Akamai Mentor Workshop
Mentoring the Akamai way
Friday, May 17th and Saturday, May 18, 2024, in Hilo, Hawaii
Who this workshop is for:
- All Akamai Internship mentors and co-mentors (including those attending past workshops)
- Colleagues of mentors who are prospective mentors in the future
ISEE’s Akamai Mentor Workshop uses more than two decades of experience running successful internships to prepare and support Akamai mentors (engineers, technologists, and scientists), who design a summer project for a college intern.
Many STEM internships involve a mentored project–but not all projects are the same. Treating the mentored project as an experience that can be designed, the workshop guides mentors through a process that uses principles similar to those that guide curriculum design, including:
- Identifying a productive project, one that will be valuable to both the intern and the mentor
- Learning about themes related to persistence and inclusion, which include:
- Using the authentic practices of STEM
- Ownership & agency
- Recognition
- Belonging
- Applying the themes to the different phases and aspects of an internship project, such as:
- Introducing the project to the intern
- Integrating the intern into the work community
- Assessing and giving feedback to the intern
- Enabling day-to-day recognition of intern
- Wrapping up the project
Before the workshop, participants read relevant articles on research within four themes related to persistence and inclusion (see second bullet point above). At the workshop, they discuss what they’ve read with instructors and other participants, and apply it to the project they have in mind for their student student. By the end of the workshop, participants develop a mentor plan that:
- Outlines an intern project that is valuable to the mentor and educational for the student.
- Teaches intern critical thinking skills and practices that are valued in the workplace.
- Fosters intern ownership over their project and promotes self-initiative.
- Supports intern in developing an identity as a scientist/engineer.
- Includes explicit strategies on giving effective feedback to an intern.
Many participants return to the workshop for a second or more times, creating an enduring community of mentors on Hawai’i Island and Maui, where many of the world’s premier telescopes are located.
Click here to see past participants and organizations
This workshop is offered with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the National Science Foundation (AST#1743117).Â
Please contact us with any questions: akamai@ucsc.edu
2019 Mentor Workshop, held at the Naniloa in Hilo, May 17-18, 2019
  
