Being a Good Mentor

As I reflect on David Asai’s article, “Inclusive Science Education Is Not Zero-Sum” (Issues, Spring 2025), I keep coming back to his call for researchers and leaders to take personal responsibility for broadening participation in science through efforts that advance belonging. While creating more inclusive learning environments will ultimately require the scientific community to fundamentally shift culture through new structures, policies, and practices, we cannot forget the important role that each of us has in making change.

Individuals have power and can both create and sustain equitable systems, even in the absence of specific programs and policies. We cannot wait for the system to function in ways that are more equitable and just—especially given the constraints of our current context. Rather, we must be brave, vulnerable, and willing to engage in our work in new ways to create a more diverse and inclusive science ecosystem where all scientists can thrive.

Asai offers thoughtful guidance on what this looks like in practice and what we, as individuals, can do to ensure that the science community welcomes the most talented and creative minds and opens its doors to include the perspectives of scientists from all backgrounds.

While Asai’s principles of inclusion and allyship are critical on their own, they can be particularly powerful when incorporated into our work as mentors. The apprenticeship model that guides so many undergraduate research programs and much of graduate education and postdoctoral training provides ample opportunities to engage in mentorship. Mentorship is a powerful tool in accelerating the development and careers of all scientists and notably has been found to be particularly important in recruiting, retaining, and advancing the careers of scientists who have been previously excluded and felt unwelcome.

Too often, however, we miss the opportunity to fully leverage the impact of mentoring relationships, particularly on efforts to broaden participation. Many young scientists report dissatisfaction with mentorship, noting either that they don’t have a mentor or that the mentorship they receive does not meet their needs. These critiques are particularly common among scientists with minoritized identities, who often find potential mentors to be aloof, unavailable, or skeptical about the unique challenges they face.

As Brad Johnson and I write in the most recent edition of On Being a Mentor, effective mentorship requires intentional efforts to cultivate personal connection, which is unfortunately often missing in many academic relationships. It may be tempting to focus singularly on “the science” while mentoring—building research, writing, and presentation skills that help trainees become good scientists. But if we are to advance commitments to inclusive excellence and strengthen the scientific enterprise, mentorship requires a greater emphasis on care and connection, shown through efforts to honor early career colleagues’ identities and humanity. Mentors who are intentional about validating their trainees’ experiences (even when they are unfamiliar), fostering inclusive learning environments in their classrooms and laboratories, and serving as vocal allies create conditions for better science because they are advancing collective thriving. In addition to embracing them as principles, embedding Asai’s proposed strategies in our practice is key to catalyzing and sustaining a more inclusive scientific community.

Kimberly A. Griffin

Science, as David Asai reminds us, relies on an ethos of curiosity and creativity. I would also add collaborative inquiry, to round out the three C’s of science.

The good news is that there is no shortage of young people, across all demographic lines, who demonstrate deep wells of curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. But the bad news is that too many fully capable students somehow get turned away from science during postsecondary education. Notably, many of these students are women, are from low-income families, are non-Asian students of color, or are from rural communities and underfunded public schools.

One way to address this gap is to change how we start the process. Instead of asking whether students are ready for postsecondary science curriculum and classroom norms, which often is the guiding question in admissions offices, leaders in science education (and education in general) should ask: Are our curriculum and pedagogies valid and reliable for educating coming generations of students who are increasingly diverse? And if not, how do we improve curriculum and pedagogical approaches to affirm and empower talented students who might not demonstrate curiosity, creativity, and collaboration in the same ways past generations of (mostly white male) scientists have?

For postsecondary educators, we should focus on factors within our spheres of influence and control. While most day-to-day college educators have little to no control over the systemic inequities in primary and secondary schooling, we do have control over curriculum and pedagogical practices. That said, few doctoral programs prepare future professors to teach. (When I was a PhD student in education in the 2000s, my adviser informed me that it was unimportant to develop my pedagogy and instructional skills to successfully pursue a tenure-track faculty career.) As a result of these norms in doctoral training across fields, as well as the reward structures in the academy, many professors are ill-prepared to teach, rarely having been exposed to research-based strategies and practices for high-quality teaching.

However, our job as educators is to learn how to be better teachers for the future of science, to guide and mentor students to grow their skills for scientific inquiry. Although there are some notable efforts to transform science education (e.g., the UBelong Collaborative and the Indigenous STEAM Collaborative), the current political attacks on science will likely hinder these efforts. As educators, this political era can be overwhelming.

One way to stay grounded is to remember that we still have to meet our vocational obligations—to teach. Because authoritarian power grabs thrive on less-educated populations, it has become increasingly important for science educators to invest in their pedagogical strategies and skills, and for academic leaders to incentivize and support their development in teaching all students. We may not individually have the power to effectively fight the political attacks, but classrooms, syllabi, and pedagogy represent sites of power and possibilities for democratic resistance and inclusive education that affirms the ethos of curiosity, creativity, and collaboration however they may show up.

OiYan Poon

As a doctoral student at Harvard University from 1990 to 1997, I worked with the wise doctor Herbert C. Kelman, a Jewish person who fled the Nazis in his youth. He taught about how to resist social pressure that can lead people to “crimes of obedience” and contributed to de-escalating protracted ethnic conflicts. Working with him and through Harvard Law School courses, I built my skills in negotiation, mediation, and problem-solving. One core lesson was that when faced with what looks like a zero-sum situation, in which I have to divide a fixed pie of resources, the best action is to take time to see if I can “grow the pie.”

David Asai alludes to this, noting that “inclusion and excellence are not mutually exclusive, and that an equitable future for all of us is possible.” He is imploring us to recognize that the pie can and must grow so that more people “win” relative to what is possible. My nearly 20 years of research on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, including measuring the power of kindness to contribute toward connection and well-being, provides ample evidence that the pie can and does grow. There are ways to change STEM curriculum and mentorship to build science training programs that help all students to succeed and be excellent contributors to their fields and the nation. Unlike traditional approaches to STEM education that were overly supportive to one dominant group, we now have ways to “lift all boats” and reduce the inequity for more of our learners. I recognize that this feels like a loss to some people, but is it?

When teaching conflict management, I had a game where two players could gain 64 pennies each through cooperation, but sometimes an individual would choose to compete. One player would then “win” the game relative to the other person with 10 cents of profit and the other person with 1 cent. To win relative to the other resulted in overall loss for everyone. An alternative approach is to build a world where learners and educators win relative to what is possible to learn and contribute, rather than relative to each other. Shifting to this mindset can happen with or without federal support and relegates the current federal shifts in funding (which is actively trying to shrink the pie) to a losing strategy.

As educators, this time in history is calling us to lean into a new paradigm, even as it is actively and systematically being challenged and even dismantled by some. This new paradigm is a major pivot toward redefining winning and success in the direction of collective benefit. Our futures rest on our evolution away from antiquated zero-sum games to a grow-the-pie mentality, where every learner and educator can be welcomed and experience belonging, achieve excellence, and find meaning.

Mica Estrada

David Asai provides a compelling perspective about why US scientists must continue inclusion efforts to achieve scientific excellence, and he provides a guide for these efforts that makes use of historical examples of American resisters.

I would like to add to his examples the Filipino and Mexican-American resisters who led boycotts and strikes to achieve inclusion of all farm workers in contracts for fair wages and better working conditions. Moreover, I would like to highlight boycotts as an additional tool in his “Be an ally” category of possible actions, and encourage American scientists to consider boycotting leaders and organizations that support or enable exclusion. They might do this by, for example, declining invitations to collaborate with exclusionary leaders or to deliver scientific talks at exclusionary organizations.

These actions might often prove difficult, but as proven by experience, they can be expected to synergize with efforts to support leaders who act against exclusionary policies and practices—a goal that Asai recommends.

Leticia Márquez-Magaña

David Asai is correct that inclusive science education is not a zero-sum game with winner-takes-all outcomes. However, there clearly is some game at play here—one that dares us to continue our work while also offering an opportunity to choose better who we will be.

In practicality, yes, we should commit wholeheartedly to inclusion, figure out how to be allies, get involved in accreditation, and work toward interdisciplinarity. But truth be told, even after we have successfully employed these strategies, disparities in undergraduate science education still exist. And the sudden and systematic dismantling of the resources and structures that supported our efforts seems to have been accomplished too easily and without explanation, curiosity about what had been accomplished, or critical discourse with our community.

This leads me to believe that advancing inclusive science education will require a different playbook—one that is more contextual than literal, more spiritual than tactical, more stylistic than scholarly. We would keep the familiar tools and strategies, and everything we know about how to implement them effectively, but would add our histories, worldviews, and, yes, even our souls.

Like Asai, I am inspired by the efforts of my ancestors. In the 1970s, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an order of Black nuns, revolutionized the Catholic Church by holding it accountable for the rights of Black women to be nuns and by insisting that Black children have access to high-quality primary education. Their forms of protest reached from the streets to the church pews, then to the classroom and back again. And, more importantly, they were deeply rooted in their spiritual commitments. What I first learned from them as a kindergartner now informs what I believe we, as leaders and change agents, need to know while operating from our new playbook.

Overcome timidity. Even with the risk of being punished or removed, the Black nuns, especially those who served as school principals, were fearless in speaking out about educational crises and challenging the status quo. Each of us must also find a way to step into the fray, take a few risks, and refuse to shrink away from meaningful conflicts and struggles.

Expect resistance. As we continue the work of “bringing science to all,” resistance is almost certain—but it also will signal that progress is being achieved. Resistance will require us to continue making mental mind-shifts to release our fears about engaging in generative conflicts and critiques, and to be open to the possibility that there is always something valuable to learn from contrasting perspectives.

Fix ourselves first. In the 1970s, Marva Collins, a noted Chicago public school educator, insisted that we not “fix” our students first, but rather look inward. None of us has been untouched by the volatility that has come with the loss of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence program and others like it. Nor can we escape the threat of proceeding with our work from a place of bitterness and brokenness, rather than one of strength and vitality. Therefore, our playbook cannot—and should never again—overlook the need for healing, rebalancing, and reconnecting with our work, with each other, and with the divine connections we share.

Kelly Mack