Towards a culturally sustaining mentorship for culturally diverse faculty members in higher education

• In Event: Investigating institutions: immigrants, experiences, and “cultural diversity”

Proposal

Purpose

In response to this year’s CIES theme, the authors conducted a critical review of empirical research into the role of mentorship in retaining and promoting culturally diverse faculty (CDF) at institutions of higher education (IHEs) around the world and proposed
culturally sustaining mentorship (CSM) as a mentoring framework to support and sustain underrepresented, minority CDFs in IHEs.

Perspectives

Mentorship in IHEs can be characterized as either formal or informal; and dyadic mentoring or group and peer mentoring (Kawalilak & Groen, 2010; Yun, Baldi, & Sorcinelli, 2016). Formal mentorship is initiated at the departmental or institutional levels where informal mentorship is developed spontaneously by faculty members and their senior colleagues. Alternatively, peer or group mentoring can be established between faculty members with similar status and goals, e.g., promotion and tenure (Kawalilak & Groen, 2010; Núñez, Murakami, & Gonzales, 2015). Research has shown that mentorship provides scholarly development, professional socialization, and emotional support for junior faculty members (Beane-Katner, 2014; Cawyer, Simonds, & Davis, 2002). However, the unique mentoring needs of CDFs and mentoring for diversity have not been given sufficient attention in IHEs (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017; Bristol, Adams, & Johannessen, 2014), despite the increasingly diverse and international IHE workforce (Johannessen, Unterreiner, Sitienei, & Zajda, 2012; Windchief & Brown, 2017).

Methods

An electronic search was performed on ERIC, Google Scholar, JSTOR, and PsycINFO, and major journals in mentoring and higher education in June 2018. Key words used included “mentor” and its variants, such as “mentoring” and “mentorship”; “culturally diverse faculty”, “faculty of color”, and “minority faculty”. We restricted inclusion to empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles published in English after 2008. A total of 98 articles were included in the final sample after removing irrelevant results.

Findings

CDFs of color, female, international backgrounds, LGBTQ, speakers of non-dominant languages in the American countries, Australia, Europe, and East and Southeastern Asia are included in the sample. Their disciplines include national sciences, education, medical sciences, engineering, humanities, and social sciences. The majority of the reviewed studies use (co)autoethnography or other qualitative methods (Chang, Longman, & Franco, 2014). Conceptually, they often adopt a critical stance, such as critical race theory (Turner, González, & Wong (Lau), 2011), LatCrit (Suriel, Martinez, & Evans-Winters, 2018), and feminist theories (Mayuzumi, 2015; Mkandawire-Valhmu, Kako, & Stevens, 2010) that examine the interplay of power, privilege, and oppression in mentoring relationships.

There is consensus in literature that effective mentorship contributes to the retention and promotion of CDFs and their engagement in scholarly and institutional communities (Lloyd-Jones, 2014; Miller, Wadkins, & Davis, 2008; Núñez et al., 2015; Ponjuan, Conley, & Trower, 2011; Zellers et al., 2008; Zambrana et al., 2015). However, CDFs often enter the IHEs with less cultural and social capital compared with their White, dominant counterparts (Curtin et al., 2013; Duntley-Matos, 2014; Martinez et al., 2017; Yun et al., 2016; Zafar, Roberts, & Behar-Horensteain, 2012) and consequently experience challenges in establishing and sustaining mentoring relationships, in particular informal mentorship (Borders et al., 2011; Garrison-Wade, Diggs, Estrada, & Galindo, 2012; Kelly & Mccann, 2014; Martinez, Chang, & Welton, 2017). A lack of recognition of their scholarship that is grounded in their sociocultural experiences and the oppressive and marginalizing climate of IHEs also fail to provide CDFs the type of mentorship they need and limit opportunities for their voices to be heard (Cole, Mcgowan, & Zerquera, 2017; Martinez et al., 2017; Mackey & Shannon, 2014; Zambrana et al., 2015).

Literature also suggests the benefits of having a mentor of the same gender and/or the same racial/ethnic group (Garrison-Wade et al., 2012; Grant & Ghee, 2015; Johnson, 2015), especially for female faculty members of color (González, 2007; Grant, 2012; Grant & Simmons, 2008; Patton, 2009); though exceptions exist (Feldman, Arean, Marshall, Lovett, & O'sullivan, 2010). However, the underrepresentation of tenured CDFs makes it difficult for junior CDFs to find a role model who is empathetic to their challenges and willing to mentor and advocate for them (Mancl, 2016; Urrieta et al., 2015).

As a result, many CDFs engage in peer or group mentorship that aims to challenge the traditional, hierarchical mentoring relationships and establish an equal, safe mentoring community to support each other even though the participants vary in academic ranks (Machado-Casas, Ruiz, & Cantú, 2013; Mkandawire-Valhmu et al., 2010). Also common in the literature are mentoring networks that transcend institutional, disciplinary, and/or national boundaries (Bristol et al., 2014; Johannessen et al., 2012; Suriel et al., 2018). The remaining are formal mentoring relationships and programs housed in IHEs (Boehm & Larrivee, 2016; Mahoney, Wilson, Odom, Flowers, & Adler, 2008).

Towards a Culturally Sustaining Mentorship in IHEs

The idea of CSM is borrowed from Paris’ (2012) concept of culturally sustaining pedagogies that aims to deliberately sustain the cultural and linguistic assets of members of culturally diverse groups as an alive and vibrant part of a learning community. The proposed CSM framework intentionally centers on the cultural identities and racialized, gendered, and international experiences of CDFs that are rarely addressed in mentorship for academic development and socialization that is conceptualized and practiced in a White- and male-dominant academia. CSM views mentoring as a social justice work in IHEs and deliberately promotes and sustains the diverse cultural identity of CDFs (Mackey & Shannon, 2014).

A CSM framework challenges the oppressive IHE climate, promotes the agency of CDFs, and advocate for their democratic participation and sharing of their experiences and voices that are historically marginalized. It is important to implement a CSM program for CDFs as an institutional mechanism to promote diversity and inclusion (Chang, Welton, Martinez, & Cortez, 2013; Martinez et al., 2017). In addition, training on cross-cultural competence and culturally responsive and sustaining mentoring should be provided to faculty mentors of CDFs in order for them to understand how the cultural experiences and identities of CDFs may complicate their mentoring needs. Such a mentorship based on genuine understanding, mutual trust, and open dialogue (Mkandawire-Valhmu et al., 2010) is conductive to foster and sustain a culturally inclusive and empowering community of support (Alarcón & Bettez, 2017) for CDFs.

Authors

• Yiting Chu, University of Louisiana at Monroe

• Weijia Wang, University of Washington