International faculty mentoring partnership with international undergraduate student and community organizations in a local and a global context: lessons learned

ABSTRACT

The authors of this perspectives-based paper analyze the research process and results of an undergraduate research (UR) partnership that involved both of us – an undergraduate student and a faculty member with international backgrounds–, a local non-profit organization in North Carolina that connected the authors with research participants who are refugees from diverse origins in Africa and South Asia, and a foreign non-profit organization that connected the authors with Nepali research participants in Nepal. Learning about how this research partnership worked, its challenges and successes is important to better understand how faculty members of diverse origins can effectively mentor undergraduate students of diverse origins in both local and global contexts. Recommendations and lessons learned are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate research (UR)
• international background
• local and global research
• research partnership
• diverse origins
• mentorship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mussa Idris

Dr. Mussa Idris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Elon University. Dr. Idris received his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Asmara, Eritrea. He then went on to earn his Master of Arts in Anthropology at the University of Florida, and then his Ph.D from the University of Florida. His research areas include entrepreneurship, micro-enterprise, transnationalism, African diaspora, migration, and refugees’ and asylees’ resettlement experiences from East and Central Africa in Greensboro, N.C. and Washington, D.C. His research has been presented in conferences such as AAA, and he has published work in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, Annals of Anthropological Practice, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Journal of Immigration and Refugee Studies, and Journal of International Migration and Integration. He has also published chapters in the books Africa and Globalization and The African Metropolis. 

Leena Dahal

Leena Dahal graduated from Elon University, in North Carolina, in spring 2017, as an International Fellow with a double major in strategic communications and international studies. She was also a Lumen Scholar. Leena was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which allowed her to obtain a master´s degree in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, where her master´s dissertation was awarded the C.A. Bayly Prize for the best dissertation in her department, and it was also awarded, nationwide, as best master`s dissertation by the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS).  After obtaining her master´s degree, Leena worked as Opinions Editor at the Kathmandu Post, in Nepal, and later as a communications specialist at Nepal´s WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).