Successful STEM Mentoring Initiatives for Underrepresented Students

Every STEM professor will benefit from reading this book- whether you simply hope to better understand the landscape of issues facing URM students in our classrooms, labs and majors, or have been tasked with designing a program to better support students at the college-entry, major-entry, or post-college transition. My students and I read this book in our class exploring topics of diversity in STEM (Being Human in STEM) in the spring of 2016. We were impressed with Packard's ability to provide such an accessible, balanced and action-oriented guide to these complex issues. She has provided an outstanding blueprint to institutions, departments, and faculty members who want to move from good intentions to action, but lack expertise and training in these issues. Packard lucidly distills the primary research documenting both the barriers faced by underrepresented students in STEM, and the effectiveness of a range of existing practices across institutions that have experimented with different programs. In addition she provides workbook style chapters that walk step-by-step through the important decisions necessary for designers to consider as they develop a program best suited to their students’ needs and existing STEM culture.

Wai-Ling Packard is extremely knowledgable when it comes to supporting underrepresented students in STEM fields. Her vast personal experience and knowledge of the literature make her the ideal author for this text. This book offers a clear picture of the obstacles that our students face as well as tools for improving climate and culture. My institution is using this text to help institute substantial change on our campus. We used it both in the formation stages of program development and as a guide book as we implement change. A must read indeed!

Great book with practical steps you can take TODAY. An easy read with powerful evidence-based advice to increase the diversity of your program. Highly recommended.

Great overview of what works. It provides, essentially, a road map for building effective mentoring programs.

I teach biology at a community college and have been following my instincts to help mentor my students over the past decades. But there is a worls of research on the topic; and this book does an excellent job compiling that work in an easily accessible manner. This is the book for those of us who want to reach out and help more students, but don't have the time or expertise to wade through the research that has been done.

This book is a crash course in designing an effective mentorship infrastructure and continues to be a crucial tool as I build out what mentorship can look like for a liberal arts college. In order to reach scale, mentorship initiatives need to expand beyond one-on-one pairing and this book provides a road map for understanding the benefits and limits of a handful of different mentorship approaches. Highly recommend!

A valuable resource for anyone developing a mentoring program or who wants to think out-of-the-box on mentoring across the institution!

We used this book for a faculty learning community at our college. Our faculty really appreciated the research-based advice, and especially liked the discussion of difficult conversations in mentoring. I wish I had this book when I first started my position.