The Importance of Mentoring to Students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
The importance of mentoring relationships becomes evident as we recognize the value of developing and maintaining relationships with experienced and successful people. The value of a good mentor is immeasurable.
A mentor can help to alleviate much of the frustration students often feel in their first few months in college. By sharing their insight and knowledge, students can be spared a great deal of stress which is often felt. A good mentor can advise and support students and help avoid an unnecessary delinquency due to feelings of incompetence and isolation. A successful mentor demonstrates and upholds the values and ethics of the field they represent.
Good mentors introduce their new students to older mentees for pair guidance. They will offer support and assistance until they feel comfortable in the college setting. As time goes on, mentoring often becomes a two way street and offers benefits to both parties.
I have identified ten advantages of mentoring to students of HBCUs. They are as follows:
- The structure established by mentors provides accountability
- Mentors provide important answers
- Mentees can learn to reflect more before acting
- Discover the “real” problem and get help to solve it
- They escape from “short-term thinking”
- They obtain a “responsible” alternate perspective
- They get into the “thinking” habit
- Students embrace new possibilities
- Mentees learn to be in balance
- Students get help to distinguish yourself in the marketplace
The Higher Education Act of 1965 defines an HBCU as “… any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans.”
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have a long history of serving African American communities long before many colleges and universities would admit black students.
Even though today’s African American students can attend college anywhere their grades and talents can take them, many still turn to HBCUs for their education. For some students, it may be the chance to study with mentors who are of the same culture and who are successful in their fields. Many develop mentoring, fraternal and family ties to an HBCU that go back generations. Others attend an HBCU to get a college experience with an African American experience with guidance from successful graduates. In addition to rigorous academics, HBCUs have storied legacies that are intertwined with the history of civil rights in the United States, giving their students, regardless of race or background, a distinctive perspective on the African American experience.
Graduate students benefit from guidance by their mentors in many ways. Among these are academic guidance, career development, personal guidance, and overall aid in the socialization of the graduate student. Students also benefit from an enhanced access to a professional network offered by the mentor. Graduate students benefit from the exposure a mentor can provide. Through this exposure the student gains ability to develop meaningful relationships with future colleagues in their respective profession. Thirdly, graduate students benefit from receiving honest feedback from their mentors. These benefits help students survive graduate school, but they also promote the professional and career development of students as well.
Given, minority graduate students historical exclusion from institutions of higher education, the persistent group stereotypes that relate to their academic abilities and competencies, as well their unique cultural perspectives demand that more attention needs to be paid to the qualities needed to effectively mentor this group. For example, good mentors are knowledgeable and sensitive to the issues their students face. To mentor minority graduate students, mentor knowledge could be expanded to include the day-to-day experiences of being a racial minority on their campus as well as mentors’ multicultural competence. Similarly, minority students’ mentors are be more effective when we have experience within diverse contexts and diverse relationships. Feedback, is another example, of an important benefit of mentoring, yet it may be one outcome that many mentors are hesitant to provide.
Many African American students have found alternative sources of support for finishing their degrees by establishing mentoring relationships with mentors outside of their institutions. Mentors from outside like ourselves helped black students form committees, locate relevant literature, develop their writing skills, and identify opportunities for presenting their work and for funding. In short, these ‘‘outsiders’’ performed all of the tasks that one would expect a graduate faculty member within the students’ home department to perform.
In understanding the importance of mentoring, one must know what it means to be a good mentor. Yet for many minority graduate students, the concerns may simply be more around related to access to mentoring rather than the quality of mentoring.
It is my hope to expose the advantages and barriers to functional mentoring and the need to increase mentoring for minority students.