Jaden Sicotte - Final Presentation.pdf

The National Mentoring Community (NMC) was fashioned in 2015 by the American Physical Society (APS) to build and maintain mentoring relationships between Black/African, Latinx, and Indigenous physics students and professionally established mentors. The sweeping objective of the program is to expand the demographics of students completing undergraduate physics degrees by supporting historically marginalized communities through mentoring focused on career development and academic success. However, many participants report that the program has yet to live up to it’s full potential, largely due to the difficulties of successfully making a mentor/mentee match. In fact, as of September 2022, of 235 total mentees and 385 total mentors, only 97 mentees and 104 mentors were matched with at least one mentor or mentee respectively. As a result, APS has decided to reevaluate the current match algorithm system in favor of a more effective process. This presentation was developed in conjunction with the APS Careers team using survey data from NMC members and an external appraisal by the WestEd firm in order to provide a recommendation and proposal for an updated match algorithm and workflow system. The intention of this recommendation is to bolster the NMC engagement levels through an updated and refined matching system, and thus, establish more mentoring relationships.