A Framework for Mentoring Students Attending Their First Professional Conference

Core Ideas Undergraduate students benefit by attending conferences and interacting with professionals. Active mentoring and support before, during, and after a conference increases student confidence. Students gained a sense of belonging, social benefits, and career confirmation through the course. Developing professional relationships likely leads to increased retention of professionals. This mentoring course focused on students in natural resource and environmental sciences, but the course structure is easily transferrable to other disciplines. Scientific conferences build professional skills and identity in undergraduate students and provide opportunities for developing professional social skills, a sense of belonging to their field, and an understanding of potential career options. However, undergraduate student attendance at professional conferences is low. When undergraduate students do attend, they often express anxiety associated with speaking with professionals, networking, or with the conference environment. To address these concerns, instructors from several institutions collaborated to develop an undergraduate course with the objective of training students to attend their first professional conference and then traveled with them to experience a conference. The course framework involved meetings with students and course assignments before, during, and after the conference. Assessment results indicated that student outcomes included a greater sense of belonging to their profession, social benefits, gains in confidence, career confirmation, and an improved understanding of the pathways to pursuing a career in this field (i.e., importance of undergraduate research, gaining experience during college, etc.). Our results suggest that formal preparation for attendance at a national scientific meeting maximizes the potential for students to benefit from their experience and reduces the anxiety many students express about attending a professional conference.