Cross-Cultural Mentoring in Institutional Contexts.

Abstract

Abstract Both White faculty members and Black students bring their own cross-cultural ideology to mentoring relationships. Additionally, institutional culture and type often impact cross-cultural relationships via institutional mission, faculty expectation, and student development. Some researchers have found that race is not a factor in cross-cultural mentoring relationships between White mentors and Black students; however, other researchers have found that campus climate and culture, including faculty-student interactions, impact student persistence and college completion. Furthermore, sparse research investigating mentor and protege's perception of each other's culture was found. Such sparseness suggested a void in the literature and therefore encouraged me to further investigate mentoring and student development across differing contexts and ethnic cultures. Introduction Cross-cultural mentoring relationships between White faculty members and Black students on college campuses, particularly large predominantly White institutions (PWIs), has and will become a greater concern for two reasons: first, there remains a disparity between Black student persistence and college completion and White student persistence and completion, where faculty-student mentoring is seen as one way to address these disparities (Astin, 1993a; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005); and second, the number of Black students entering PWIs is steadily increasing while the number of Black faculty members at PWIs remains at a disproportionately low and stagnant percentage (Bowman, Kite, Branscombe, & Williams, 1999). While Blacks show increasing enrollment trends in higher education (Provasnik, Shafer, & Snyder, 2004), there still remains a disparity between White student and Black student persistence and degree attainment. Nettles and Perna (1997) reported that 71.7% of White students were in continuous enrollment (i.e., those students who were still enrolled at year six), while only 57.3% of Black students maintained continuous enrollment. Additionally, statistics at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) presented an interesting dynamic which shows that although HBCU graduates comprise only 2% of total college graduates, Blacks at HBCUs constitute almost 25% of the total Blacks who received bachelor degrees (Provasnik et al., 2004). HBCUs continue their mission of providing Blacks with access to higher education and providing a campus climate that differs form PWIs (Allen, Epps, & Haniff, 1991; Brown & Davis, 2001). There are several factors that may explain the lower persistence and degree attainment of Blacks at PWIs. One such factor may be attributed to campus experiences. Researchers have found that Black students at PWIs face issues of socialization, isolation, and marginalization (Chang, 2000; D'Augelli & Hershberger, 1 993; Fries-Britt & Turner, 2002). In contrast, HBCUs are credited with helping students of all economic backgrounds to succeed and beat the odds (Brown, Ricard, & Donahoo, 2004, p. 25) through support, especially the support provided by faculty (Allen & Haniff, 1991; Fleming, 1984; Fries-Britt & Turner; Nasim, Roberts, Harrell, & Young, 2005). For both HBCUs and PWIs, student persistence is correlated with the academic and psychosocial support of faculty and the quality of the faculty-student interaction (Astin, 1993a; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). For Blacks, this type of support is reported to be more prevalent at HBCUs than at PWIs (Allen & Haniff, 1991 ; Fleming, 1984; Fries-Britt & Turner; Nasim et al., 2005). Regardless of institutional type, Black students seek faculty of the same race or cultural background for such support (Crosby, 1999; Thomas, 1993, 2001). Although Black students seek same-race mentoring relationships, as stated previously, the availability of Black faculty remains minimal. Hoffman, Llagas, and Synder, (2003) reported that in 1999 only 5. …