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“Take the Fifth”: Mentoring Students Whose Cultural Communities Were Not Historically Structured Into U.S. Higher Education

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Abstract

This article presents a description of the African Atlantic Research Team as exemplary of ten years of successful mentoring of undergraduate and graduate university students who are focused on a Ph.D in disciplines traditionally associated with academic research and teaching. The team is distinctive because it is multi-disciplinary in composition, the majority of its members are from communities historically excluded from structures of U.S. higher education, and its activities focus on members working collaboratively and collectively through most areas of their academic learning and socialization. Though the numbers of this case study are small, 95% of team members successfully completed their bachelor’s degree with majors that facilitate their application for graduate study in disciplines linked to academic research, writing, and university instruction. These undergraduate majors differ from those focusing upon social problems or applied or professional majors. Eighty percent of the team members applied for graduate study, and only one did not attend graduate school.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Jualynne E. Dodson, Beronda L. Montgomery & Lesley J. Brown

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  1. Jualynne E. Dodson
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  2. Beronda L. Montgomery
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  3. Lesley J. Brown
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Correspondence to Jualynne E. Dodson.

Additional information

Jualynne E. Dodson

, Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley), is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate Program in African American & African Studies at Michigan State University. Her current research focuses on issues of “Culture and Religion of African Descendants in the Americas.” Dr. Dodson is the founding organizer and director of the African Atlantic Research Team.

Beronda L. Montgomery

, Ph.D. (University of California, Davis), is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University. She is a current recipient of an NSF CAREER award, and her practical interests in higher education include increasing diversity in the natural sciences and in the professoriate in general.

Lesley J. Brown

, M.S. Library and Information Studies (Florida State University), is a Reference Librarian in the Social Sciences at Michigan State University. At present Ms. Brown’s research interest explores the gap between School Libraries and Academic Libraries in an effort to represent the academic community’s expectations of student information literacy skills better.

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Dodson, J.E., Montgomery, B.L. & Brown, L.J. “Take the Fifth”: Mentoring Students Whose Cultural Communities Were Not Historically Structured Into U.S. Higher Education. Innov High Educ 34, 185–199 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-009-9099-y

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