Mentoring Relationships and Black People in STEM

• In Event: Elevating Black epiSTEMologies: Theories, Methodologies, and Praxis for Dismantling Racial Injustice in Postsecondary STEM Education

Abstract

Purpose. Mentoring takes on many forms and can significantly impact individual career choices and professional trajectories. Within STEM contexts, particularly for underrepresented students, mentoring is an integral component of the socialization process and offers them access to social and cultural capital while increasing their likelihood to continue in STEM fields after graduation (Estrada et al., 2011). Despite its importance, scholars advocate for more research on mentoring relationships in postsecondary milieus that encourage the implementation of new experiences with particular attention to identity (National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019). Using an anti-deficit (Harper, 2014) and humanizing (Salazar, 2016) conceptual frame, this session outlines how a group of Black scholars from differing postsecondary institutions on an interdisciplinary research team provided varying forms of mentorship throughout the research process.
Perspective. Our research team encompasses individuals who are situated in the following roles: principal and co-principal investigator, graduate research assistant, undergraduate research assistant, and undergraduate advisory board member. Given our collective commitments to humanizing research, mentoring, and supporting the needs of Black research team members across multiple research sites, we embrace the notion that everyone has the capacity to be mentored and that our mentoring must consider the ways Blackness is positioned within the academia. To that end, we employ a critical qualitative approach in this inquiry (Bhattacharya, 2017).
Significance. Numerous examples of mentoring relationships have emerged throughout the research process that were both planned and unanticipated. A salient claim here is that mentoring is multidirectional, and not just from a position of power to a student. First, mentoring occurs as the team engages theorizing about Blackness. It became clear that our expertise is grounded in a plethora of different disciplines (e.g., STEM, education, and/or sociology), and team members occupy varying levels of professional ranks (e.g., dean, professor, associate professor, assistant professor, postdoctoral researcher, doctoral student, master’s student, and undergraduate student), thus there have been different learning curves across the leadership team. Another case is during our summer research training in which there was mentoring in the instructional decisions and approaches within the qualitative research training. It was powerful for our students to know that everyone was being trained regardless of professional rank which allowed for authentic and transparent conversations that were free of judgment.

Theme Alignment. This session aligns with the conference theme of dismantling racial injustice and constructing educational possibilities. With the expected growth of people entering STEM, we must better understand how Black people negotiate STEM and the ways that mentorship shape such experiences within. In sum, there is a longstanding history of Black people mentoring each other in STEM contexts. Although these perspectives are less reflected in the mainstream higher education and STEM education literature, they provide salient insights into the ways Black people intentionally mentor one another in STEM contexts and how supportive mentoring spaces in STEM are created.

Authors

• Brian McGowan, American University

• Nickolaus A. Ortiz, Georgia State University

• Shari E. Watkins, American University

• Andrea L. Tyler, Tennessee State University