Hi Jay

These are great questions.  Atmospheric science is a discipline that encompasses many of the STEM disciplines (and, as you mentioned, some humanities too), so there is no one "right way" to our field. SOARS proteges come from universities and colleges across the nation and usually come in with majors in atmospheric science, meteorology, geography, math, engineering, physics or chemistry, though we do occasionally get social scientists with an interest in the atmospheric sciences. As such, their background preparation does vary considerably. We work to find projects that fit the individual's interest, and support them in developing skills they might need, for instance by providing a computing and a writing mentor. This is an advantage of being at a national lab like NCAR where our scientist-mentors also have broad expertise and backgrounds. For a student interested in the atmospheric and related sciences, I would say that having experience with some sort of physical science and math courses and some form of programming definitely makes the transition to research a bit easier, and my advice to all students who are interested in a career in STEM, whatever field they are interested in, is to try and get some computational experience, whether as part of your major or through an online course.

Our recruiting strategy is multi-faceted. Word of mouth, from our proteges, alumni and the very many professors who have worked with our students over the last two decades remains the most valuable. We are lucky to be part of UCAR - the University Collaboration for Atmospheric Research - which is a collaboration of nearly all the universities with atmospheric science and meteorology programs. We also recruit at meetings specific to our field (e.g. AMS, AGU) and at broader conferences aimed at supporting underrepresented students in STEM (e.g. SACNAS). You are right that reaching students and faculty who might not be at these sort of meetings or already involved in atmospheric science is harder, and in recent years we have been working with partners in the REU community to talk about undergraduate research and internship opportunities more generally with 2 year and other college students and faculty through webinars, listserves, talking at meetings and workshops. Thankfully our reach seems to be good - over the 22 years SOARS has been running, our ~ 200 proteges have come from more than 75 institutions. 

You also raise a great question regarding the social sciences and humanities. We definitely see the interest in the intersection of social and physical sciences from our proteges, and meeting the demand for research projects in this space is sometimes a bit tricky. I would love to see more graduate programs that offer (funded) opportunities in this area, as doing science for the benefit of society is without doubt a motivator for many of our proteges and applicants and is a great fit for the atmospheric science field.

Thanks for engaging, and please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have more questions.

Thank you for this very detailed and helpful response!

Jay

Thanks for watching! Long-term investment is vital in a program like this, because it just takes time for an undergraduate to become a graduate to become a postdoc and to end up in leadership positions. We've been very fortunate to have funding support for so long, and our alumni are now in faculty positions, becoming leaders in companies and rising within the federal government.  A success has been maintaining relationships with our proteges as they move beyond the summer program, and we have a very engaged alumni. Because they can participate in the program for multiple years, there are strong personal connections across cohorts, and we work hard to connect them across the decades the program has been running, for instance through gatherings at national meetings, invitations to serve as speakers and mentors and through emails, newsletters and a closed facebook space.  I think for many programs keeping a connection with alumni and tracking their career paths is a challenge, especially with short-term funding cycles. Technology has helped in this realm (especially linked in, facebook and similar). An interesting but exciting challenge has been how we keep our mentoring relevant for ALL our proteges - while we were established to support undergraduates moving into graduate school and we now know how to do this pretty well, we continue to be mentors and career coaches for our alumni, so also do our best to keep abreast with initiatives and research on supporting, for example, early career minority faculty. It has been fun to share ideas and resources with them on supporting their own undergraduate and graduate students, and gratifying to see them handing their own experiences in SOARS to the next generation. 

Along those lines, I am interested in knowing more about how you prepare the mentors.  Do you provide any training opportunities for them?

Dear Alexander, 

Your Cal-Bridge program sounds so great from your video! Thank you for sharing and I'm happy to meet whenever you are in town! 

Lorena

Hi Cathryn,

Thanks for watching and your thoughtful questions.  For our alumni, the support they need varies a lot, but is most often needed during periods of change - for instance having someone to talk through moves between MS and PhD programs or a career transition, or perhaps having someone to read through postdoc applications and offer suggestions. It has also proven valuable for some of our alumni to have someone to talk through challenging situations who is fully independent of the workplace.  We have also been able to share resources regarding mentoring and structuring student research as our alumni start to work with students themselves.

Your question about what the older mentors are learning from the younger mentors and students is also a good one. We have informally started to survey the mentors, and many of them say that the students bring enthusiasm and new ideas which helps revitalize their own interest, gives them the opportunity to explore new ideas that they may not have thought about or had time to pursue, and strengthens their commitment to diversity and inclusion. A lot of them also acknowledge the new relationships that they have been able to develop with other mentors, as the multi-mentoring structure brings people together that may not have previously known or had the chance to work together. Over the years many of our mentors have moved between NCAR and academia (the NCAR postdocs frequently mentor for SOARS) and it is great to see some of them also recruiting and supporting our students in graduate school and beyond.

While UCAR is surveying the culture of our organization, we have not specifically looked at the impact of SOARS on that culture - that would be a great question for future research!

Thank you.  Our EarthConnections Includes project is also focusing on long term mentoring and we are excited to learn from you.  http://stemforall2018.videohall.com/presentatio...

Cathy