“People around Me Here, They Know the Struggle”: Students’ Experiences with Faculty Member’s Mentorship at Three Hispanic Serving Institutions

Current attempts to further diversify the professoriate signal the critical need to cultivate pathways for students to enter academia by encouraging undergraduates to pursue further graduate education. Previous research has already noted the critical importance of positive graduate education experiences in preparing future faculty. Other researchers point to the role that faculty mentors offer in cultivating students’ future aspirations to become academics themselves. Drawing on interviews from a longitudinal study with 30 undergraduates at three Hispanic Serving Institutions, this qualitative project explores how students of various racial and ethnic backgrounds make sense of the support they receive within a program (titled HSI Pathways to the Professoriate) specifically aimed at supporting students from Hispanic Serving Institutions interested in becoming faculty members. In what ways does the program’s (HSI Pathways to the Professoriate) focus on racial and ethnic identities cultivate students’ perceptions of what it means to enter academia with the goal of diversifying the professoriate? Framed by Museus’ CECE (Culturally Engagement Campus Environments) model, this paper contributes to the importance of faculty mentors working alongside students and students’ interactions with each other as critical to the meaningful engagement of culturally responsive principles. The paper concludes with suggestions for institutions interested in cultivating these principles within their faculty.