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NCFR has a strong legacy of engaging and supporting its Student and New Professional (SNP) members. One frequent request at the annual conference has been to connect SNPs with experienced and established practitioners and scholars. In the past, NCFR has piloted mentoring programs and activities through Section meetings and the SNP Leadership Council. Although these events were successful in creating connections, efforts were not centralized or sustained. Former SNP Board Representative Rachel Engler Jordan led an enthusiastic discussion with SNP leaders at the 2016 conference in Minneapolis about potential answers to critical questions regarding mentorship within NCFR: What sort of mentoring do SNPs need? Who is willing to offer up their time and knowledge? What should this relationship look like? How long should it last? And, importantly, how do we successfully facilitate a meaningful match between mentors and trainees? Since then, the SNP Leadership Council has been hard at work researching other mentorship programs in peer organizations and brainstorming ways for NCFR to support promising early career professionals and Family Scientists through a more formalized, meaningful mentorship program. At this point, we recognize that we need your input to help make the new program a success!

At this year’s NCFR conference in Orlando, the SNP Leadership Council will be hosting a town hall meeting to provide an open space for established practitioners and faculty (mentors) and SNPs (trainees) to discuss their ideas on what would make this program a success. From potential mentors, we are interested in hearing your thoughts on effective mentoring strategies, time allocation and constraints, motivating factors for engaging in a formalized mentorship program via NCFR, and how to balance competing demands while maximizing impact for trainees. From potential trainees, we want to hear about your motivations behind seeking external mentors, expectations for yourself and mentors, thoughts on the application process, and how you might coordinate mentoring from afar. To keep the discussion focused, we’ll be having these conversations with faculty or practitioners and students or new professionals separately:

• The faculty, practitioner, and mentor discussion will occur on Thursday from noon -12:35 p.m.
• The SNP and trainee discussion will directly follow, from 12:40 - 1:15 p.m.

We would like to recognize support from the Ethnic Minorities Section and will be able to provide snacks to attendees due to generous support from the Religion, Spirituality, and Family Section.

Please come and share your ideas on how to promote mentorship through NCFR!