Explorers Virtual Internship: Fostering Rightful Presence and Sense of Belonging in an Online High School Internship...

This paper describes the "Explorers Virtual Internship" (EVI), which was designed and presented in the 2020-21 school year by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Despite our initial wariness about creating a virtual internship, the shift helped us make valuable innovations to our programming. EVI paired 11 high school interns with mentors to work on individual research projects. We designed our program to foster a sense of belonging and "rightful presence" in biomedical research among the interns, all of whom came from backgrounds underrepresented in science. In addition to the research experience, we also focused on ethical issues, career awareness, community building, identity/belonging, and leadership/agency. Interns reported increases in their perceptions of the overlap of their identity and those of STEM professionals. They also reported increases in their knowledge of STEM concepts and capacity to demonstrate STEM skills (n=10). Open-ended survey responses indicated that students' uptake of scientific practices and sense of belonging were interrelated with their relationship with their mentors, and that students felt a sense of community with other students despite being in a virtual environment. We also provided programming for mentors, who indicated that learning and thinking about rightful presence and belonging was helpful for their role.