Broadening Participation in STEM: The Social Proximity of Mentorship Model

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Luis Rivera at Rutgers University, Newark, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the utility of a scalable undergraduate near-peer mentor-mentee relationship program that yields positive psychological, persistence, and performance outcomes among underrepresented group members (URGs; Black, Latinx, Native American, and women) pursuing STEM. The research goal is to test the effectiveness of the near-peer mentorship program in achieving four societally relevant outcomes valued by NSF: (1) increase participation of URGs in STEM, (2) improve STEM education at the undergraduate level; (3) develop a diverse STEM workforce among the United States to increase economic competitiveness; and (4) enhance infrastructure for research and education by partnering with eight different higher education institutions in New Jersey. After three decades of research efforts, STEM pathway participation gaps are still observed between URGs and non-URGs in STEM. One possible reason is that psychological, performance, and persistence gains among these groups may be limited to those participating in STEM retention programs. This indicates the need to expand successful practices within ongoing support programs to the broader URG population across institutions. The undergraduate student near-peer mentorship in the project represents a scalable solution to the lack of mentorship often experienced by undergraduate URG students in STEM. Instead of relying on faculty members or staff, advanced undergraduate students represent a largely untapped pool of potential mentors that can be encouraged to mentor lower-level students at little or no cost. This project proposes a mentoring model, the Social Proximity of Mentorship (SPM), that centers mentor-mentee relationships between advanced undergraduate near-peer mentors and lower-level undergraduate students. Based on the SPM model, the main objective is to demonstrate the utility of a scalable undergraduate mentor-mentee relationship program that yields positive STEM outcomes via social psychological closeness, relationship comfort, and psychosocial support among both mentees and mentors. The SPM model proposes that mentor-mentee relationship processes and outcomes are bidirectional. The academic and career status proximity between upper-level and lower-level undergraduate students should promote mutual feelings of psychological closeness and relationship comfort, which presents a unique opportunity for strong psychosocial support. These relationship factors buffer situational threats stemming from numeric underrepresentation, cultural stereotypes, and bias that, in turn, uniquely undermine STEM belonging and identity. The project’s specific aims are (1) to show that URG mentees and mentors assigned to a near-peer relationship, compared to a faculty relationship, will report stronger psychological closeness, relationship comfort, and psychosocial support, and (2) to demonstrate that URG mentees and mentors assigned to the near-peer mentorship condition will exhibit stronger STEM belonging, identity, performance, and persistence gains across three-time-points, compared to URG students assigned to the control conditions. To meet these goals, a longitudinal experiment will track mentor-mentee relationships among undergraduate near-peers, faculty-undergraduate mentorship, a control group of upper-level students, and a control group of lower-level students across two semesters. STEM-related psychological processes and performance outcomes will be measured in both undergraduate mentors and mentees. The ultimate goal is to establish a scalable mentorship program with URG students that could be implemented across higher education institutions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.