Stephanie is the current Chair of the ASPET Young Scientists Committee and currently works as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Kentucky. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Future of Research, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated towards advocating for early career researchers and sustaining the scientific enterprise.

Funded Supervisors ≠ Great Mentors

Six years ago, I sat in a classroom with my fellow incoming PhD students while listening to short research presentations by faculty members. This event, a yearly ritual for all new graduate students, provided a glimpse of the potential research advisors that we might choose to oversee our dissertation project. Although their scientific interests varied, one common factor united them all: they had funding for their research. Our program director stressed the importance of finding a supervisor with sufficient research funding. To have a well-funded research supervisor was to avoid delays in your project, obtain opportunities to attend prestigious conferences, and guarantee receipt of your research stipend. Despite these benefits, there was one thing that a well-funded supervisor could not ensure: a healthy, productive mentor-mentee relationship. Initially, I joined the lab of an investigator with three R01 awards, but I soon realized that I made an error in judgment. My supervisor failed to provide any significant guidance, and toxic intrapersonal dynamics led me to leave the lab. My new supervisor was less well-funded than my initial advisor, but he was an exceptional mentor figure that challenged me and made me feel valued as a scientist. Two years later, I successfully defended my dissertation.

A Doctoral Student’s Dilemma

Although my graduate career ended with a successful defense, this disconnect between the availability of research funding and quality of mentoring remains a critical issue in graduate biomedical education. Graduate directors rarely mentioned this problem within my program, but it remained a reality among graduate students. The decision to choose between a well-funded lab and the lab of a quality mentor is a difficult choice for many graduate students. While a lack of funding might hinder the completion of a dissertation project, several studies suggest that the quality of the relationship between grad students and their supervisors is also a significant factor in their success. According to the PhD Completion Project funded by the Council of Graduate Schools, mentoring and financial support are two of the six critical factors that determine the rate of attrition from doctoral programs in the United States and Canada. Furthermore, rocky relationships between graduate students and their research supervisors are often associated with poor mental health among these students. A 2018 report by Evans et al. in Nature Biotechnology demonstrated that students who are not satisfied with the quality of mentoring, emotional support, and career guidance from their research supervisors are more likely to experience anxiety and depression.

Follow the Funding

One possible reason behind the unequal access to health mentoring relationships is the differences in funding sources for graduate students. Currently, R-grants from NIH remain the principal source of funding for graduate stipends and postdoctoral salaries in the biomedical, social, and clinical sciences. In 2016, 59% of NIH-funded graduate students and 46% of postdoctoral scholars in these fields are supported by their supervisor’s research project grant. By contrast, only 27% of graduate students and 7% of postdoctoral scholars are supported by NIH training (T-series) grants, which are awarded to institutions to enhance the research training and career development of graduate students and postdocs. According to the NIH Criteria for Peer Review, applications for T-series grants are rated based on the quality of the institution's training record, career development activities, the success of past trainees, and the mentoring experience of faculty investigators. By contrast, the merits of R-awards and other research project grants are judged almost exclusively on the scientific attributes of the application (i.e., significance, innovation, and experimental design).

The NIH Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) has released recommendations designed to emphasize training and education among funded investigators. In 2012, the ACD Working Group on Biomedical Workforce recommended the implementation of individual development plans (IDPs) for all NIH-supported trainees and the inclusion of IDP use in the review criteria for institutional training awards. Two years later, NIH released an announcement that required investigators to indicate whether IDPs were utilized for graduate student career development in the Research Performance Project Reports (RPPRs) for all NIH grants. Although the use of the IDP has been encouraged by NIH, its utility as a career development tool varies based on several external factors. According to reports conducted by Vanderford et al. (2018), 54% of graduate students and 45% of postdoctoral scholars surveyed were required to complete an IDP by their institution or supervisor. However, survey participants from both groups were more likely to agree with the effectiveness of the IDP if they could communicate the results honestly, felt emotionally supported, and effectively mentored by their supervisor. By contrast, participants whose responses reflected a negative relationship with their supervisor were less likely to find the IDP useful.

Learning the Value of Mentoring

According to Michelle Oyen, PhD, a lecturer in the Cambridge University Department of Engineering, faculty members do not always value mentoring because it “ does not contribute to [one’s] funding portfolio.” Faculty investigators are required to include recent publications in RPPRs to indicate research productivity, but there are few requirements for R-series RPPRs that demonstrate successful mentoring of trainees.  NIH-funded trainees should be able to provide written evaluations of their supervisors that would factor into the evaluation criteria for research project grants. Assessment of research supervisors should also be required at the institutional level to ensure that supervisors are catering to the mentoring needs of their students. Until quality mentoring becomes a requirement for obtaining research funding, researchers and institutions do not have a strong incentive for ensuring the career development of their trainees. Science cannot move forward without a properly-trained workforce, and evidence-based mentoring practices are the key to future scientific progress.