Coming Soon: Manuscript on Mentoring in STEM Higher Education

Dr. Tara Nkrumah, Lydia McInnes, and Dr. Kimberly Scott have a manuscript in progress titled “Mentoring in STEM Higher Education: A synthesis of the literature to (re)present the excluded women of color.” The manuscript's working abstract is below.

As both faculty and students in higher education (HE) science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs, women of color (e.g. Black/African American women, Hispanic/Latinxa women, Asian women, Pacific Islander women, and American Indian/Alaska Native women) have created multiple forms of resistance challenging systemic inequities. Mentoring undergraduate and graduate women of color has provided peer-to-peer relationships and counterspaces to disrupt the inequitable treatment many of these students experience. How well mentoring efforts consider the power dynamics in higher education cultures is narrowly understood. In this literature synthesis, the authors present findings from a literature synthesis of STEM mentoring models for undergraduate and graduate women of color to explore the following research questions: 1) What impact does the social contexts of women of color have on their experience of mentoring in STEM HE? 2) What role does intersectionality play in the structural organization of mentoring models for women of color in STEM HE and how has intersectionality shaped the life experiences for women of color mentors and mentees moving through these structures? and 3) How can mentoring models and relations utilize intersectionality to better incorporate the experiences of women of color in STEM HE? Findings are presented thematically and suggest that social contexts for women of color are used to reinforce deficit mentoring models and intersectionality is being applied as a metaphor without encouraging paradigmatic shifts to mentoring structures. The authors conclude by proposing guiding principles that draw on intersectionality as a framework with architectural tools and strategies for transforming HE mentoring programs for women of color in STEM.