Mentoring: A Foundation of Leadership, Teaching, and Research at HBCUs

Introduction

Many historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were founded with an emphasis on teaching future leaders (Jewell, 2002). Kim and Conrad (2006) noted that although HBCUs have access to fewer resources compared to historically White colleges and universities (HWCUs), they compensate for those deficits by providing more supportive environments for faculty, staff, and students alike. While nurturing environments do not replace access to resources, they do serve to foster student achievement and leadership. Over the past 30 years, smaller HBCUs have integrated a focus on research as a method to enhance the marketability of their students. Consequently, to prepare students for leadership roles, exposure to research has become a necessity. This has required a push for research in the undergraduate curricula. Formal research training programs available to students at HBCUs have been found to contribute significantly to minority research scientists in the field of psychology (Stahl, 2005). Both exposure to research and formal research training serve to prepare students for the rigor of graduate school. Furthermore, the ability to conduct research requires skills of resourcefulness and critical thinking that are assets in any leadership role.

HBCU faculty play a major part in shaping the future leaders who will explore and solve the problems of the nation and, perhaps, the world. Researchers from such institutions bring unique perspectives and experiences that have been found to enhance the understanding of factors associated with racial, ethnic, and social inequities across various disciplines (D’Anna et al., 2019). Thus, in this chapter, examples of mentoring as part of leadership enhancement of psychology majors in research methods courses and as participants at research conferences will be provided. The authors discuss relevant research as well as personal experiences (as psychology professors) which they found reflects the research findings. The research process for other majors may be similar in that the characteristics associated with lead-ment-ship can be understood as an interdisciplinary endeavor.

Students are told in many of the psychology classes that the research process will allow them to better understand complicated social issues. Schwartz (2012) described an undergraduate research program in which the mentor, an African American man, talked about the importance of research and community service related to the students’ respective communities, which can extend to other countries, such as those in the Caribbean or South America. In this chapter, we argue that research should enhance the lives of predominantly ethnic minority and/or low-income communities from which many HBCU students come. As a result, we encourage students to develop research projects that would involve the community as beneficiaries of their research.

Past research experiences with former and current students have garnered invaluable experiences. Anecdotally, some students have become more interested in research when they found a way to relate it to their lives. For many HBCU faculty, a sense of commitment to Black communities is cited as a reason for teaching there (Sydnor et al., 2010). Oftentimes, the best way to teach a minimum of 12 credit hours a semester while seeking to conduct research is to mentor students for future graduate school opportunities. Thus, the faculty-student relationship as the foundation continues to enhance the experiences of both parties.

Teaching is a way to access students for such opportunities. Due to heavy course loads at HBCUs, and guiding them toward improvements in their coursework, faculty are able to set the stage for building students’ confidence--one of the hallmarks of both mentoring and leadership. Classroom experiences predicted student-faculty relationships in a study by Williams and Johnson (2018). They found that when Black female students received adequate feedback from instructors, it impacted the way they related to their professors and the outcome was likely to be positive.

A common theme that came out of much of the literature in undergraduate research implemented with students, was the focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). With psychology being a STEM discipline, these majors understood the need for research. HBCU STEM success is important due to the percentage of Black students who go on to attend research institutions for graduate school. The goals of preparing students to become competitive in the graduate school application process, the graduate school experience, and ultimately in the workforce were achieved. The students embraced dedicated course work and research experiences both within and outside of the classroom.