Work-in-Progress: Inclusive Mentoring Strategies for Neurodivergent Undergraduate Researchers in STEM.

In this work-in-progress research paper, we discuss our approaches to undergraduate mentoring strategies towards neurodivergent student's conducting undergraduate STEM research. Despite the increase in STEM students who report disabilities, few resources are available to train mentors to work with this population. The neurodivergent community is often inappropriately perceived to have disadvantages with STEM-based research and face exacerbated challenges when pursuing undergraduate research with STEM faculty. We investigate different mentoring strategies that support neurodivergent STEM undergraduate researchers to thrive. First, we created a survey (see Appendix A) for the undergraduate research community, and we will recruit local participants to understand our research questions. The goal of the survey is to provide a first look at (1) what mentoring processes/approaches promote thriving for neurodivergent students? and (2) which strategies create a cohesive mentoring strategy to promote thriving for the entire neurodiverse community? Next, we will use the survey to identify interview candidates including professors, neurodivergent students, and neurotypical students to explore and understand various factors that empower thriving neurodivergent STEM undergraduate researchers. Increasing the success of neurodivergent STEM undergraduate students through mentorship not only broadens participation in STEM but also provides more role models for current and future students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]