MentorNet (www.MentorNet.net) was founded in 1997 as an innovative large-scale electronic mentoring strategy, pairing women studying engineering and related sciences at colleges and universities with female and male professionals in industry for yearlong, structured mentoring relationships, conducted via email. MentorNet has grown into an online community, leveraging its extensive web site, email, and other electronic communications technologies and related systems and software to offer structured one-on-one, group and peer mentoring for its members on a large scale. Over the last five years, MentorNet has matched nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students with e-mentors working in industry and government in its One-on-One mentoring program; it has also received numerous requests from both students and faculty to support academic e-mentoring.
Based on results of past work, evaluation findings and other research, the PI proposes to expand MentorNet into MentorNet ACE, a new project focused on substantially refining and expanding MentorNet.s programs to include e-mentoring services addressing the needs of women students and untenured faculty seeking or pursuing academic science and engineering careers. To that end, MentorNet plans to develop specialized components of its One-on-One Mentoring Program, enabling one-on-one mentoring relationships based on 1) matching graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with tenured faculty members as mentors, and 2) matching untenured faculty with tenured faculty mentors. MentorNet will develop a comprehensive approach for this project, with programmatic features tailored to the needs of the specific protege-mentor populations.
