The Women in STEM Mentoring Circle Completes Its First Year
146 pairings, an 81% completion rate, and a clear finding: group format outperformed one-to-one for early-career members.
The Women in STEM Mentoring Circle closed its first year with 146 completed pairings and an 81% completion rate — high for a volunteer-run programme.
The most useful finding was structural. Members in their first three years post-degree consistently reported more benefit from the small-group format than from one-to-one pairing, largely because it normalised problems they had assumed were theirs alone.
From September the programme runs a hybrid model: group circles for early-career members, one-to-one for those at transition points such as a PhD application or a move into industry.
Applications for the second year open in August.
