Mentoring Correlates to Characteristics of University K12 Outreach Programs: Survey Findings (Fundamental)

Effective mentorship between faculty and undergraduate students has been recognized by the National Academies as an avenue to address issues of diversity and identity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).Mentoring relationships may also form in other contexts, such as between undergraduates and K-12 students in K-12 STEM outreach programs.A survey was administered to university faculty / staff who coordinate K-12 STEM outreach programs to obtain a pool of respondents and facilitate interview selection in a larger phenomenographic study.This paper presents the results from the survey, and focuses on developing a better understanding of mentoring in K-12 STEM outreach programs through the research question, Do K-12 STEM outreach program characteristics differ between programs that are and are not believed to foster mentoring relationships between university and K-12 students?The survey yielded useful responses from 61 program coordinators representing 131 K-12 STEM outreach programs.Tests for association between individual program characteristics and program coordinators' beliefs about mentoring in their program(s) and a binomial logistic regression model were carried out using IBM SPSS 26.The most significant program characteristics were found to be having the goal "Improve K-12 student learning in STEM," the program time (i.e., Day, Summer, Academic Year OR Year), and the level of cohort experience among college students.A discussion as to why these characteristics differ between programs that are and are not believed to foster mentoring relationships is included, and future qualitative work in the larger study will provide more insight.utilize these common goals to provide pathways for K-12 students to develop a sense of belonging in the STEM community and can promote persistence of URM in STEM 19, 20.Programs that target K-12 girls can impact the future composition of the S&E workforce by mitigating bias in STEM 21.K-12 STEM outreach programs can also impact K-12 students' interest in and identification with STEM 22, 23.For example, a study by Wei & Hill 23 found that students became more enthusiastic about STEM and that girls' " implicit perception that they can be engineers" increased 23, p. 13.Regardless of format, focus, and benefit to K-12 students, many universities select promising undergraduate students to facilitate their outreach programs, with undergraduates benefiting alongside K-12 students 24.Through their interactions with K-12 students, knowledgeable and experienced undergraduates are thought to potentially form mentoring relationships with comparatively less knowledgeable and inexperienced K-12 students.Given the potential benefits to undergraduate mentors, the authors are interested in examining mentoring as it manifests in K-12 STEM outreach programs facilitated by universities. Research QuestionThis paper presents the analysis of a survey that was situated within a larger study that seeks to examine undergraduate STEM identity development in relation to mentoring in K-12 STEM outreach programs.A first step towards achieving this larger goal is to better understand if and how mentoring occurs in these programs.To this end, the survey analysis presented here focuses on the research question: Do K-12 STEM outreach program characteristics differ between programs that are and are not believed to foster mentoring relationships between university and K-12 students?The program characteristics of interest include goals, K-12 to university student ratio, duration, "cohort" experience among students, etc. MethodsThis paper focuses on one part of a larger research study: a pre-interview survey given to coordinators of university-run K-12 STEM outreach programs.The larger study involves semistructured interviews and follows a phenomenographical methodology, requiring a variety of experience be represented in the research participants.To select a variety of programs and participants for interviews, the authors first needed to collect a pool of potential participants and gather information about their K-12 STEM outreach programs.The survey achieved this goal.