# Intersection of Social Capital, Mentorship and Networking on Persistence, Engagement and Science Identity

> **NIH NIH U01** · ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $594,149

## Abstract

Project Summary
Effective mentorship is essential to improving the success of trainees from diverse backgrounds, including those
from under-represented (UR) groups in the biomedical sciences, from undergraduates to new professionals. The
overarching objectives of this proposal are to test: 1) the effects of pre-existing social and contextual factors
on participation of undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds in biomedical workforce, 2) test
whether mentoring/networking intervention, mainly in freshmen and sophomore years, influence the
persistence, engagement, and development of science identity of students from diverse backgrounds. Our
proposal will focus on a set of HBCUs that are geographically distributed with different individual- and
neighborhood- level socioeconomic factors. Based on historical data and background, we hypothesize that the
preexisting social and contextual capital factors among diverse students mediates the persistence, engagement
and overall success rate of students as an individual and as a group. This hypothesis will be tested in following
specific aims: Specific aim 1: Determine the effects of active intervention through mentoring and networking
on engagement and success of students – immediate post-intervention effects for freshmen and distal effects for
sophomore and higher-level students. Specific aim 2: Determine the role personal and contextual factors play in
the engagement and success of freshmen and sophomore and higher-level students. Specific aim 3: Determine
whether the immediate post-intervention engagement and success of freshmen mediate the effect of active
intervention through mentoring and networking on distal engagement and success of the students as sophomores
and higher-level. This project relies on a mixed experimental design with random selection and assignment of
participants to Active Intervention (test) and Control Intervention (control) groups. Pre-/Post-test data will be
gathered in each cycle of participation, with ongoing monitoring of engagement with the intervention activities.
Differences between groups will be minimized through the use of a small number of similar institutions,
drawing both treatment and control groups from each institution, as well as examining the effect of various
contextual factors, including social capital on group differences. Our test group will be freshmen who will
participate in the mentoring and networking programs of NRMN, and in addition get active intervention at the
institution through near-peer mentoring, peer mentoring, mentee training and coaching. The control group will
be freshmen who participate in mentoring and networking programs of NRMN, but do not get active
intervention. The comparison group will be all freshmen who did not participate in NRMN (institutional data).
Our expected outcome of the interventions is increased persistence, engagement and science identity of the test
group resulting in the successful transition to the next career s...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10201664
- **Project number:** 5U01GM132769-03
- **Recipient organization:** ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** MANOJ K. MISHRA
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $594,149
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-01 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10201664

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10201664, Intersection of Social Capital, Mentorship and Networking on Persistence, Engagement and Science Identity (5U01GM132769-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10201664. Licensed CC0.

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