Training

CIMER Principal Facilitators can provide trainings for individuals, institutions, and organizations across the country to optimize research mentoring relationships. Learn more about each of these trainings below, including how to attend a public training hosted by CIMER or host a private training. If you have questions, please contact us at cimer@wcer.wisc.edu.

Research Mentor Training and Managing Mentoring Relationships are all currently designed to be hosted by your institution for a group of 24-32 participants. We are currently focusing on in-person workshops offered at your institution (private) with exceptions made on a case by case basis. 

Our facilitator trainings (Entering Mentoring and Entering Research Curriculum Development Institute) are offered to the public on a first come first served basis (private trainings may be available). Registration-based facilitator workshops (generally offered at UW Madison) are offered virtually during the winter months and in-person during warmer calendar months. Registration costs are per person and do not include travel and hotel costs for in person trainings.

Mentor Training

Mentor Training For all career stages. Mentors of research trainees learn to:
  • Align expectations
  • Articulate a mentoring philosophy and plan
  • Assess understanding
  • Cultivate ethical behavior
  • Enhance work-life integration
  • Enhance cultural awareness
  • Foster independence
  • Foster well-being
  • Maintain effective communication
  • Promote mentee research self-efficacy
  • Promote professional development
  • Reflect on diversity and establish a practice of inclusion
More about mentor training

Entering Research Curriculum Development Institute

Mentee Training Undergraduate and Graduate students learn to:
    • Research communication and comprehension
    • Practical research
    • Researcher identity
    • Researcher confidence and independence
    • Equity and inclusion awareness
    • Professional and career development
    • Mentoring
Participants become familiar with the curriculum, build a custom curriculum using a backward design approach, learn how to effectively facilitate Entering Research curricular activities, and learn to use the Entering Research Learning Assessment (ERLA) to assess research trainee learning and development. This is a workshop designed to be used with trainees in a research environment. Note, this is not “train the trainer” workshop for mentors. More about mentee training & curriculum development

Managing Mentoring Relationships

mentoring relationships Post-docs and junior faculty learn to:
  • Build research self-efficacy
  • Align expectations
  • Maintain effective communication
  • Reflect on diversity and establish a practice of inclusion
  • Enhance work-life integration
  • Foster independence
  • Promote professional development
  • More about managing mentor and/or mentee relationships

Culturally Aware Mentoring

Research shows that culturally diverse teams outperform and out-innovate culturally homogenous teams, and lead to better science. But addressing cultural diversity can be daunting. In recent times, we have been confronted with the difficulties of racial discussions and the legacy of racism in our institutions. Research is not insulated from these dynamics. This CIMER CAM workshop is one effort to increase effective mentorship toward advancing equity and inclusion in science (Byars-Winston et al., 2018).

While there are many aspects to cultural diversity, the CIMER CAM workshop focuses primarily on race within the US. Extrapolations can easily be made to other aspects of cultural diversity beyond race. CAM workshops are advanced trainings intended for mentors who have already completed core mentorship education and reflected on their practice. Therefore, prior mentor training is a prerequisite. If your participants have not had mentorship education, then we recommend you begin with a research mentor training course that includes at least 4 hours of training prior to a CAM workshop. CIMER offers core mentorship education workshops including Entering Mentoring or Managing Mentoring Relationships (or Mentoring Up).

If you are unable to meet the prerequisite core mentorship education for the CAM workshop, shorter mentorship education courses might be more appropriate for you. A number of offerings exist through the National Research Mentoring Network courses page as well as the University of Minnesota’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, all of which cover topics of cultural diversity within mentorship.

At CIMER, we also offer the Enhancing Cultural Awareness (ECA) module, which is a 2-hour module that can be incorporated into Entering Mentoring. The ECA module (Black et al., 2022Byars-Winston et al., 2023) offers participants an expanded, rich discussion of cultural diversity matters within the core Entering Mentoring workshop  The ECA module is available upon request. To request a PDF of the ECA module materials including a facilitation guide and participant materials, please fill out this form.

We offer both hosted and public Culturally Aware Mentoring (CAM) workshops. Regardless of format, these workshops are led by two CIMER Principal Facilitators and participants are asked to complete roughly two hours of pre work (in addition to the prior mentor training):

  • Hosted/private trainings consist of a full-day in-person workshop at your institution
  • Public trainings, open to individuals, are offered online as three 3-hour sessions over Zoom, held one week apart. Sign up here to be notified when new workshops are scheduled.

See our CAM brochure for more information.

Facilitation Workshops

Workshops are offered online and in person. Online trainings span over one week with synchronous and some asynchronous sessions. In person workshops are held over two full days onsite. These workshops are available for private trainings as well as public trainings hosted by CIMER.

facilitator training Faculty, instructors, staff, or administrators learn to:

  • Facilitate mentor training for all career stages
  • Develop a curriculum and facilitate Entering Research to use with research trainees (mentees)
  • Build and deliver customized workshops or courses for research mentors or mentees

Entering Mentoring Workshop: Learn to implement mentor training

Entering Research Workshop: Learn to implement & develop a mentee curriculum

Facilitator Workshops are periodically hosted by UW-Madison and available for 1-3 individuals via registration. In-person workshops are offered over the course of 2 days. If you are interested in hosting a Facilitator workshop at your institution, please contact CIMER for more information.

Facilitating Culturally Aware Mentoring

This workshop is available for faculty, instructors, staff, or administrators who are committed to deepening their facilitation skills to lead the CAM advanced mentor training workshop. In addition:

  • All participants need to have participated in a CAM workshop.
  • All participants need to apply with at least one other person who can be their co-facilitator when implementing CAM.
  • Participation in facilitator training, such as Entering Mentoring Facilitator Training, or experience facilitating Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) conversations is required.

If you are interested in learning how to facilitate and implement CAM workshops at your institution or organization, we offer public facilitator training workshops. These facilitator training workshops are open to the public but require an application. Sign up here to be notified when new workshops are scheduled.

See our brochure for more information.

Interested in Hosting a Training at Your Institution?

If you are interested in hosting a private training, please contact CIMER as soon as possible to check on your date availability (availability may be be 6-8 months due to high demand). Please complete the “Submit a Private Training Request” service from. A CIMER staff will reach out to schedule a short consultation meeting if needed to review your goals, pricing and availability.

Training and Evaluation

The CIMER Assessment Platform is used to evaluate CIMER Training Services thereby leveraging CIMER Training Services to optimize research mentoring relationships. Standard evaluation surveys are used to assess outcomes based on the type of training being implemented.