Advancing Inclusive Mentoring: CSULB's Mentor Training Program for Faculty

By Kelly Young, PhD

California State University Long Beach’s BUILD program continues to promote student success with its Advancing Inclusive Mentoring (AIM) initiative. The overarching goals of AIM are to provide a variety of engaging faculty training resources to promote student success through positive and inclusive mentoring. Called “Beach Mentor” at CSULB, AIM has trained over 150 mentors at the CSULB campus.

“Because student involvement in high impact practices such as research, scholarly, and creative activities boost student success—particularly when associated with strong mentorship—learning the best practices for mentoring is a critical component of facilitating student success,” said Kelly Young, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences at CSULB who serves as Co-Director for the BUILD program’s Research Enrichment Core.

The AIM Program works towards that goal by providing a hybrid program that includes 35 videos across six learning modules accompanied by six synchronous discussions to build a community of practice around mentoring on campus. The  videos feature faculty and staff members from around the CSULB campus who share tips and ideas on best practices in mentoring, along with re-enactments of student/professor scenarios that are based on real mentoring stories collected from the CSULB community.  

The AIM modules are structured to meet key learning outcomes and include: Communicating with your Mentee; Inclusive Mentoring; Cultivating Mentee Growth & Development; Facilitating Mentee Health & Wellbeing; Mentee-Centered Mentoring; and a Mentoring Toolbox. These modules not only cover critical topics such as social justice mentoring and issues of equity, combating discrimination, and culturally aware mentoring—they also help to define the broad role of an undergraduate mentor. 

In addition to the videos, AIM ‘Top Tips’ handouts for each of the 35 episodes are provided to participants, along with additional outside resources. Following completion of the self-paced, six-hour Beach Mentor program, which includes module quizzes, members can earn a certificate of completion. A Leader’s Manual encourages sharing of experiences and expertise within the discussion group. The manual provides group activities, discussion prompts, and session notes for these facilitated discussions. 

“The AIM Program shares key mentoring practices that, when used by faculty mentors on campus, can help students feel welcomed, empowered, supported, and geared for success,” Young said.

If you are interested in bringing the AIM program to your campus, please contact Kelly Young at Kelly.young@csulb.edu. 

Any interested mentor can enroll in the online portion of the course on Canvas and instructions on how to enroll are available here. Information on the creation of the AIM program (called Beach Mentor at CSULB) is available here.