iTHRIV Scholars Program:
Mentorship
ABOUT:
The iTHRIV Scholars Program is a multi-institutional career development program across multiple schools/departments focused on early career faculty and partially supported by the integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia (iTHRIV) Clinical Translational Science Award (KL2TR003016 and UL1TR003015). Each Scholar has one or more Scientific Mentors identified in their application. This mentor/mentoring team plays an important role in the development of the research career for each Scholar.
Mentors may focus on ‘content,’ ‘process,’ or both helping the Scholars to establish and develop new technical and scientific skills, to navigate the challenges of setting up a new research team, and to identify critical steps for progressing in academia. During the first year of the iTHRIV Scholars Program, each Scholar is also assigned an ‘iTHRIV Mentor.’ This person is chosen to complement the existing Mentor/mentoring team and fulfill a specific need for the individual Scholar. This new mentor-mentee relationship is intended to allow the Scholar to move into a new scientific area, create connections to specific clinical populations, foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, augment access to grant writing expertise, or gain access to new sponsorship opportunities among other opportunities.
The iTHRIV mentor may be drawn from outside the Scholar’s research area, school, and even institution. Each month the Scholars and their mentors come together with the iTHRIV Scholars Program leadership for a Mentoring Hour focused on issues around mentoring. Scholar-Mentor pairs frequently lead discussion on topics of their choosing. These sessions also focus on the fact that the Scholars, as emerging clinical translational researchers, are themselves both mentees and mentors to others. As the Scholars Program embarks on its fifth year, program alumni are returning in formal mentoring roles.
Meet a Mentor
Micah Mazurek
Novartis U.S. Foundation Professor of Education, UVA School of Education and Human Development
“Dr. Micah Mazurek is a leader in the field of autism research and is internationally recognized for her research on autism diagnosis, sleep, and mental health interventions. Her success in intervention research and grant writing has been incredible to learn from, and is inspiring to myself and her colleagues across UVA. She is generous with her time, ideas, and insight which helps foster a positive learning environment. I have truly appreciated learning from her as a mentor and colleague."
- Rose Nevill, PhD
