The 'Ike Wai Project: Structured Mentoring and Professional Development for Hawai'i's Future Sustainability Workforce

'Ike Wai (the Hawaiian words for "knowledge" and "water") is a multidisciplinary project focused on securing the sustainability of Hawai'i's water future. Funded by the National Science Foundation EPSCoR program, a major project goal is to build local capacity in hydrology and data science by training a diverse cohort of students, postdocs, and faculty researchers. To accomplish this, 'Ike Wai has established a professional development program that includes holistic mentoring, Individual Development Plans (IDPs), and cohorted training in professional skills. In this presentation we focus on the 'Ike Wai graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, a diverse group which includes a high proportion of women, Native Hawaiians, and other underrepresented groups. Students are actively encouraged to take charge of their career path and define their professional development goals and milestones. Students can devote 20% of their graduate assistantship to career development activities. The project then provides a framework to assist them along this path, including a Professional Development (PD) mentor chosen by the student from outside their discipline. The PD mentor's role is to provide an outside perspective, and ensure there is no conflict between the student's PD goals and the goals of the research project.

Based on early feedback from the pilot rollout, a custom module on Place & Culture was added to the IDP to help capture 'Ike Wai's emphasis on cultural integration and inclusivity. The graduate students have shown extensive leadership in all aspects of the project, particularly community engagement, integrating historical Hawaiian newspaper translation efforts with scientific efforts and results, and organizing conference sessions and cultural workshops. Preliminary results suggest that graduate student satisfaction with the IDP process is strongly related to the quality of the feedback and conversations they have with their advisors and PD mentors over the course of developing their IDP. Early takeaways point to the importance of structured mentoring, and to the positive and inclusive signals established when local community values and culture are recognized and formalized within the structure of a scientific project.