How Do We Bring Equity and Culture Into the Research Space with Dr. Janet Branchaw

Dr. McGavock: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Emerging Scholar Podcast, season one. We hope you enjoy this series of great conversations with leading medical researchers that's designed for graduate students, medical trainees, residents, and fellows to help you on your journey towards your first scientific project.

Welcome everyone to episode 13, season one of the Emerging Scholar Podcast.

Today we are chatting with Dr. Janet Branchaw, who's an associate professor, faculty of kinesiology at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. Dr. Branchaw is an associate professor and faculty director of the Wisconsin Institute for Science Education and Community Engagement, WISCIENCE, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Her research and programming focus on the development, implementation, evaluation of innovative approaches in science education [00:01:00] at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. Branchaw is recognized nationally as part of a, a large NIH-funded, uh, research mentoring network that helped create, uh, a training platform for undergraduate students, but also for people running their own labs for how to create an effective mentoring situation.

The reason why we brought Dr. Branchaw on was, uh, at the time we were recording this podcast, a very exciting randomized control trial of an intervention to increase cultural diversity awareness among research mentors of undergraduate students came out. It was published in Science Advances, and, uh, we wanted to understand a little bit more about how do we bring equity, how do we bring culture into the research space.

So as we run a lab, as we mentor undergraduate students, as we work with, uh, trainees below us, not only do we have a responsibility to ourselves to do research in the right way, but we also want to create a great culture for trainees. I was really excited to talk to Dr. Branchaw about what [00:02:00] kind of work is being done funded through the NIH to bring equity and cultural sensitivity, cultural safety into the research space for undergraduate students.

And so we dive into that and we talk a little bit more about, uh, the clinical trial that was published at the time that we did this interview. This is actually fascinating work, and I hope that inspires you to think about cultural safety, equity, and inclusion as you create your own research environment All right. Welcome, everyone. Today, we have the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Janet Branchaw, who's coming to us to talk about cultural awareness training in your mentor and mentee relationship. Welcome, Dr. Branchaw. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and, uh, what brings you here today?

Dr. Branchaw: Thanks very much. I am, uh, an associate professor of kinesiology in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and I'm also the director of the Wisconsin Institute for [00:03:00] Science Education and Community Engagement, and I've been working in research mentor and mentee training for about 20 years, both as a practitioner or director of research training programs, primarily for undergraduates, and then also as a developer and facilitator of training for the mentors of the students in my program.

You know, I'm here to share some of the things we've learned about what folks can do to improve their mentor and mentee relationships, and that's on both sides of the relationship, both as mentors and then also as mentees, 'cause it's really a, a two-way situation.

Dr. McGavock: That's fantastic. Our group is part of a larger group called ENRICH, where we're trying to enhance the mentor-mentee relationship across Canada for anyone working in the child health, maternal health area.

And to be honest, I don't think we've really tackled this well about how to train your mentors in cultural awareness to foster that cultural safety for mentees. First off, I, I got to apologize, uh, [00:04:00] for the smoke, uh, that is hanging over- ... the United States right now. Yeah. On behalf of all of Canada, I'm sorry it, it went south.

Uh, but hopefully-

Dr. Branchaw: It's okay ...

Dr. McGavock: it clears up pretty soon.

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah, we understand. Last week it was, uh, pretty smoky in Wisconsin. Now this week it's kinda moved over to the East Coast, so- ... seeing a lot about it in The New York Times. They're paying attention 'cause it's now in their space.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah. So

Dr. Branchaw: I

Dr. McGavock: also have a kinesiology background- Oh ... and I'm also very passionate about this, so maybe there's something in kinesiology about this.

Um, but maybe just- Yeah ... tell me first, like what drew you to this area generally of, uh, enhancing the mentor-mentee relationship?

Dr. Branchaw: So I guess I am a first-generation college student, and when I went through my graduate training program, it was really a mystery all the way through how it was gonna work, how I was supposed to behave.

In particular, how I was supposed to interact with my research mentor or my thesis mentor. I was in a program, but [00:05:00] it felt really unstructured, and I was in a physiology graduate training program. You know, when you go through undergraduate education, it's pretty clear and easy to figure out what you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to know and how to behave in class when there's a professor there.

And then I found myself in a research lab, and it was a whole new ballgame, right? There were a lot of unwritten rules about the way people behaved and what they did and how they interacted with one another. So the mentor-mentee relationship is really a key relationship. It's at the heart of research training.

That training takes place in a whole research environment and a research culture. That is pretty unstructured and there are a lot of unwritten rules in that space. So I got motivated to work in this space because as I figured out and found my way, I was like, "Why didn't they tell me that? Why wasn't this part of the curriculum?"

Uh, knowing these things or what to expect, and [00:06:00] how to essentially stick up for yourself, figure out what you need, 'cause every research training experience is really unique and different. And every research mentoring relationship is kind of idiosyncratic, right? It, it's between two individuals who have different personalities and come from very different backgrounds, and sometimes they hit it off, sometimes they don't.

It feels like it's the luck of the draw whether it works or it doesn't work, but it really doesn't have to be that way. We can, and there's a lot of evidence to show that learning how to be an effective mentor is possible. Uh, there are best practices, there are approaches and strategies that people can learn that will help them make better connections and be a better mentor for mentees, both who come from backgrounds similar to theirs, and then also for those who come from different backgrounds.

So everybody's experience is different. And I started to realize this as I went through my training. And then after I finished my postdoc work, I [00:07:00] started working at a center for biology education, and I was working in undergraduate research training, and it became really clear for as clueless as I was, many of the undergraduate students that were in the programs that I was running were even more clueless, right?

Who were brand new to research and were trying to figure out what they needed to do to be successful, trying to decipher what their mentors were doing and what their mentors' expectations were. So how to communicate, how to align expectations, these important things. And many of the students who were in my programs were from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in STEM research, and they were all doing STEM research.

So it was kind of a no-brainer that I needed to start to work not just with the students to help them figure out how to navigate, but also to work with their mentors to help their mentors understand better where their students were coming from, how they were perceiving the environment and their interactions with their mentor in ways that might be [00:08:00] very different than what the mentor intended or what, what they thought was happening.

So I teamed up with some people who were starting to develop mentor training on my campus, namely Dr. Jo Handelsman and Dr. Christine Pfund, and we started collaborating and developing training. So- Yeah. And that was like 20 years ago. Yeah. Oh, wow. We've been, we've been chugging along ever since.

Developing training, studying whether it's effective, refining it. Yeah.

Dr. McGavock: That's fantastic. It's such a huge need. 20 years ago, I was going through this myself as a- Mm-hmm ... as a graduate student, and it was sort of like you were mentored by another grad student in the lab who was telling you- Yep ... you know, "Oh, he doesn't like it when you do this, and he doesn't like when you do that.

And if you want to get a hold of him-" Right ... "do this." And I'm saying he purposely. It was almost always men. Yeah. We're seeing a nice shift in that, especially in pediatrics- Yeah ... which is great. So before we get into the recent randomized trial that you did that incorporated- Mm-hmm ... some new elements of cultural awareness training, maybe just talk generally about the training module that you were [00:09:00] working with that was part of this randomized trial that is offered to graduate students, to anyone- Mm-hmm who's gonna be in a mentoring position. So this isn't just for faculty Right. It's for anyone who thinks they're gonna be working with an undergraduate student or mentoring someone.

Dr. Branchaw: Right. So the whole training curriculum is called Entering Mentoring, and, um, it has several modules. Um, we started out, I think, with eight maybe, and now there's as many as 12, and they're available online, the new modules.

So they cover several different mentoring competencies, and one of the original training competencies was around equity and inclusion. And so when we were studying how effective each of these modules were, what we saw was that people showed gains, or they showed learning gains and some intentions to change their behaviors around equity and inclusion.

But frankly, those gains were not what we were hoping for. They were not as big as we would've liked. And across all the competencies, they were, they were the smallest. Hmm. And [00:10:00] so it became clear that we needed to do something different in that space. And so that's where the work on this randomized control trial came up.

We designed a new module for cultural competency to develop people's cultural awareness in mentoring, and it's based on the multicultural competency model, um, and you can see more about that, uh, in this paper. But what became really clear was that it was gonna be a lot more effective if mentors could explore their own cultural identity, right?

And many people from majority backgrounds don't even realize that they have a cultural identity because it's just the s- they're like most of the other people in their environment, so they don't even think about what they're doing as culture. They don't think it, it's unique or different. They just think it's the way everybody is.

Um, and so much of this training is developing their awareness around the fact that, yes, you do have a culture, even if you are from the majority group, and what is that culture? And [00:11:00] how does that shape the way you work and interact with people? How does that shape the environment? And what are the consequences for people who come from different cultural backgrounds who come into that space, and it's not their typical way of interacting, right?

What does that feel like? So in large part, we wanted to raise awareness about the fact that people have a culture, uh, everybody has a culture, and so becoming aware of what that is, and then paying attention when people from other cultures, and looking for opportunities to talk about and connect with others in their work environments, and in this case, in particular, their mentees who are coming from different cultures.

How do you-- In the module, they practice with each other- Asking questions about different cultures or different backgrounds and experiences, because often this feels uncomfortable. They think, "Oh, they're gonna think that I'm just worried about the fact they're from a different race than I am, and [00:12:00] I'm pointing this out."

But in fact, it's really important to understand where someone's coming from if you're gonna effectively mentor them. So the big difference between the first and second module is helping people understand that, um, it's okay to learn about other people's backgrounds and cultures who come into your research group, and you should take this into account in the way that you're interacting with them, and especially providing opportunities for them to practice that in a place that's safe, you know, and where they, they won't worry, like if they make some missteps in the way they speak, it's okay.

This is where we're learning about how to talk about things that maybe we've never talked about before. And I think also making sure people realize that these things affect, uh, the science we do and the way we do it. Often people are like, "Oh, none of that should matter. Science is science. It's all objective."

Well, the people are doing science, and people are all different, and there's human interaction. So these things actually do matter. So [00:13:00] sometimes the biggest gain for folks who participate in the training is realizing that, oh, actually, I should pay attention to this. This is gonna matter for the outcomes of my students and the outcomes of my research.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah, and, uh, you've touched on a real- a couple of really important things here that I think all of our trainees and soon-to-be scholars need to understand. So first, there are these huge racialized gaps, right? So from-

Dr. Branchaw: Yes ...

Dr. McGavock: high school to undergrad, from undergrad to grad school, and then to faculty. It's a pyramid, and it, it's so tiny at the top where these racialized groups make it.

Right. And one of the things that I'm hearing from you is that it's really important to engage with racialized, underrepresented groups to talk about their culture and incorporate that into creating their scientific identity and having- Mm-hmm ... it merge with their cultural identity. Now, as a white person, I feel uncomfortable talking to a Black student about their cultural identity, and my colleagues might say to me, "Science is colorless, Jon."

Right. "We don't have to worry about that." But the more we work in teams, the more you realize that that [00:14:00] diversity is critical to answering those questions, which I, I thought I heard you say. But also that if we wanna keep the pathway open and increase the diversity at the top of that pyramid, we need to understand how to create a culturally safe environment- Right for those underrepresented groups to come through. And it sounds to me like the equity and diversity training that was being offered in your module- Mm-hmm ... just talking about, "Oh, it's just about equity," wasn't enough. Right. And you had to do a bit of a dive into your own biases and your own perceived cultures or cultural beliefs so that you could foster a better training experience for trainees.

Dr. Branchaw: Absolutely. And I think your point about you want your trainees or your mentees to bring their whole self to the team, to the research, because they bring different ways of looking at everything, right? We don't want anybody to feel like they have to leave part of themselves at the door when they walk into the lab.

We want you to bring your whole self, and, you know, you already have a very strong [00:15:00] identity before you come to the training environment, and then you're gonna develop new parts of your identity, and you want those things to ex- coexist in a positive way, right? You don't wanna have to be a different person when you're doing research than when you're not doing research.

So often, especially when working with undergraduate students and graduate students, when they're just getting started in research, they're exploring, like, what kind of a scientist do I want to be? It's not just that. It's like what kind of a, a white scientist or a female scientist or an African American scientist or, you know, whatever your background is, what are all the identities you bring in, and how are those gonna...

how are you gonna still be those and become a s- a scientist that you wanna be? And so that's what mentors, you know, need to create spaces and relationships with mentees that encourage them to do that work, to figure out who they're gonna be. Like, that's the whole job of the mentor.

Dr. McGavock: And as a mentee, you [00:16:00] wanna be seen as a human and as a person and not just- Yes.

Right? So- Yeah, absolutely ... your cultural identity is a big part of who you are, right? If we think about that intersectionality piece, it adds to- Yep ... a whole other group of elements. But if you come into the lab and we're like, "Eh, I just wanna focus on your scientific identity," you might- Right ... not feel safe, and you don't wanna be in that space, and now we're missing out on a lot of diversity in terms of designing, executing studies- Right engaging with patients in research or engaging with- Yeah ... communities in research. Yeah. So it's a huge loss if we can't do that.

Dr. Branchaw: It can feel uncomfortable for mentors, right? They're like, "Oh, there's... My lab environment is different than the way that I imagined it would be." So part of the training is recognizing that you might feel uncomfortable, you probably will feel uncomfortable some of the time, and that's okay to feel uncomfortable.

Like, imagine your mentee is probably feeling uncomfortable a lot of the time, right? Right. So how do you work together and recognize that it... it's part of your responsibility.

Dr. McGavock: I think you better feel uncomfortable. Like if you're- Yeah ... not uncomfortable, you're [00:17:00] probably not doing the work. So-

Dr. Branchaw: Right ...

Dr. McGavock: um, maybe just explain a little bit how the equity competencies that were part of the original training and mentoring program are different from the, the newly developed cultural awareness.

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah. I think probably the easiest way to, to talk about that is the original equity and inclusion training- was really about, it was kind of a safe, objective look at what's happening in the research environment. So we had activities where we'd look at research results that would show, you know, some classical research around if we show you two resumes and one of them is Christine and one of them is Christopher, but they're exactly the same, and people will rate Christopher higher than Christine, right?

So it was other people's work, it was other situations. Um, others were doing, um, these things that were not equitable or creating spaces, providing opportunities to some groups and not other groups, [00:18:00] and just trying to raise awareness that that happens, and here's how you can avoid doing that. But it really wasn't diving into or exploring, you know, yourself and where you came from, and kind of that human piece that we were talking about before and the human interactions.

So I do think, I mean, people gained and they understood and learned new things about creating equitable environments and ways to do, you know, not just do research, but to set up training programs and things like that that would reduce barriers for people from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

But they weren't really engaging in, I'll, I guess I'll call it the deep personal work of how they themselves as a cultural being, as a human being were interacting, or what it was that they were bringing to the environment, how would they personally be contributing to the lack of equity, and what could they do about it.

And so I think that the revised module goes there. It's less safe. People feel [00:19:00] more uncomfortable- Mm-hmm ... when they do it. But I feel like the gains that, and, you know, the data show that they're gaining in ways. And importantly, part of this study was asking the mentees of these mentors whether or not they notice differences, and we did see differences reported by their mentees, which is really important, right?

Because people can learn a lot and think about it, and it's between their ears, but are they doing anything about it? Are they acting on it?

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Branchaw: And in a way that their mentees see it and report seeing it differently.

Dr. McGavock: So yeah, maybe we'll go into the study results, and then I wanna take a step back because- Mm-hmm everything in your module is evidence-based. It's guided by science, right? That National Academies report is this is the scientific evidence- Right ... for how to improve those relationships. But to get into the study, so- Mm-hmm ... I guess every year you enroll hundreds of people, grad- ... right? Graduate student, maybe thousands of people to take this, these modules.

Dr. Branchaw: Right.

Dr. McGavock: Right. And they, [00:20:00] they probably do a pre-post survey, right?

Dr. Branchaw: They do. Yeah. Often they do, yeah.

Dr. McGavock: So did you leverage that to do this randomized control trial? And then talk to us about how that trial was, uh, executed and then what you found.

Dr. Branchaw: Mm-hmm Yeah. So there was previous studies published. So part of the work was also developing scales, uh, to measure these changes.

So we have a m- mentoring competency assessment, we have a mentoring cultural awareness scale. So work leading up to this was involved developing scales so we could actually start to feel confident about measuring changes across all the competencies that are addressed in the training. And so data is being collected, and has been for a while, through the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, which is also at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

And we don't only do the training or implement, facilitate the trainings ourself, we actually train other people from a- um, around the country and across the world to implement this training. [00:21:00] And so we have data from not just people we've trained, but others have trained as well. Um, it became pretty clear that it wasn't gonna be feasible to have enough people to do this training or to provide this training for everybody who needs it.

And so building capacity for others to do the training was really important. So the mentoring competency assessment has shown us that the training is effective, and people, uh, report that there's an increase in skills, and their mentees report when compared to those who are not trained, the mentors who have been trained have greater skills in all of the competency areas.

So th- this study, this... I guess it's kind of relatively small study where we focused on one module, this mentoring competency awareness module, came on the groundwork of all the prior studies that showed that there were gains across all the competencies. In the study, we measure all those competencies and we [00:22:00] see that, as usual, th- there are gains.

To add, there were gains for equity and inclusion, both the comparison group as well as the intervention group with the new module, but they weren't really very, very different until we looked at a couple of specific questions. And so when we dug down, we actually saw that mentees were reporting that their mentors were behaving differently if they had the cultural awareness training versus the equity and inclusion training.

And so I don't wanna, like, go through every single result that - Yeah ... is in the paper because that doesn't seem very useful, but, um, I think importantly, we wanted to know Whether or not the mentors reported increases and whether the students reported that their mentors had increases, and we saw evidence of both of those.

And we were also curious, there's another exploratory question in the study about what were people's attitudes about cultural diversity awareness before they [00:23:00] came in versus, and whether or not that affected the gains. And we did see, we were thinking, you know, if they're more open to this, uh, kind of training and they are more open to the idea that cultural differences matter in mentoring relationships, that they may achieve greater gains, 'cause they're just gonna be more invested and open to learning, and our data also supported that.

So I think that training is important, but I also think that that particular, that exploratory research question also tells us that I don't think this should be the only thing that a campus is doing or an organization is doing. Like complementing all of this with other kinds of trainings or professional development that help people recognize that cultural differences and differences in backgrounds make a difference in our work.

I guess maybe you could say it kinda primes the pump and gets them ready to get the most out of [00:24:00] trainings like this.

Dr. McGavock: So to summarize- Mm-hmm ... if you were to just evaluate the mentors, a mentor goes through cultural awareness training- Mm-hmm ... then they fill out a questionnaire about cultural awareness and-

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah

Dr. McGavock: obviously they're gonna say, "Yeah, much better," right? But it doesn't- Right ... mean that what they've learned or what they've practiced, it sounds like the module had a little more, uh, dialogue in it than just- Yeah, mm-hmm ... um, didactic, that they can feel like they're better. Right. But the real outcome that you found here was that when you interview the mentees, which is sort of- Yeah an objective self-report that the mentees themselves who weren't in the randomization process, so they actually don't know whether their mentors got the EDI training- Right ... the equity training, or their mentors got the cultural awareness training, so they're kind of blinded to that. Mm. Yeah. So in that sense, seeing any improvement in the mentees' perceptions of cultural awareness and cultural diversity skill sets, um, would reflect that there's actually an improvement, um, based on the training, and that's what you found.

Dr. Branchaw: Absolutely right. See, you're much better at summarizing [00:25:00] that. Uh, that's my job. But that's the key, right? Yeah. Like, you gotta, y- you know, you gotta act on it, right? So- Yeah ... it could be that, I think people learn a lot and they report that they learn a lot with both versions of, you know, both the equity and inclusion training and the culturally aware mentoring training, but the mentees reported that they acted on it or they behaved differently.

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Branchaw: So they left with the skills and the confidence that they needed to actually do something about it, and that's really what, at the end of the day, we're looking for, right?

Dr. McGavock: Now, were the mentees all from underrepresented groups? So what- They- Were you trying to find mentor-mentee relationships- Mm-hmm where there was a difference in their, their cultural backgrounds?

Dr. Branchaw: No, not all of them were from underrepresented groups. Most of them were, right? So they were all participating in summer research programs that targeted, um, serving students who were from underrepresented groups, and so they were, in our student sample, they are over-represented.

They were a lot of students from minoritized backgrounds. And then the [00:26:00] mentor pool was, as you were talking about before, was pretty standard, right? It was mostly white or people from, of Asian descent who were, who were the mentors. So it was mostly majority mentors and mostly underrepresented minority mentees.

Dr. McGavock: So can you just give us a little background about what they learned and what they practiced in this module? And I think Angela Byars-Winston- Mm-hmm ... um, who has done a lot of research in this space, was involved in kinda developing this curriculum

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah. So I wasn't part of the group that actually developed the curriculum.

I can tell you that they-- and this is outlined in the paper too, so they actually do a little online pre-module that gives them some baseline information similar to what the original equity and inclusion module gave, so that when they come to the training, they have, you know, some basic vocabulary and a common understanding of what it, what those words mean and how they're using [00:27:00] them, and then just some background about what the situation is, right?

What research tells us. And then they watch a video that is an animation that's not new. It's called the Story of O. Some of you may have heard of this. It's about X's and O's and what it's like to be... like when- if you're an O and you're in a group of X's, or if you're an X and you're in a group of O's.

So it's pretty safe and easy way to kind of set the stage and have people think about if you're the one and only who's like you in a group, and what does that mean. They complete a self-assessment that helps them understand where they're coming from and review some background information about what it means for people who are interacting from different races in research environments, and also talking about kind of the power dynamics of the mentor-mentee relationship and what that does in this situation, kind of exacerbates what's going on.

They participate and discuss a case [00:28:00] scenario, and they do some role playing, so it introduces some kind of a sticky situation. Um, and then they can practice with one another how they would handle that. Exactly what would I say in that situation, and how would I go through that? It's a two-hour experience, not counting the prior online learning module.

Dr. McGavock: So two hours is a short exposure time, um-

Dr. Branchaw: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ...

Dr. McGavock: but it involves some practice, involves some non-didactic work, right? Which I think-

Dr. Branchaw: And actually, this kind of training really is so much more effective non-didactic, right? Yeah. I mean, just telling people what to do does not... Like, you really have to put them in situations.

Like the little video makes you feel uncomfortable. You're like, "Ooh, I would really not wanna be an X in that O environment." Right? You know. It makes you just un- uncomfortable enough so that you're motivated to think hard about what would I do in that situation and how would I, how would I respond.

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm

Dr. Branchaw: So I would say it's kind of provoking.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah. Well, and [00:29:00] it sh- and I think, uh, thinking about some of the anti-racism training that I've, uh, been involved in- Mm-hmm ... and in Canada we work a lot with indigenous communities, and the-

Dr. Branchaw: Mm-hmm ...

Dr. McGavock: elders and grandmothers, knowledge keepers are just saying, "We're done with cultural awareness. You're racist, and I want you to be less racist."

Mm. "And let's move into that space." So that gets even more uncomfortable, right? Because now- Yeah ... you're just facing it right on. There's, the reason why the cultural diversity isn't there at the upper level of academia is really, you know, racial oppression for- Right ... people of color. And so they've asked us to kind of dive into that a little bit more, which is if X's and O's are uncomfortable-

Dr. Branchaw: Oh, yeah

Dr. McGavock: then identifying oppression and-

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah ...

Dr. McGavock: that was my next question was to say thinking about something like critical race theory or within indigenous communities we talk about truth and reconciliation. And so-

Dr. Branchaw: Mm-hmm ...

Dr. McGavock: some of this training will incorporate what the truths are that some of these- Yeah structural factors were colonial or were white-

Dr. Branchaw: Right ...

Dr. McGavock: white [00:30:00] supremacist derived, and then they're, they're still persistent or there's still a legacy of it. Mm-hmm. And then how do we as the kind of oppressed group deal with that? Right. And i- is there any discussion about, uh, moving into that space with this kind of, uh, work?

Dr. Branchaw: Well, in terms of training individuals, most of the focus in the discussion is about your research team, right? Especially if it's with faculty in the group and creating a space there. But I think kinda the next level up, I think it's gonna be important to work with the training program directors, right?

Like, and, and then you could go up, then you're in the department, or then you're in, you know, the school or college. Um-

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm ...

Dr. Branchaw: so in this training, it's really about... So people get uncomfortable. They're like, "Well, what can I do in my space?" I think getting them to come is also an issue. They're gonna be uncomfortable, but they have to be willing to come.

It's a very interesting dynamic when some people are required to take this training, and then others are [00:31:00] simply coming because they wanna grow and they wanna learn. And the sessions play out very differently depending on which group you have. And so importantly, I think you have to meet people where they are.

People are gonna feel uncomfortable, and they're gonna feel bad. "Oh my goodness, I'm part of the problem. I-- First, I didn't even really realize there was-- what the problem was. I kinda knew there was a problem 'cause, so I'm here. And now that I understand the problem a little better and, uh, and I realize I'm part of it," that's really tough for folks.

I think the training needs to m-move. First, you need to f-find out where people are and go there, and then move from there, right? So the gains people make really depend on... You can have the same magnitude gain, but it might just be like, "I wasn't even aware this was an issue, and now I'm aware." Or others will come in and they'll say, "Yeah, I know all about this, and I'm really interested.

I really wanna work on strategies, and I wanna work on next level change, not just in my lab, but I wanna work on the department, or I wanna work on the [00:32:00] institution, and what can I do?" I feel like we have to be working on training and discussing all of this at all of those levels simultaneously as people move along this continuum of the opportunities for action and opportunities to change what they're doing and how they're, how they're behaving.

So I feel like the next level up at the training program, because this is a community, right? When you bring in a, a group of residents or a group of graduate students or undergraduates or whatever it is, your trainees, you can build an, um, inclusive and welcoming community there. You can engage all of your mentors in the program in that work and doing that together So I feel like that's next level up.

When we do these mentor trainings, and we do them, you know, across the country, we, we often have people come, and they're coming from all different institutions, so they're pretty focused on their own research group. But when we go to an institution and we'll work with a whole program or a whole department, [00:33:00] there's opportunity for next level change in that space.

So individuals have to move, but then getting them to come together to move the institution, then we can start to see broader change.

Dr. McGavock: I love that. Yeah, and I d- I didn't think about that in the trial, but if you did this within your own institution with all of your colleagues, there's a lot of peer influence and, uh, you're not just the one.

You know, like, "Oh yeah, that-"

Dr. Branchaw: Right. "

Dr. McGavock: Yeah, go talk to, uh, Janet. Janet's the one that deals with cultural awareness in the faculty." Right, right. It's everyone. And that's what changes- Yeah ... the culture of your whole department, is when everyone- Yeah ... is moving-

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah ...

Dr. McGavock: in the right direction.

Dr. Branchaw: And you're also holding each other accountable.

You kind of get on the same page. I think that happens a lot where it's like, "Oh, you know, all the minority students do well in that person's lab, so... But that can't be what we're doing, right?" Mm-hmm. Like, we need to be thinking, we want those students from marginalized groups to be doing in, well in everybody's group.

Mm-hmm. Like, how do we all take it up a notch? People hold their [00:34:00] colleagues accountable, right? If this is some- You don't wanna be the one who's, who doesn't get it or who isn't able to function- Or- ... in this space, so.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah, or if you're a dean or a research lab and people are like, "Oh, I would love to work with, um, racialized minority students, but they just don't seem to apply to our college," and you're like, "Well, maybe there's a reason why they-" Who's that?

Yeah. What i- what's, uh- Yeah ... what is it about your college that they're not really drawn to? And so shifting this culture- Mm-hmm ... of the whole, either your entire research group, your entire department, your entire faculty, starts to initiate the change that-

Dr. Branchaw: Right ...

Dr. McGavock: you know, attracts people into that space.

Can you just give me a little example? So if I'm asked to do it, I'm not gonna say forced to do it, but if I'm strongly encouraged, right? You know, you have- Uh-huh ... to do this training. This is part of your- Mm-hmm ... academic promotion and tenure, as an example. Right. Or- Right ... "Hey, guys, we're doing this on a Saturday.

We have a group coming in from Wisconsin. They're really awesome. If you have time, come and do this." So now we've got two different approaches, and you said you do see differences, [00:35:00] right? A little bit

Dr. Branchaw: We do see differences, yeah. Yeah, what are

Dr. McGavock: those?

Dr. Branchaw: I mean, well, in the United States, our federal funding agencies are now requiring in different programs that mentors be trained.

You know, one of the things that's happening is, you know, if you wanna be a trainer on our training grant, you have to go through research mentor training. And so I think you have to have really strong facilitators in those groups because there'll be people who say, "I've been doing this for years, I don't need to be trained."

And so one of the things you can do with those folks is acknowledge all the knowledge and experience that they do bring to the table. That's the thing about this training. When we're working with faculty in particular who've been doing mentoring a lot, I learn something new, I should say, every time I facilitate from the people who are in the session with me.

From the get-go, we encourage them to contribute and participate and share their own experiences. It's more difficult to facilitate these trainings when people feel like they don't have anything to learn, they're just there because to, they're [00:36:00] required to learn. But one of the ways to get them engaged is to invite them to share all that they've learned.

And usually by the end they're saying, "Actually, this was really helpful. I hadn't thought about it in that way." But it takes a while for them to realize that they can learn from their peers and they can learn from the curriculum. So I think their gains are not as great, although I don't have hard data to show that.

Whereas when we train graduate students, for example, they come in and they're just so eager. Yeah. They're like, "Yeah, you know, I wanna learn all the things because I haven't done this," and so it feels like we get a lot farther with them, but they start from a very naive place. I think one of the things for people who are a little reluctant, we can show them evidence that if they have a more diverse research group, they will do better science.

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Branchaw: Right? There is a lot of evidence there. So oftentimes people who are kind of reluctant, we can say to them, "Look, this training will help you recruit, retain, and work more effectively with people from different backgrounds, and that's gonna help you do better [00:37:00] science and get more research money and, you know, publish more papers."

All the things that we all wanna do as scientists, so.

Dr. McGavock: If you don't wanna be a better human, just focus on the science, right?

Dr. Branchaw: Exactly.

Dr. McGavock: Exactly. It's okay. Right? I'll talk, I'll talk to you in your language. But I totally agree, you gotta meet some people where they're at. Right. And the other thing that I love to hear from you is something that I think I've seen over and over again, is that that next generation is so- Mm-hmm ready and keen for this. And so, you know- Yeah ... this, we're talking to pediatric residents, you're gonna be mentoring in the future, right? And-

Dr. Branchaw: Oh, yeah ...

Dr. McGavock: the re- the reason I was really excited to talk to you and, and to show this kind of work to the residents is you guys gotta get trained in this too. Like, don't perpetuate some of these bad mentoring practices, right?

Oh, yeah. Get yourself ready to do this kind of work. Yeah. And as more and more diverse students are coming in, we wanna make sure those pipelines are wide open for you to rise to the top. And that'll happen if our residents and our trainees engage in this in a really deep way.

Dr. Branchaw: I agree You know, when we talk to seasoned, really good mentors, we [00:38:00] will often say, "Why are you here to get this training?"

And they'll say, "Well, I had a great mentor, and I wanna be a good mentor because it made such a big deal." And then on the other side, we'll also have people who say, "I had awful mentors, and I need to make sure that I don't do what they did, and I need to learn something different." So for the people who are willing to come and interested in coming, but who are more experienced, that's often what we see.

Younger people, or people earlier in their careers I should say, are interested in developing these skills because they're just learning how to do it. But they also recognize, "Oh, this helps me understand better how it is for my mentor." Mm-hmm. Something that happens with the graduate students, they'll be working with an undergraduate, and they'll have some challenges, and along the way they start to appreciate their own mentors.

They say, "Oh, I'm having trouble. This one student is driving me crazy in this one way," or, "I'm not sure what to do." And then I think about my own mentor and say, "Oh, you know, she's got eight people that she has to... I just have [00:39:00] one."

Dr. McGavock: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Branchaw: I can't imagine how hard this is to work with eight different people, right?

So they start to also develop some empathy for what it is, and in that they learn how to be a better mentee.

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Branchaw: So they learn how to mentor up, how to help their mentor help them.

Dr. McGavock: Oh, that's, that's also great.

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah, we have a whole parallel curriculum called Entering Research-

Dr. McGavock: Hmm ...

Dr. Branchaw: for mentees.

Dr. McGavock: Do you fly up to Canada?

Do you drive up to Canada? Wisconsin's not that far.

Dr. Branchaw: We drive.

Dr. McGavock: Pretty sure we share a border. Uh, yeah, we'll open that up too and say, you know, maybe one day we, we will have, you know, your group traveling across Canada to provide both of these. And just to add to what you were saying, it's- Yeah ... I keep thinking that there's this karaoke effect.

So you've heard, you've heard a song a million times, right? And you're like, "Oh, I love that song." Mm-hmm. And so you get up on stage, and you go to sing it, and you're like, "I can't. I'm terrible," right? And I'm thinking about it in the writing context, working with trainees who are moving from reading a million papers to now having to write- Oh, yeah their first paper. It's like there's no translation. It's like you- Right ... it's like you didn't even read the [00:40:00] papers. And now I think the same thing, right, about mentoring. If you had great mentors, and now you're like, "I wanna be like that," right? Mm-hmm. And then you're thrown into the mentor experience, you can't really identify what it was about that relationship- Right that would make you a good mentor. It's practice. It's like karaoke. It's like you've gotta get- Yeah ... really good at it by having the skillsets- Mm-hmm ... maybe having the boundaries, but then putting yourself inside of it.

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah. It really is idiosyncratic. I mean, there are definitely best practices and strategies and things like that, but at the heart of it, it's human interaction.

Mm-hmm. And so listening is so important, and then there's a lot you can do proactively, but then you also have to be reactive and ready to be flexible, change what it is you thought you should be doing, um, to meet the needs of the mentee. I mean, at the end of the day, in my mind, someone who works in with research trainees mostly, the success of the trainee is the measure for me of the quality of the mentoring relationship.

Dr. McGavock: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Branchaw: Like, is the mentee... And, [00:41:00] and how do we define that success? Like, what is it that the mentee wants to achieve? Where are they trying to get? What are they trying to do? And the only way that's gonna work is if the mentor is listening to them, understands where they're coming from, helps them figure out, what do I need to do to get to where I wanna go, and not have preconceived notions about, oh, everybody who comes in my lab is gonna go to this track.

They have this kind of background, and then they're gonna go out in this way. So every mentee-mentor relationship is different because every trainee who comes in is different.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah, and that could be like the follow-up of your trial, which is those undergraduate students, how many of them decided that grad school was the place for them, or medical school- Right or whatever because they felt like they were seen, that their own personal identity was celebrated? and brought in so that as they develop a scientific identity, it merges together with their cultural or their personal identity and- Right ... they see a place for them in, in this space.

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that long-term tracking, that's hard work, but at the end of the [00:42:00] day, I think that that's really what matters.

Are we changing the composition of all the folks who are at the top of that triangle that you were talking about? Yeah.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah. Does that,

Dr. Branchaw: does that look different 10 years from now, 20 years from now?

Dr. McGavock: God,

Dr. Branchaw: I hope so. I think if this, if this stuff is working-

Dr. McGavock: Yes ...

Dr. Branchaw: it should look different.

Dr. McGavock: And it's our job. Like right now we're at the top of that pyramid, and it's our job to create- Yep that space, uh, so that looks a lot different than what it was when we came into it.

Dr. Branchaw: Right.

Dr. McGavock: Um, okay, so for any trainees, this was wonderful. Um, and for trainees looking to either go beyond after your training or to get into this space for the first time- Mm ... any recommended readings, resources, places-

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah. I think the fir- the first thing I'd recommend is the National Academies report on the science of effective mentorship that came out, I think 2019, 2020.

I can't remember now off the top of my head. Um, but that is a great kind of summary of the literature on this. So then you can find many, many things there about what we know about effective mentorship in STEM. This is all in STEM. [00:43:00] And the other thing I'd recommend is all the trainings that I'm talking about are offered through the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, or CIMER, and that's at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But it's a national center, so we provide trainings for people all over the country, and we customize trainings depending on what institutions need or individuals need. So when trainees feel like they're ready for some training, they can go there. There's also, um, some self-paced modules that the University of Minnesota offers.

Okay. We're also on the border with Canada- Yeah ... so right down the street, right? Yeah. Those are places to start, and there's lots of links and references in those.

Dr. McGavock: And we'll put a link to that on our website, especially the chapter on diversity and inclusion in, in mentoring and cultural- Mm-hmm ... awareness.

And actually, when I was going to find to go through the, uh, the National Academies module or the whole- Mm-hmm ... you know, training textbook, it... they do have podcasts. They have a series of podcasts that they've created- Yeah ... [00:44:00] on mentoring, so we'll put a link to that, too, and if you're really keen on this- Yeah we can, uh, we can share that.

Dr. Branchaw: Yeah, there's an online guide that goes with that report. Yeah, so there's like a website. There's podcasts. There's lots of great stuff there. So I'd forgotten about those podcasts. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

Dr. McGavock: That's great. Um, thank you so much. Uh, we're really grateful- Mm-hmm for you taking time to share that with us. We'll put links to these resources. We look forward to anything, uh, that's coming through your research institute, uh, in the near future. And any final words for residents or trainees out there that are hoping to become great mentors one day?

Dr. Branchaw: There's training available, but it's mostly about being open and, um, interested in listening to your trainees and not feeling constrained.

So be creative and work as a team with your mentee. Excellent. You don't have to know it all, like work together.

Dr. McGavock: Yeah, be vulnerable.

Dr. Branchaw: Mm-hmm.

Dr. McGavock: That's excellent. Okay. Well, thanks again, and, uh, we look forward to having you. Maybe we'll have your team up into [00:45:00] Canada to do some training with residents in, uh-

Dr. Branchaw: Fantastic

Dr. McGavock: in the next year or so. We'd love to come. So that'd be great. Okay. Um-

Dr. Branchaw: All right. Thank you ...

Dr. McGavock: thank you.

That was a very insightful conversation with Dr. Janet Branchaw about a really interesting clinical trial and methods on how to properly bring equity and culture into your research space as a research mentor. Be sure to join us for episode 14 where we continue this discussion in the final episode of season one with Dr.

Jonathan Jackson about how to bring equity inclusion into the design and delivery of randomized control trials and other clinical epidemiological studies. Thanks for listening. The Emerging Scholar Podcast was recorded in the UMFM studios located at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

This is Treaty 1 territory, the original homeland of the Anishinaabe, the Ininew, and on the national homeland of the Red River Métis. Manitoba is also homeland to the [00:46:00] Anishininew, the Dakota Oyate, and the Dene peoples. We acknowledge that our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation. As a settler scientist working in health research, I acknowledge TRC Call to Action Number 18, that health inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are the direct result of colonization.

Winnipeg is the center for reconciliation in Canada, and where we are speaking from today is at the crossroads of Canada's history and Canada's future. We are three kilometers away from one of the most sacred meeting grounds for Indigenous people on the plains and within Turtle Island. We are also several kilometers away from one of the last residential schools in the province.

We are working collectively on reconcili-action with youth, elders, and community leaders to heal from the trauma of colonization, past and present, honor the original treaties, and create a Canada that addresses and eliminates the inequities and injustices of the past and present to create a future for Indigenous children to live and [00:47:00] thrive.

On behalf of the team at The Emerging Scholar Podcast, we want to thank Osani Balkaran for the great production for our opening and closing themes. We also want to thank UMFM 101.5, especially co-producer Jared McKetiak for technical assistance and production on this project. We also want to thank all of our guests for the discussion and the insight that they've provided.

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