(554d) Preliminary Findings from Research on Inclusive Mentoring Strategies for Neurodivergent Undergraduate Researchers in STEM

Undergraduate research opportunities improve retention, increase confidence, and support better overall academic performance for underrepresented students in STEM. Neurodiversity is a term used to encompass all individuals, inclusive of both neurodivergent and neurotypical. The neurodivergent community is often inappropriately perceived to have disadvantages associated with STEM-based research and faces exacerbated challenges when pursuing undergraduate research with STEM faculty. Despite the increase in STEM students who report disabilities, few resources are available to train mentors to work with this population. Our team seeks to investigate different mentoring strategies that support neurodivergent STEM undergraduate researchers to thrive. The aim is that this project will provide educators with information that can improve how we attract, support, retain, and graduate a neurodiverse population of engineering students. Additionally, increasing the success of neurodivergent STEM undergraduate students through mentorship not only broadens participation in STEM but also provides more role models for current and future students. To assess our aims, we created a survey for the undergraduate research community. After the publication of a work-in-progress paper in the summer of 2022, we updated our survey questions from feedback at the American Society for Engineering Education annual meeting, this was followed by the conduction of cognitive interviews on our assessments. From these cognitive interviews, our quantitative questions were again updated. Then, the survey was sent out to undergraduate students across STEM disciplines. Both neurotypical and neurodivergent students were surveyed. Survey questions explored students’ experiences with mentorship, research, thriving, and background information. This presentation details the quantitative results from the survey questions with engineering students who participated in undergraduate research. Future work will detail interviews with students and faculty on their experiences with mentorship and the STEM research environment.