New SPSP Resource Offers Guidance to Promote More Inclusive Mentorship

SPSP has produced a new video designed to help mentors support mentees from different cultural backgrounds. This is the latest addition to SPSP’s “Eliminating Racism in Workplaces and Communities” collection of resources.

The video highlights first-hand experiences from scholars who have felt alienated by professors or faculty advisors who have singled them out or made assumptions based on the student’s cultural background. These stories demonstrate that mentors who offer advice driven by assumptions, even those with good intentions, can harm a student’s sense of belonging and erode trust.

“Acknowledging the differences in our perspectives may help us understand why many students and junior faculty from minoritized backgrounds remember unhelpful advice and even hurtful, harmful advice as a common theme among their experiences,” explains C. Malik Boykin, Chair of the Eliminating Racism in Workplaces and Communities Task Force.

Throughout the video, SPSP members offer guidance that can help mentors support their mentees and, when appropriate, engage in thoughtful conversations about cultural expression.

Key Takeaways for Mentors Include:

• Resist commenting on practices, bodies, and objects that are unfamiliar to you. Instead, request permission to ask questions and do so with cultural humility. You should also respect a mentee’s right to deny that request.
• The desire to shape a mentor’s professional experience to conform with a mentor’s orientation can cause conflict in cross-racial, cross-ethnic, and cross-cultural mentorships.
• If your colleagues are put off by student’s cultural expressions, consider it an opportunity to advocate for expanding our collective definition of what it means to be professional.
• Listen, and create opportunities for mentees to tell you what they need. Fostering a sense of trust can help a student feel comfortable communicating these needs.
• Make good faith efforts to act upon students’ needs, provide support, and validate their trust in you as a mentor.

This video is the newest tool in a suite of resources produced by the Eliminating Racism in Workplaces and Communities Task Force. This collection includes a diagnostic tool that helps departments and organizations assess their own progress toward fostering equity and inclusivity, mentorship rubrics, and more.

Learn More About the Resources         Download the Resources Here

SPSP believes that these tools are an important step toward fostering a more inclusive field and we urge other members to help us build on this momentum. We would like to thank the Eliminating Racism in Workplaces and Communities Task Force who have devoted their time and expertise to creating these resources. Task force members include Malik Boykin (chair), Simon Howard, Kate Ratliff, Christine Reyna, Brenda Straka, Negin Toosi, Daryl A. Wout, Julia Ryan, and Cydney Dupree (for several months) with support from SPSP’s Board of Directors