Search for: All records

This full paper interrogates the perceptions of mentoring of international STEM doctoral faculty at US universities. International faculty comprise the second largest STEM faculty population in the US, yet little is known about their perceptions surrounding mentoring. Literature informs on the importance of cross-cultural mentoring which is impacted by various factors especially sociocultural and sociopolitical concerns. As a result of the miniscule number of Black and Brown STEM faculty at US institutions, most US underrepresented racially minoritized students have doctoral faculty mentors who are either White or international. These students are negatively impacted when these cross-cultural mentorships fail to be culturally liberative. A qualitative case study using interviewing as method was employed to better understand the perspectives of international faculty teaching in US STEM doctoral programs. Using inductive constant comparative analysis, the study identified three patterns relative to STEM doctoral mentoring by international faculty: focus on pragmatics, science culture as race and culture neutral, and limited ability to empathize with the marginalization of "the other" in spite of marginalization as international faculty. Three implications were developed based on the findings. STEM doctoral education should reimagine mentoring as holistic, embedded in and accountable to cultural understanding, international faculty should draw on their own experiences of marginalization to connect with and better respond to the needs of racially minoritized US STEM doctoral students and international faculty should engage in anti-racism and anti-Black racism training to become aware of ways in which implicit bias and lack of cultural knowledge infiltrates mentoring practice. 

Purpose The purpose of this research study was to explore U.S. STEM faculty’s perceptions of culturally responsive mentoring underrepresented doctoral students in STEM programs. The research question that guided this study was “How do STEM doctoral faculty mentors engage in culturally responsive mentoring? Design/methodology/approach A case study research design was used and included findings from an embedded case drawn from a larger ongoing study. Six STEM faculty participants provided in-depth insights into the dynamic nature of the culturally responsive mentoring journey through semi-structured interviews that were analyzed using thematic analysis. The theoretical framework for this research study was grounded in the ideas posited by culturally responsive pedagogy. Findings The findings revealed three themes related to the mentoring journeys experienced by the faculty fellows: an academic journey, an intentional journey, and a subliminal journey. Research limitations/implications The findings of this research provide significant contribution to the current literature on mentoring and point to the importance of continuous, structured research efforts to increase the quality of mentoring for URM students in doctoral STEM programs. Practical implications STEM faculty could benefit from participating in mentor training framed by culturally responsive pedagogy. Future research is needed to explore the mentor training needs of STEM faculty in other environments, including contexts outside the United States. Originality/value This study extends understanding of STEM faculty's knowledge, dispositions, and abilities of culturally responsive mentoring and emphasizes the need for ongoing professional development training in this area. 

A major barrier to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. One factor contributing to this situation is that the two-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. Many efforts have been made to decrease the attrition, most involving direct work with doctoral students and others concentrating on institutional changes such naming a high-level administrator to coordinate recruitment and retention efforts. Often lacking in these efforts are attempts to change faculty attitudes and practices that negatively affect student retention. Three public universities including one HBCU are currently carrying out a five-year project to develop and pilot-test a department-level process to fill this gap. Why the focus on the department level? Since URM students spend most of their time in their departments as they take classes, attend seminars, conduct research, and interact informally with department faculty, staff, and other graduate students, the climate they experience and the support they receive can have a major impact on their success. In addition, changes in a department can last well beyond the end of a grant. When interventions address students directly, once they graduate there may be no lasting change in the department. When faculty attitudes and mentoring practices change, on the other hand, the changes may last and continue to help students succeed long after the grant expires. The project seeks to help department faculty increase their understanding of the issues facing underrepresented minorities in doctoral programs, identify and remedy the departmental practices that may be hindering URM student success, and examine and improve their own mentoring practices. In the project, six cohorts of faculty members and both URM and non-URM doctoral students—two cohorts at each participating university—will be assembled and surveyed. The faculty members will be asked how their departments address recruitment and retention of URM students, how they personally support and mentor their URM students, and how welcoming and supportive of URM students they perceive their department to be. The students will be asked to express their level of satisfaction with their coursework and their relationships with faculty and other graduate students, describe the learning opportunities and mentoring they have received, and discuss how welcoming and supportive of URM students their departments have been. To initiate the gathering of baseline information, the first cohort—79 faculty members, 16 URM students, and 94 non-URM students from six STEM departments at one of the universities—was surveyed. This presentation will report and discuss the results. 

Mentoring is crucial for academic success in higher education, especially for women and minority students in STEM doctoral programs. The purpose of this paper was to examine mentoring relationships involving diverse doctoral students studying in the STEM programs at the university in the southeastern part of the United States. Data collection methods included focus groups with twenty-five students and individual interviews with nine underrepresented minority students studying at various STEM programs. Data was analyzed using an inductive process. The findings reveal a few missing pieces to effective mentoring that are connected with feelings of lack of personal, social, and cultural inclusion in mentoring relationships. These findings call for transformation of mentoring in graduate STEM education. 

Research has established that effective cross-cultural mentoring relationships impact minority student success in higher education and further career; however, a scarcity of studies focus on culturally responsive practices in mentoring relationships in STEM programs. This paper describes experiences and perceptions on culturally responsive mentoring of faculty in STEM programs, and thus, has a significant contribution to the existing body of literature on mentoring in STEM education. The theoretical framework for this research study was grounded in the ideas posited by sociocultural theory and culturally responsive pedagogy, and the research question that guided this study is as follows: How do STEM doctoral faculty mentors engage in culturally responsive mentoring? A case study research design was used to aid in providing in-depth insights into the dynamic nature of the culturally responsive mentoring journey. The findings reveal three themes that relate to mentoring journeys that mentor and underrepresented minority mentees experience: academic journey, intentional journey, and subliminal journey. This study offers several implications for mentoring and leadership in cross-cultural educational contexts.