One Size Does Not Fit All: Culturally Attuned Mentorship for American Indian Students in STEM

• In Event: 25.068 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 25.068-2 - Indigenous College Students' Experiences: Identity, Mentorship, and Promising Practices

Abstract

American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students in the STEM fields are experiencing “Crises’ of Relevance”, issues related to a chilling campus climate, and cultural incongruity within predominately white institutions (PWIs), leading to unequal access to the same academic experiences as their non-Indigenous counterparts. Using Indigenous ontologies to develop a culturally attuned mentorship model, this paper combines Indigenous ontologies, TribalCrit and the Family Education Model to address adversity. Indigenous research methodologies are used to redefine mentorship construction to include fictive kinship structures and intergenerationality when mentoring American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students in STEM. The manuscript concludes that institutional differences, Indigenous identity location and Indigenous epistemological spaces need to be addressed to best serve students.

Author

• Sweeney Windchief, Montana State University