mentoring relationship.
• Provide coaching to allow mentors and/or proteges to gracefully end the mentoring relationship.
• Offer alternatives for continuing the relationship, without expectation that these will be appropriate for all participants.

Evaluation, … this is not something you want to do, ideally, AFTER the end of the first year of the program. You want to think about this ahead of time so that you can measure what you have accomplished. You need to have a plan in place and know that it is one that will respond to the needs of the stakeholders.

SLIDE 12

Evaluation

• Establishing goals and outcomes
• Identifying stakeholders and their interests
• Establishing measure for outcomes
• Planning and implementing formative and summative evaluation
• Measuring results
• Sharing findings

Why would you create a large-scale national electronic mentoring program? A national program or a large-scale program, I might say, whether it is across several states or international, provides a richer and deeper pool of mentors and of students or protégés, allowing for better matches. You are transcending the limitations of spheres of influence and acquaintance of individual organizations. You can often get people thinking outside of local cultural boundaries. The economies of scale and operations. A lot of people could replicate the one-on-one mentoring network that we provide through MentorNet if they had unlimited resources that could be done on a campus-by-campus basis. But as long as we are putting the infrastructure together, it makes a lot more sense economically to do it across institutions. This, of course, does create a new organizational paradigm based on collaboration, which in some cases works well and in other cases you have to break down some preconceptions. Just to give you an idea, because we were talking about creating and sustaining a large-scale program, this is our plan for growth for our particular program:

Year Zero we did what we called a "pilot semester." We began to get enough startup funding to justify the program in 1997. By the time we were staffed and had enough of our content on the web, it was early February of 1998. So we started a program that ran for a semester; and, we learned a tremendous amount about how to structure and shape the program from that experience. I think we started out from our business plan in 1996, we had a goal of 250 matched pairs for that year. We ended up with 204 - pretty close. Last year, the first full-year length of the program, which we called Year One because Year Zero was really a partial year, we had targeted 500 pairs, and we ended up with 539 matched pairs. This year we are expecting to double that to 1,000. We are right now in the middle of our matching processes, and that will not conclude until the end of October. So, what we did here in projecting numbers was to think about what seemed to be a reasonable growth trajectory, given the resources we had at our startup and what we thought we could develop with those resources. If we were able to get more resources, then we could probably ramp it up more quickly.

We have a model in which we have participating campuses, and we are also building as part of our sustainability strategy a memberships program. We are trying to create a partnership among colleges and universities, professional societies, corporation and government sites, all working together to support this program. We were fortunate to have the College of Engineering at San José State University in California offer us a space for our startup. That got us over the hurdle of location. Each of these partners has representatives who work with us, designated liaisons, in a way. Their roles include:

• Recruiting participants,
• Providing funding and/or in-kind contributions, and
• Providing advice, feedback and information, which ultimately drives their funding.

This year we have 38 campuses involved in our program (they are listed on our website).

The corporate partners that are working with us are interested in identifying and attracting the top technical talent available in the future workforce. This is something Jim mentioned at the lower level concerned about aspects of the future workforce. Knowledge that a diverse workforce leads to product development and customer service designed for an increasingly diverse customer base and support for an inclusive work environment that enhances productivity and impacts the bottom line, in terms of our particular target population. Those are the interests of our supporters.

We have a new initiative coming up, the MentorNet 3C, The Community College Connection. That is a specialized addition to our program that will be blended into the program over a 3-year planning and implementation period.

This year we have new funding, and that is part of our continuing plan. The idea is we have startup funds for 3 to 4 years. We develop a membership program over time that will allow us at a much lower level to have membership from the various organizational partners. We have not done this yet. We are thinking that over time, as students go through the program, graduate and get out into the workplace, they may be willing to help support it. I think all of us have agreed that even at the college level, this kind of program will not be sustained by fees from those who benefit most from it, the protégés. We are hoping to find an equilibrium here through these corporate memberships. Again, these are not the startup grants, but the membership at a sustaining level - $5,000 per year - which involves the corporation in a variety of ways. It gives them an affiliation with MentorNet, priority in having their employees matched with students, where there are appropriate matches. The university memberships, which are at this point by invitation because we have many more campuses that would like to participate than we can currently accommodate responsibly, are also contributing, though at a lower level, in recognition that we really are providing a service for their students, and something that would be difficult for them to duplicate at anywhere near that cost on their own individual campuses. We also have some professional societies that are interested in becoming involved in MentorNet. SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineers, is one of our first, setting up a model for this $5,000-per-year commitment.

In terms of our own vision for the future, we expect that MentorNet represents a large and growing partnership among these different groups, with leadership provided from those groups on the board, that we would like to get to a point where any interested student could be paired with an industrial mentor via email. Over time we would hope to expand to serve a global population, reflecting a global economy, and using technology to transcend geographic distance and boundaries. We also are interested in our own organizational development, and in making sure that we continue to stay on top of the technology, the organizational efficiencies, and so forth. We do continually receive requests to extend this concept to other populations. We have initially steadfastly resisted those. It is very easy when you are trying to start an organization and you see an opportunity to say, "Oh, maybe we should veer off in this direction or that direction." We really felt we would be successful if we maintained our focus, got that program up and running with that target population, had an opportunity to evaluate it over several years so we really understood its value and got it stabilize in terms of finances before we moved on to a lot of other populations.

SLIDE 13

MentorNet: Industrial Mentoring

• Most engineering and science graduates find employment in industry, but women in scientific & technical positions are proportionally less likely to be employed in industry than in public or nonprofit sectors.
• Complements opportunities for on-campus mentoring by academic personnel.
• Links students to potential employers, and employers to potential employees.
• Non-judgmental mentors.
• Information from industry increases retention.

SLIDE 14

MentorNet:
A Growing Partnership

• Colleges and Universities
• Professional Societies
• Corporations
• Government

Operations based in San José, California

SLIDE 15 MentorNet: A Plan for Growth

SLIDE 16

MentorNet Partners

Partnering Organization Volunteers:

• Campus Representatives
• Corporate Representatives
• Professional Society Representatives
• Government Site Representatives

Roles:

• Recruit participants
• Provide funding and/or in-king contributions
• Provide advice, feedback, information

SLIDE 17

MentorNet: A Growing Partnership
Participating Campuses, 1999-2000 Arizona
Harvey Mudd
San Jose State
Arizona State
Howard
U. Southern Calif.
Brown
Illinois
Spelman
Berkeley
Kentucky
Stanford
UC - Davis
Michigan
Stevens Institute
Caltech
Mills
Texas A&M
Cal Poly
New Mexico
Texas - Austin
Carnegie Mellon
NC A&T
Virginia
Colgate
Northwestern
Virginia Tech
Colorado
Penn State
Washington
Cornell
Princeton
Wellesley
Dartmouth
Purdue
Wisconsin
Georgia Tech
RPI

SLIDE 18

Characteristics of MentorNet
Corporate Partners

• Interested in identifying and attracting the top technical talent available in the future work force
• Knowledge that a diverse work force leads to product development and customer service designed for an increasingly diverse customer base, and
• Understanding that an inclusive work environment enhances productivity, and thereby positively impacts the bottom line.

SLIDE 19

MentorNet Program Features

• Mentoring lasts for one academic year at a time.
• Weekly communications between mentor and protege.
• Structured mentoring program, including matching, training, coaching and ongoing support, evaluation, and closure.
• Research-based: mentoring, women in engineering and science, human-computer interface, pilot testing.
• The web site - www.mentornet.net - provides on-line information, applications, and training materials.

SLIDE 20

Beyond One-on-One
E-Mentoring: Other MentorNet
Program Features

• Monthly electronic newsletter
• Topic- and theme-based electronic discussion groups (introduced 1999)
• Small group mentoring option (new in '99-'00)
• Resume database (new in '99-'00)

SLIDE 21

Recruiting Mentors

Call for Mentors developed, available in paper, e-mail format, PDF files on web site

Disseminated via:

• Electronic mailing lists
• Corporate & Professional Society contacts
• Campus representatives to alumni/ae
• Showcase, exhibits, presentations at meetings
• "Cold" faxes to corporate HR, R&D offices

SLIDE 22

Recruiting Students

• Campuses invited to participate
• Campus representative selected by their institutions
• Instructions sent to campus representatives; sample e-mail messages, PDF files available on the web site
• Campus reps get word to students via e-mail, meetings, other networks

SLIDE 23

Matching Participants

• Prospective participants complete web-based applications
• Data automatically feeds into database
• 3 rounds of matching (2 weeks apart)
• Matching software sorts through database to find best matches; staff reviews
• Individuals are sent e-mail with characteristics of partner, asked to approve
• When both approve, pair is launched.

SLIDE 24

Matching Protocol

Automated Matching Program matches pairs based on the following:

• Pairs must have similar majors/fields.
• Mentor must have an equal or greater college degree than student
• Pairs are then matched based on similar Careers and Other Preferences from the application

These matches are individually checked by us

These final matches are then emailed out for approval from each person

SLIDE 25

MentorNet Training

• Training for both students and mentors
• Web-based content
• Small group, moderated electronic discussions of case studies
• Training delivered via regular e-mail "prompts" with hotlinks to training material
• 2000: Interactive, web-based training curriculum

SLIDE 26

MentorNet Coaching

Regular weekly "prompts" to undergraduate students, biweekly to mentors, graduate students accomplish 3 objectives:

• Provide direct training content
• Remind students/mentors to exchange email
• Connect participants to the program, reminding them there is a person to contact if anything is awry with mentoring relationship

Problem-solving, with campus rep, as needed

End of year closure

SLIDE 27

MentorNet: The Start-Up Semester 1997-98

Applicants: 280 students, 241 mentors

15 participating universities

93 companies represented by mentors

Mentors by gender: 73% female, 27% male

Students by degree programs

• 73% undergraduates (39% fresh/soph; 34% juniors/seniors)
• 8% masters
• 19% PhDs

Students by field of study:

• 54% engineering
• 18% computer sci./eng.
• 8% chemistry
• 7% bio- sciences/eng.
• 5% math
• 5% physics
• 3% geology/environmental sciences

SLIDE 28

Lessons Learned from the Pilot Semester

• Expectations for weekly communications make for stronger mentoring experiences
• One semester is not long enough for a satisfactory mentoring relationship
• Participants are more likely to be satisfied if they are matched first on academic/career interests.

SLIDE 29

Enhancements in 1998-99

• Matching protocol revised, improved
• Experimental on-line, small group, case study-based mentor training
Non-moderated, topic-based electronic discussion groups for all mentors and unmatched students

SLIDE 30

MentorNet, Year 1: 1998-99

Applicants: 973 students, 693 mentors

26 participating universities

539 matched pairs; 515 remained by year-end (4% failure)

261 companies represented by mentors

Mentors by gender: 80% female, 20% male

Students by degree programs:

• 78% undergraduates (42% fresh/soph; 36% juniors/seniors)
• 8% masters
• 14% PhDs

Students by field of study:

• 55% engineering
• 24% computer sci./eng.
• 8% bio-sciences/biochem
• 3% math
• 3% physics
• 2% chemistry
• 2% geology/environmental sciences

Fields of Mentors & Students

Computer Science
Computer Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Biological Sciences
General Engineering
Materials Engineering
Civil Engineering
General Chemistry
Environmental Engineering
Aerospace Engineering
Industrial Engineering
General Biochemistry

MentorNet Evaluation

Ithaca Evaluation Group (1998 - )

• Mid-year, year-end web-based questionnaires
• Sample of volunteer, consented, confidential email monitoring

Quality Evaluation Design (2000)

Evaluation Process, 1998-99

• Goal-oriented
• Focus on student-mentor process
• Midyear and year-end web-administered questionnaires
• Email/telephone follow-up of nonrespondents
• Unobtrusive, but consented, monitoring of all e-mail traffic among a random sample
• Content evaluation of e-discussion lists

Evaluation Findings, 1998-99
Final questionnaire response rates:

67.6% for mentors, 50.9% for students

• Participants' assessments of their mentoring relationships are very positive
• Email exchanges were more frequent earlier in the year
• Frequency of email initiation is a significant predictor of overall mentoring success
• Varied, though mostly positive, reactions to email prompts

Participant Assessment of Aspects
Mentoring Relationship

Outcome Measure	Student (mean)	Mentor (mean)
Comfort Asking Questions	4.45	4.32
Comfort Answering Questions	4.55	4.64
Interest in Staying in Major	4.31	n.a.
Interest in Participating in MentorNet Next Year	n.a.	4.20
Interest in promoting MentorNet program	n.a.	4.21
Interest in working in industry	4.17	n.a.
Confidence in one's own major/mentoring skills	3.49	3.70
Overall quality of match	4.01	3.65

Evaluation Findings, 1998-99

For most conversational topics and other outcomes, there were no observed differences related to mentor gender

Topics discussed by more than 75% of participants:

• Backgrounds
• Mentor's job
• College life
• Protege's career plans