Examining HBCU Undergraduate Student Experiences with Mentors in STEM
Discipline: Science and Mathematics Education
Session: 1
Room: 2 - Inman
Manisha Maurya - Georgia State University
Underrepresented minorities (URMs) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are more likely to remain in the field if they have a mentor invested in their academic pursuits (Martinez et al., 2018). URM students are those underrepresented in college and university classrooms relative to their proportion in the U.S. population, which includes the following demographics: African Americans/Blacks, Hispanics/Latinx, and Native Americans (American Federation of Teachers, 2010). This preliminary study examined how mentors used culturally responsive mentoring (CRM) to influence URMs in STEM (Pfund et al., 2022). CRM is when mentors are aware of how their background has shaped their beliefs, perceptions, and judgements and recognize their mentees’ cultural identity and learning experiences (Byars-Winston et al., 2018). Mentors who use CRM can help URMs by acknowledging the gender and racial/ethnic differences in STEM and helping them use their identities as assets in STEM (Byars-Winston et al., 2020). The lack of research on CRM mentor effectiveness begs the following research question: How do mentors establish high expectations of undergraduate student researchers who experience marginalization in STEM from students’ perspectives? Using this research question, I conducted the study using a qualitative approach to understand how students at Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) engage in CRM practices. The data collected consisted of semi-structured interviews of URMs in STEM to identify mentor characteristics that supports students. I interviewed six undergraduate HBCU STEM students about their mentorship experiences. For this study, students defined a mentor as someone who has guided their STEM academic pathway. Students identified former or current STEM and/or social science professors as mentors. The majority of mentors were professors who taught a STEM course. As such, it was appropriate to use the Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol (CRIOP) (Powell et al., 2017) to develop an interview protocol to discern if mentors used culturally responsive practices. Additionally, students’ demographics were considered when examining how mentoring practices differ across genders. I used a grounded theory approach to identify emerging themes from the data using the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST), a culturally sensitive developmental framework to contextualize the experiences of STEM undergraduates (Spencer, 1995). Preliminary results suggest that an ideal CRM mentor is caring and respectful, understands their mentees, helps develop or improve mentees’ academic skills, and motivates and encourages students to seek opportunities that align with their STEM career goals. The results of this study will be used to inform research on mentoring practices that can positively impact URM students in STEM.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): I would like to thank the National Science Foundation for funding the preliminary study.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Adrian Neely, adrian.neely@morehouse.edu
Role: I am a graduate research assistant at Morehouse College, enrolled at Georgia State University, that conducted this preliminary study.