Amanda’s New Job!

Dr. Amanda Butz was a long time lab member who recently obtained her doctorate in educational psychology and is now a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin. We checked in with her to see how things are going. As a post-doc, she is a part of a three-person research team researching two grant-funded projects that are examining mentoring in the sciences. She is currently involved in two different projects. The first project is evaluating a mentor-training workshop that that is designed to educate mentors about self-efficacy and its sources.  The second project focuses on the development and validation of a measure designed to assess cultural diversity awareness in mentors. Amanda will also begin her own research project soon. With her own research project she is thinking about developing and implementing a couple of training workshops for mentees (primarily undergraduate researchers in the sciences). We asked her how working in the lab has affected her in her new position: “As I am thinking about these projects, I see a lot of parallels between the curriculum that these folks have developed and many of the things that we do in Dr. Usher’s lab.  One of the things I always loved about being a member of the P20 lab was working with undergraduate students and helping them to discover a passion for research and develop their confidence in developing and presenting their ideas.  I am excited to take what I have learned during my time as a lab assistant and apply it to developing these workshops that will help undergraduates get those most out of their mentored research experiences.” We wish Amanda well at her new position! You reach Amanda at abutz2@nullwisc.edu.