The PhD program was highlighted by Dalmacio Dennis Flores, PhD'16, in the article "Mentorship an 'essential ingredient' for nursing PhD students' in Penn Today. Flores is currently an assistant professor of nursing at Penn Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Excerpt

Students in doctoral programs nearly always have faculty mentors. Sometimes formalized peer relationships also exist to offer one-on-one guidance. But, despite having these two avenues of support, Ph.D. students in Penn’s School of Nursing reported wanting more by way of mentorship.

With that in mind, graduate student leaders partnered with faculty to create a new initiative they called the Ph.D. Constellation Mentorship Program (PCMP). This incorporated an additional element, in the form of a group of six to eight students, one acting as a facilitator, plus a faculty participant selected by the students. 

Since spring 2020, these groups have constituted a safe, confidential space for doctoral students to connect virtually with peers. They’ve also fostered camaraderie and provided a monthly forum for open conversation. 

In a paper published in the journal Nursing Outlook, a Penn Nursing team including recent Ph.D. graduate Joshua Porat-Dahlerbruch and researchers Nancy Hodgson and Dalmacio Dennis Flores describe the benefits of a predoctoral mentorship of this sort, real-time changes they made based on participant feedback, and how other nursing doctoral programs might incorporate something similar.