Development of a Research Mentorship Program for Minority Students at a Southeastern Predominately White Institution

Abstract

Mentorship is an underestimated asset that focuses on growth and accomplishments and offers broad forms of support to students from marginalized populations, including intersectional and overlapping identities. This article aims to identify the gaps in current literature regarding mentorship, propose an adaptive mentorship model and identify the model's strengths in practice. Traditional mentorship models focus on one specific aspect of student identity, and this gap marginalizes an individual's identity's duplicity or multi-faceted complexity. Such models often offer great educational support but dismiss the value of high-impact research. High-impact research has been shown to positively impact marginalized communities because it allows the unique opportunity to engage in all stages of research. The model described in this paper is grounded in principles of collaboration and cooperation across an interdisciplinary team. Each faculty mentor and mentee possess intersectional and overlapping identities adding unique perspectives and resilience to the work they engage in. This resilience is united with various intersectional study complexities in behavioral sciences, medicine, social studies, and humanities. Thus, it offers a strengths-based experience that widens student opportunities and challenges unitary models of peer-peer/peer-to-adult mentorship patterns.