Mentoring News Post

January 19, 2024, Durham, NC – iRT is pleased to welcome Abbey Collins to its team of skilled, world-renowned researchers and creative professionals. Collins joined iRT this month as a research intern to contribute to the research and development of high-quality mentor trainings on topics related to cultural competency. Collins brings a wealth of research experience in the fields of behavioral science and neuroscience to iRT, with publications in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine (in press), Psychology of Women Quarterly, Experimental Aging Research, and Epilepsy & Behavior. As a current doctoral student in the Department of Applied Social Psychology at North [...]

November 29, 2023, Durham, NC - iRT Research Scientist Dr. Rebecca Stelter joined a working group with other researchers from the National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC) Research Board to develop a youth-informed guide for young people seeking or entering a mentoring relationship. The guide is now freely available on the NMRC website. Impactful mentoring relationships involve informed participation from both mentors and mentees, as well as support from mentoring program staff and parents. Mentees must feel equally equipped for the mentoring relationship as their mentor, be informed about their role as a mentee, and learn appropriate expectations for the mentoring relationship [...]

November 28, 2023, Durham, NC – Implementing high quality training is an integral step in the process of building and maintaining a successful mentoring program. Research has shown that mentor training programs that prepare mentors to establish a meaningful connection with their mentee may directly impact mentee outcomes, volunteer retention, and mentors’ feelings of satisfaction and self-efficacy as a mentor. Training mentees about what a mentoring relationship is, what they can expect from their match meetings, and how they can benefit from mentoring may ease their anxiety and uncertainty about entering a relationship with a mentor, and therefore yield more positive [...]

October 10, 2023, Durham, NC – iRT is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to explore the characteristics of effective mentors who are mentoring children of incarcerated parents (COIP). Recent reports have shown that over 2.6 million youth have an incarcerated caregiver in the United States.1 COIP often face family instability, stigmatization, and stress that may put them at risk for negative developmental outcomes. For example, research has shown that COIP may be at an increased risk for substance use in late childhood and early adolescence, including alcohol, cannabis, and [...]

July 17, 2023, Durham, NC – iRT Research Scientist Dr. Rebecca Stelter is a member of a working group with other researchers from the National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC) Research Board contributing to the development of a youth-informed guide for young people seeking or entering a mentoring relationship. The guide will soon be freely available on the NMRC website. Impactful mentoring relationships involve informed participation from both mentors and mentees as well as support from mentoring program staff and parents. Mentees must feel equally equipped for the mentoring relationship as their mentor, be informed about their role as mentee, and learn [...]