Mentoring Underrepresented Minoritized Students for Success

The underrepresentation of minoritized populations in public health, health care, and research disciplines hurts the advancement of science and the communities disproportionately affected by health disparities (Valantine & Collins, 2020). While the implementation of pipeline programs like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Undergraduate Public Health Scholars (CUPS) Program have been invested to increase workforce diversity in the last decade, the current workforce remains racially homogenous, and there are significant challenges in developing and retaining a diverse public health and health care workforce. The CDC includes mentorship as an essential component of the CUPS Program. Just as it is critical for success in academia, mentorship in public health training translates the hidden curriculum and reinterprets cultural and professional norms. Mentorship contributes to underrepresented minoritized (URM) students’ educational and professional development by increasing access, promoting persistence, and allowing students to visualize what success looks like throughout every stage of their training (Carter, 2006; Lewis et al., 2016; Young et al., 2021). While the provision of scholarship can also increase access and promote persistence, the power of human connection and role modeling offered through mentorship is paramount. This article provides a historical and cultural perspective on what mentorship means in a minoritized population such as in the African American community. It discusses the unique needs of URM students and offers methods to effectively mentoring them, and ways for the system to address the scarcity of mentors required to meet the enormous needs in support of the nation’s charge to increase URM groups in public health, health care, and biomedical sciences. Last, this article highlights what students can do to make themselves more attractive to mentors and recommends selecting candidates of maximum potential for the CUPS Program.

While students generally welcome mentorship, incidental reports from the CUPS participants suggest possible misunderstanding and generational gaps on mentorship style. Insights from another generation of mentors could help demystify and explain why some mentors may be (or can be perceived as being) more protective and critical than others. Throughout history, mentorship has played a crucial role in passing on knowledge and skills to the next generation. Mentorship is as important in this context as it was for many African American youths in the segregated South of the United States. In the segregated South, African American youths were accustomed to both formal and informal mentorships. The formal mentorship was from parents, teachers, administrators in the school system, coaches, and clergy. Two primary goals for these mentors were to (1) help children avoid prohibited activities that would lead to imprisonment or death and (2) receive a quality education. Informal mentorship was a process fueled by the concept of “in loco parentis,” in that if children were misbehaving away from home, any adult could “discipline” them “as if they were their own.” Although many may consider this as an extreme process, “in loco parentis” has primarily been a part of the African American culture and psyche as a way to protect and corral the young. Additionally, children were taught at a young age that “they must work twice as hard to receive half as much.” Many mentors and program officials were perhaps operating under these assumptions but were misunderstood by students.

Whatever our social identity or cultural norm, we have all felt alienated from time to time. Feelings of alienation are often greater among minoritized students who must live and function in a culture and institution that privileges Whiteness. Every day, URM students receive negative messages about themselves from the media, social media, students, and sometimes teachers, contributing to their poor self-image, low self-esteem, and lack of self-confidence. These messages, called microaggression, are the everyday, subtle, intentional, and often unintentional interactions or behaviors that communicate bias toward the marginalized group (Nadal, 2018). Unlike an overt declaration of racism, microaggression takes shape in the form of an offhand comment, joke, or a pointed insult that the perpetrators might not even be aware of. Whether intended or unintended, these comments are often painful for the students and result in negative consequences in their lives. To have equal opportunities in school and life, the URM students must counter these negative messages. Unfortunately, many of these URM students do not have role models and adult figures growing up to help them process negative messages, navigate these issues, and foster confidence. Thus, for mentorship programs to succeed, they not only need to take into account the educational gap between the minoritized students and privileged students, but mentorship programs need to help students counter these negative messages and build their self-confidence. No one knows the impact of microaggression and negative messages on one’s self-image than successful URM mentors who have overcome these issues themselves. As such, URM students usually benefit from having mentors and role models who are also from such groups to recognize their competencies and social identities as the findings from two studies—“Investigating the Influence of Mentor–Mentee Race and Gender Pairs on Public Health Persistence” (Trawick et al., 2021) and “An Evaluation of a Pipeline Program to Support Diversity in the Public Health Workforce: CDC Undergraduate Public Health Scholars (CUPS) Program” (Young et al., 2021)—in this issue suggest.

Fleming et al. (2013) highlighted six core competencies for successful mentoring: (1) effective communication, (2) align expectations, (3) assess understanding, (4) foster independence, (5) address diversity, and (6) promote professional development. Effective communication is the foundation from which all other competencies are built. Having effective communication in mentoring relationships fosters trust with URM students. This allows mentors and mentees to find common interests and professional synergy. In this way, students might find an easier way to develop professionally and advance self-advocacy while the academic environment promotes equity, diversity, and inclusion. By doing this, mentors ensure mutual understanding and expectations for developing educational and training goals by supporting students’ independence, self-efficacy, and leadership.

Besides keeping these core competencies in mind, mentors can also build work teams with other mentors to provide different expertise and points of view; look for adequate feedback by asking their students about their experiences and if they might need any other type of support, and then incorporate the best ideas into the program. In the instances of what works with URM mentees, some URM mentors have known to let students “borrow” their self-confidence until the students get some of their own (Brown, 1998). In short, mentors need to encourage open conversations by creating respectful atmospheres and implementing strategies to integrate diversity in education programs while incorporating clever ways to help students overcome their individual challenges.

Regardless, mentors need coaching to develop mentoring skills. The scarcity of mentors who know how to coach and mentor students has presented a significant obstacle to increasing the diversity of the public health and health care workforce. In essence, mentoring does not have to be a hierarchical structure but a circular system where mentors are also “mentored,” and mentees become mentors. Peer mentors can be a powerful tool to retain URM students in research and practice by actively engaging them in training activities (Gandhi & Johnson, 2016; Keller et al., 2014). In this special issue, Blenner et al. (2021) and Joyner et al. (2021) highlight how two CUPS programs use peer mentors to work with participants, establishing a system for the continuous development and maturation of well-equipped mentors.

Thus far, mentorship refers to professors, other senior officials, or peers serving as mentors; the role of the student is often overlooked. Less attention is given to how aspiring students can make themselves more attractive as candidates for a mentorship. To be successful, a mentoring relationship must have equal investment from the student. A student will more likely attract the attention of a potential mentor if he or she adheres to three attributes: (1) high levels of self-confidence, (2) a strong commitment to a lifetime purpose, and (3) a commitment to academic excellence. Any student can decide to ascribe to these attributes if he or she is willing to do so (Brown, 1998). All these elements are essential in helping students be more attractive in finding mentorships. While not all students will possess all three attributes, these attributes can be cultivated and fostered over time (i.e., self-confidence and lifetime purpose as found in the study conducted by Young and colleagues); the CUPS Program can best position itself by incorporating such attributes in its student selection process. The program may choose to select students who may have less confidence but have a strong commitment to academic excellence (e.g., not afraid to work hard; have strong work ethic), or have a strong commitment to lifetime purpose but need a little extra help in building skills for academic success and building confidence. However, a student with a lot of confidence but little commitment to academic excellence and lifetime purpose will likely not be a very good candidate as humility is vital for anyone looking to learn and grow.

All points of view are important, regardless of social identity, cultural norm, or whether one plays the role of a mentor or a mentee. Diversity in mentoring provides confidence in students and fosters self-efficacy. According to the African American Mental Health Research Scientist Consortium Working group: a program that embraces the premise that “differences between people based on ethnicity, culture, language, beliefs, and lifestyles are rich in information from which resilience and health promotion may be derived” (Wyatt & Belcher, 2019, p. 313). URM students may have very important viewpoints to tackle health disparities. Mentors can help bring out the best in students by fostering and helping unleash their potential.