TABLE 1—
Sample Quotes From Interviews With the Scholars and Mentors Demonstrating the Identified Program Facilitators, Strengths, Challenges, and Suggestions for Improvement: HIV Vaccine Trials Network Research and Mentorship Program for African American and Hispanic Medical Students, Cohorts 1 and 2; United States; 2011–2013
| Interview Themes | Definition | Scholar or Mentor Comments |
| Program facilitators and strengths | ||
| Site capacity | Site capacity includes having staff, expertise, and other resources available at the site to provide assistance and additional mentoring to the scholar. | “I definitely could not have done the project if I hadn't had buy-in at the sites and had that kind of effort done by all of the staff, not just my mentors, but everyone that worked there. . . .”–Scholar |
| “[T]he site I was in had all the infrastructure in place to really hit the ground running, which was really necessary for the short, summer projects.”–Scholar | ||
| Access to funding | The level of funding available to the scholars attracted them to the program initially, and helped them complete their projects. | “All of my legitimate financial needs for the project were met with RAMP . . . that removed a lot of needless stress, when you don't have to worry about, ‘Well, we can't do that part of the project because there just aren't funds to do that.’”–Scholar |
| “Most budgets for medical students were like $5000 and you really can't do much with that, and you certainly can't go to scientific meetings and do research with that, so I thought the budget was like a wonderful way to learn. It just allows you to do so much more with research and with coming up with a project that's big. . . .”–Scholar | ||
| Highly involved mentors and program administration | An engaged and available mentor was commonly identified by scholars and mentors as a facilitator during application, project, and mentoring activities. Comprehensive and hands-on program administration was also identified as a strength. | “Well I think the strengths are . . . the mentoring aspect, at least in my experience, wasn’t an afterthought. It was a really deliberate effort on the part of my mentor to be a good mentor.”–Scholar |
| “[The RAMP Project Manager] was incredibly helpful in every aspect, in terms of getting the application together, then after that working with the budget. . . . I think that was really great. All those details were able to be centralized and she was the point person.”–Scholar | ||
| Learning and networking opportunities | Learning and networking opportunities including trainings, workshops, conference attendance, and the ability to present their project results were seen as key strengths by both scholars and mentors. | “So, I think that from my perspective [the project] went really well because I learned a lot of new methods of doing research.”–Scholar |
| “I think it’s, again, a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world who are engaged in really important work.”–Scholar | ||
| “And now I have an even bigger professional network, and that is something that will definitely benefit me in the future.”–Scholar | ||
| Challenges and suggestions | ||
| Project logistics | Project logistics were identified by both mentors and scholars as a common challenge. Examples include the institutional review board process, time constraints, scheduling conflicts, funding allocation issues, international coordination, and project management. | “[W]hen you're going to an international site . . . there was a lot of nonacademic logistical things that kind of make your experience less efficient.”–Scholar |
| “I only had 1 month to do my project, so I had to have everything organized and ready to go by the time I got there and that was a really hard thing to get done. . . .” –Scholar | ||
| “One of the things that is just a great limiting step for [Research and Mentorship Program] scholars, or anybody who has a limited amount of time to collect data, is [institutional review board] approval.”–Scholar | ||
| Mentor accessibility | The accessibility of mentors was identified by the scholars as a challenge. | “I think logistics of accessibility was difficult sometimes. Just because [the mentors’] availability obviously fluctuated and sometimes when they were available, they weren’t both available at the same time.”–Scholar |
| “[The mentors] are both really, really busy, so it would have been good to have had to have been assigned someone earlier that was more hands-on than them.” –Scholar | ||
| More explicit communication | Scholars and mentors suggested more explicit communication and clarification of expectations from the outset of the program. | “[It would be helpful to] have sort of a road map for what needs to be done now, having that available for mentors in the [United States] . . . so that they can go through the steps that are necessary to get this accomplished.” –Mentor |
| “Maybe like 1 or 2 points of preference would be a little more advance notice on the fact that we were going to be asked to create a poster.”—Scholar | ||
| Opportunities for scholar interaction during and after the Research and Mentorship Program | Scholars and mentors suggested increasing opportunities for scholars to interact with one another during the program and finding ways to maintain contact with them after the program. | “I do wish that I had gotten to meet the other scholars earlier, or maybe more often because we only actually met, say like twice really.” –Scholar |
| “One good thing would be to make sure that . . . we hold, like, regular maybe conference calls as the program keeps going. . . . To link the current fellows with past fellows and kind of keep that community alive, and make sure that those who have finished the program are sort of kept abreast of what is happening in the field, and have an opportunity to kind of link back to [HIV Vaccine Trials Network] and the work that we do.”–Mentor |
Note. RAMP = Research and Mentorship Program.