STEM News Post

February 09, 2025 – Angelika Santero has joined iRT as the newest member of our team of interdisciplinary research scientists, research assistants, web developers, multimedia designers, and more. iRT is pleased to welcome Santero as an intern through the Karen M. Gil Internship Program, which iRT has supported and participated in for several years. Santero is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, double-majoring in psychology and data science. Her interests lie in social and organizational psychology as well as using data science to support meaningful causes. She is passionate about the power of mentoring [...]

October 20, 2025, Durham, NC – iRT is excited to announce that we have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to complete the development a novel mentoring training program for STEM mentors. Why we’re doing it. In the United States, the number of young people pursuing careers related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is diminishing. Mentoring programs that aim to give young people support as they explore STEM subjects may inspire young people to pursue a future in STEM fields. The supportive relationships that mentees create with mentors through STEM mentoring programs may also help [...]

June 23, 2023, Durham, NC – Researchers from Mentoring Central, a division of iRT, are seeking STEM mentoring programs to participate in usability and feasibility studies to evaluate a new online mentor training course for STEM mentors. The new course includes an adapted version of Building the Foundation, Mentoring Central’s foundational mentor training course, that contains revised content that is relevant to STEM mentoring and new content related to how mentors can support the recruitment and retention of mentees into STEM, build cultural competency, and identify, prevent, and support mentee’s exposed to microaggressions in STEM settings. Development of this course was [...]

April 03, 2023, Durham, NC – There are fewer and fewer youth pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) each year. In addition, there are many subgroups of youth that are underrepresented in these fields including girls, youth with a disability, youth living in a low-income family, youth who are or will be first-generation college students, youth who are immigrants or refugees, and youth from a traditionally underrepresented ethnic or racial minority group. STEM mentoring programs can play an important role in inspiring youth of diverse races and abilities, and from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in STEM. In [...]