Developing an Indigenous Mentoring Program for faculty mentoring American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students in STEM: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

In order to increase graduation rates of American Indian and Alaska Native doctoral candidates in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, a culturally attuned mentorship program needs to be developed. In our study, we used a conversational method of Indigenous research that privileges relationships and lived experiences to inform such a program. Data was collected in semi-structured interviews using a conversational guide and initial themes were deliberated and refined into a coding framework that was subsequently applied to the data. The themes that emerged from the research included relationality, cultural humility, Indigenous worldviews, suggestions for activities, and resources/support. These themes established the framework for an Indigenous mentoring program (IMP) for faculty mentors of American Indian/Alaska Native graduate students in STEM at four, 4-year institutions and a tribal college.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentoring
• American Indian and Alaska Native
• Indigenous
• Graduate Students
• STEM Fields

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program seeks to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success for historically underrepresented minority doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty, particularly African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders, in specific STEM disciplines and/or STEM education research fields (National Science Foundation, 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sweeney Windchief

Sweeney Windchief, a member of the Fort Peck Tribes (Assiniboine) in Montana and serves as an Assistant Professor of Adult and Higher Education at Montana State University. His research interests include higher education specifically under the umbrella of Indigenous intellectualism. His teaching privileges include critical race theory, Indigenous methodologies in research, law and policy in higher education, and institutional research. He and his wife Sara have two sons who help keep things in perspective.

Raquel Arouca

Raquel Arouca serves as the Director of Recruitment, Retention, and Diversity Initiatives at the Office of Graduate Studies of the University of Missouri – Columbia. She provides support to incoming graduate students who are members of racial and ethnic underrepresented populations in graduate education, and/or first-generation college student, and those in undergraduate programs to understand the graduate school application process. Her research interests are mentoring diverse graduate student population, place-based experiential learning to retain students, and readjustment of international or study abroad students after their sojourn experience.

Blakely Brown

Blakely Brown was born and raised in Montana. She is a Professor in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences. Broadly, her area of expertise is behavioral and public health, with emphasis on child health promotion, diabetes prevention and improving food access and systems in rural and Indigenous communities. Her teaching privileges include community-based participatory research methods for health and basic human nutrition. Her leisure activities include long distance running and walking, ceramics, bee-keeping, canoeing and gardening and spending time with her daughter and son, and her husband, Andy.