26 February 2007
Online Mentoring Promotes Diversity in Sciences, Engineering
MentorNet provides online advice, support to underrepresented groups
Washington -- Young scientists and engineers can get assistance with career development through an online mentoring program that aims to promote diversity by offering advice and support to traditionally underrepresented groups, particularly women.
MentorNet is a nonprofit network that matches undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and early-career faculty with professionals in their fields for structured, e-mail-based mentoring. It aims to promote a diversified global workforce and to advance the progress of women and other groups underrepresented in scientific and technical fields.
“MentorNet's mission and programs are indeed global, and we hope they continue to expand globally,” the group's founder and chief executive officer Carol Muller told USINFO.
At present, MentorNet has partnerships with institutions of higher education in Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in addition to its 108 institutional partners in the United States. Protégés -- young scientists being mentored – currently are located in eight countries, and mentors are located in 34 countries. Protégés originating from 95 countries and mentors from 61 countries are participating. MentorNet is supported through partnerships, grants and donations from academic institutions, corporations and individuals.
A recent National Academies of Science and Engineering report, Beyond Bias and Barriers, called attention to the obstacles women often face in academic careers, including discrimination. “[W]omen are very likely to face discrimination in every field of the sciences and engineering,” according to the report. “It is not lack of talent, but unintentional biases and outmoded institutional structures that are hindering the access and advancement of women.”
The report said that at every step from high school through full professorships, women -- particularly minority women -- are lost to scientific and technical careers because of discrimination. “Evaluation criteria contain arbitrary and subjective components that disadvantage women,” the report said. “Women faculty [members] are paid less, are promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions than men. These discrepancies do not appear to be based on productivity, the significance of their work, or any other measure of performance.”
The report spurred MentorNet and the American Association for Women in Science to extend their partnership and to offer mentoring to more undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctorate scholars and early-career faculty.
Mentoring is important because it involves two-way learning relationships, according to Muller. What the mentor learns can be as important as what the protégé learns.
“Through mentoring relationships, mentors can discover for themselves what protégés experience that may be different from what they experienced,” Muller said. “Too, the conversations in mentoring relationships can open up questioning and discussion of practices and policies which may be outmoded and hold women back.” This shared information can become “one of the keys to solving the problem of discrimination against women -- and others underrepresented -- in science and engineering,” she said.
As for protégés, “mentoring is one of the primary ways that individuals learn about how to navigate the social and cultural aspects of their fields, disciplines, and professions, and without such tacit knowledge, many will be unable to succeed,” Muller said.
Mentoring benefits not only individuals but the group, she said, because it “is one of the key ways that organizations and societies keep growing, developing, and advancing even as the people within them move on.”
MORE MENTORS NEEDED
MentorNet needs more volunteer mentors, particularly professionals with backgrounds in life sciences, biosciences, biotechology and bioengineering, Muller said, adding that the organization “can use most volunteer professionals across all science, engineering, mathematics and technology fields.” Mentors make a commitment to email a protégé approximately once a week over a period of eight months. MentorNet provides training and coaching for both mentors and protégés.
The organization also provides training and coaching for both mentors and protégés.
“Mentoring all by itself is highly unlikely to enable all the systemic change needed to ensure a ‘level playing field’ and a world in which women and others face no discrimination. But it is a useful strategy for individuals in the face of a society which continues to be characterized by gender and ethnic ‘schema’ and expectations for performance based on gender and race, and can contribute to systemic change over time,” Muller said.
The executive summary (PDF, 33 pages) of Beyond Bias and Barriers is available on the Web site of the National Academies of Science and Engineering, as is the rest of the report.
More information on MentorNet is available on the organization’s Web site.
For more information on U.S. society, see Population and Diversity.
