Retention

Ron Metoyer (1) , Manuel Pérez Quiñones (2) , Anastasia Bazerianos (3, 4) , Jonathan Woodring (5)

1 UND - University of Notre Dame [Indiana]
2 UNC - University of North Carolina [Charlotte]
3 ILDA - Interacting with Large Data
4 LRI - Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique
5 LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory

Many factors are important for the retention of women and underrepresented minorities in the STEM fields. According to the National Academies of Science, for example, efforts to recruit and retain underrepresented minorities must be urgent, and sustained; comprehensive in addressing the full pathway pipeline; intensive to address inadequate social, educational, and financial support; coordinated across groups and organization; and informed by best practices [121]. An intensive effort, in particular, is a focused intervention that that seeks to fill in the gaps and level the field for those who have not had the same level of exposure to STEM as others. These gaps may be in financial support, mentoring, social integration, and professional development. Similar recommendations for focused interventions have been made with regards to retaining women in STEM [122]. In this section, we will examine targeted efforts to mentor and integrate underrepresented groups into a research community. Mentoring is a crucial component of the success of graduate students, post docs, and junior faculty alike, particularly for women and underrepresented minorities. Mentors serve as role models, supporters, advocates, advisers, and more. While the “match” model of assigning a more senior experienced person (e.g. Full Professor) to a less experienced mentee (e.g. Assistant Professor) has historically been employed in many institutions and organizations, a new “network model” has emerged as a popular alternative in recent years ([123]). In this model, 1) the individual mentor is replaced or augmented by a network of mentors where each fills a specific mentor- ing need for the mentee and 2) the mentee is an active participant in creating that mentor network. While the traditional model has merits, some argue that this net- work model (also known as multiple mentoring) is even more effective in providing multiple targeted sources of accountability as well as resources for collaboration and sponsorship in various aspects of the academic career. Implementing a mentoring policy such as this is typically not the responsibility of a research community, but rather an employer. However, supporting the building and utilization of such net- works can be accomplished by a determined research community and can benefit that community in the long run. In the next section, we present two efforts, CHIMe and Visbuddies, from two different conferences, that attempt to create the environ- ment in which these kinds of networks can be formed and cultivated in support of graduate students in one case, and in support of newcomers to a research conference in the other.

Mots clés: information visualization; mentoring; inclusion; diversity

Domaines: Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]; Informatique [cs]

Ron Metoyer, Manuel Pérez Quiñones, Anastasia Bazerianos, Jonathan Woodring. Retention. Ron Metoyer; Kelly Gaither. Diversity in Visualization, 6 (1), Morgan & Claypool Publisers, pp.39-52, 2019, ⟨10.2200/S00894ED1V01Y201901VIS010⟩. ⟨hal-02562448⟩