Mentoring

Save the Date! Poster Abstract Submission for 2025 ICAA

In addition to invited speakers and keynote lectures, the CAA fosters the development of emerging scholars by sponsoring a peer-reviewed poster session at the end of the first day of the conference. To elevate the visibility of the topic worldwide, we are proposing three new installments of an expanded mentoring program for emerging scholars.

Currently, the CAA Mentoring Program (ESP) seeks to

Provide opportunities to emerging scholars students to pursue research that supports the mission of the CAA;
Provide the skills, knowledge and experience to prepare the emerging scholar to excel in his/her career path in the behavioral and social sciences in minority aging with a special emphasis on Hispanic health;
Encourage proposals from all interested graduate students and post-doctoral trainees;
Act with dedication to maximize diversity within the Scholar network.

The mentoring plan follows the guidance of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) on how to enhance the mentoring experience in aging by providing a structured mentoring plan, professional development, and opportunities to learn a number of career skills such as writing articles for publication, grant preparation for becoming an independent investigator, and research presentation skills.

Specific elements of the one-day mentoring plan include:

Working with CAA faculty to establish and an Emerging Scholar mentoring plan (ESMP) for an independent research agenda;
A seminar and individual consultation on how to identify research funding opportunities offered by the NIA;
A workshop on how to write competitive proposals;
Engagement with faculty mentoring who are leaders in our field at the CAA mentoring awards reception and dinner;
Participation in a CAA on-line journal club for graduate students and postdocs, in which participants connect weekly, along with mentoring faculty facilitator, to discuss and critique recent journal articles in the field and to discuss how to write and submit journal articles; and
Travel to one conference in September beginning in 2012, 2013, 2014, with the goal that the postdoctoral fellow present a poster or paper at the conference;
An evening mentoring program and dinner designed to connect and share in a less formal setting than during the presentations.

Poster Session Award Winners

Exemplary posters are selected for oral presentation at each conference installment. Scholars whose abstracts are selected have the opportunity to make an oral presentation of their paper at the conference and share their findings and research with students, post-doctoral trainees, and faculty from across the country and from other nations, including Mexico, Brazil, and Chile.