Taking the First Step: Mentoring Students in Gerontology Research

Daniel W. Durkin and Victoria AdamsDepartment of Social Work and The School of Allied Health and Life Sciences

Agenda

• History – nothing I do is original• Student Mentoring Conference• “The Process”• Emerge Project• Presentations over the years• Victoria’s experience

Mentoring Culture

Always be mentored and

always be mentoring.

UA Center for Mental Health and Aging

• Interdisciplinary research center

• Mostly psychology and social work

• Also nursing, medical, business

• Weekly meetings with a statistician on-hand

• 1st year project

Southeastern Student Mentoring Conference in Gerontology and Geriatrics

• Started in 1989• I have attended all but 2 since 2003• “Seeks to provide students with

practical scholarly experiences associated with academic and applied gerontology”

• “Vehicle for students to gain experience presenting their research and to network with key professionals in aging”

Southeastern Student Mentoring Conference in

Gerontology and Geriatrics

• Promotes student professional development

• Acknowledges important student work in the fields of gerontology and geriatrics

• Supports faculty/student mentoring

The Process

• The student picks an aging-related topic (e.g. mild cognitive impairment, LGBT aging, recovery after stroke).

• The student does a preliminary search of the literature to begin to identify research gaps.

• The student meets with me to discuss the topic and narrow it down to a more specific research focus that addresses a gap in the literature. We work together to develop some preliminary research questions.

• We search for publicly available databases that could be used to examine our research questions (e.g. NIH data stored with the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, Centers for Disease Control data).

• We decide on a database, download the data and organize it to meet our needs. This includes the identification of variables and data transformation, if necessary (e.g. calculating sum scores, recoding to categorical variables).

The Process

• We refine the research questions and determine the appropriate analyses to answer the research questions.

• Since I do not expect the student to have experience with statistics, I run the analyses with the student present. I explain what I’m doing and why and we discuss the process so the student has a basic understanding of what the tests mean and how to interpret the results.

• We work together to interpret the results and identify research, practice and policy implications.

• Once the above process is complete, an abstract is crafted and submitted for acceptance.

• If the abstract is accepted, the student and I work together to create a poster presentation and an oral presentation for the conference.

• Finally, the student and I attend the conference and the student presents his/her work.

• Student completes the formal critical reflection component.

Critical Reflection

Identify Explain Apply Analyze Synthesize EvaluateIdentifies principles of effective presentations as a result of reflection on the experience.

Explains principles of effective presentations so that others can understand.

Considers how principles of effective presentations emerged in your experience at the Student Mentoring Conference.

Compares and contrasts your initial and later understandings of effective presentations.

Develops steps necessary to use principles of effective presentations for other conferences.

Evaluate principles of effective presentations in terms of impact on different audiences.

Critical Reflection Learning Goal:Create a professional poster presentation using criteria from Hess’ “Creating Effective Poster Presentations” and analyze which characteristics and strategies support effective communication in different settings and with different audiences.

DEAL Model

• Describe your poster presentation and oral presentation experience at the Student Mentoring Conference.

• Explain: How effective were you in conveying your central message in both poster and oral presentation?

• Articulate Learning: What problems or challenges did you encounter in creating your poster and oral presentations? Was there anything you feel was important that you had to leave off or de-emphasize?

High Impact Practices

• Faculty/Student Research• Faculty guided systematic investigation and

research experiences including presentation of findings.

• Collaborative Assignments and Projects

• Learning activities that combine two key goals: learning to work and solve problems in the company of others, and sharpening one’s own understanding by listening seriously to the insights of others including team-based activities, cooperative projects and research.

Program Goals

• Critical Thinking: Analyze and interpret the qualitative and quantitative data related to evidence-based social work practice.

• Communication: Report findings from social work research and literature.

• Project Management: Effectively utilize research strategies to examine issues in social work practice.

Presentations Over the Years

• Subjective and objective measures of income: Which is the better predictor of caregiver outcomes?

• Growing old behind bars: A qualitative review of the aging male prisoner.

• Goodness of fit of a stress and coping model with White, African American and Hispanic/Latino caregivers of person’s with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

• The influence of exercise upon subjective health, anxiety and depression among Alzheimer’s caregivers.

• Exemplary caregiving as a mediator of the effects of daily care bother on caregiver emotional outcomes.

• Whom do nursing home residents prefer to talk to about their satisfaction with care?: Implications for improving quality of care.

Last Year

• Heather Mutchie - Comparison of MMSE and ACTIVE methods for the identification of MCI.

• Dannette Wallace - Subjective mental health among LGB Latino and Asian American adults: A comparison between older and younger adults.

• Victoria Adams - Quality of life among stroke patients in the Russian Federation.