MENTORING A

DIVERSE POPULATION[1]

_____________________________

 

Roxana Moayedi

 

 

OVER THE PAST TWO DECADES numerous reports have suggested that mentoring is an important part of an individual’s career and workforce development.  These reports, however, focus their attention on the importance of mentoring as a tool for social integration into the “organizational culture” of academia or the workplace.  This chapter presents a new focus about the intersection of race, class, and gender.  The pilot course, titled “Mentoring and Diversity,” was taught at Trinity College in Washington, D.C.  This report provides an overview of mentoring programs in institutions of higher education, includes a description of Trinity College’s mentoring program, and presents recommendations for future implementation of such a program.

 

            Review of the literature and past research on mentoring suggests three facts: everyone who makes it has a mentor; it is especially important for women (Bova, 1995; Halcomb, 1980; Kim, 1995; Merriam, 1983; Missirian, 1982) to have mentors because of the obstacles they often face in career advancement; and yet mentor pools are largely composed of white males.  The lact of available female mentors (Cook, 1979; Sheehy, 1976; Shapiro, Haseltine, and Rowe, 1978) is particularly disturbing in light of research indicating that same-sex mentoring relationships are most productive (Goldstein, 1979, Tidball, 1973).  Research also indicates that early experience with the protégé role linked to willingness to assume the mentor role later (Carden, 1990; Phillips-Jones, 1983).

 

            Diagnosing mentoring as an important organizational skill (part of the game that women must learn to play to survive in organizations) has prompted various institutions of higher education to develop formal mentoring programs for their female and minority students (Bell and Drakeford, 1992; Dickey, 1996; Association of American Colleges, 1991; Redmond, 1990).  These very popular programs usually involve matching a junior or senior college student with a successful career woman working in the field in which the protégé is interested.  The personal ambition of the protégé is the focus of the mentoring relationship.  Mentors are seen as experts who socialize their protégés into the “rules of the game” and provide job contacts in the future.  Establishing mentoring programs has become particularly popular as a tool for increasing the number of women and minorities in nontraditional fields such as mathematics and science (Atkinson, 1991; National Science Foundation/ACM, 1992; Pearl and others, 1990).  The career model of mentoring is designed to help women and minorities “catch up” with white men.  Mentoring programs with a community focus, in which college students become mentors to at-risk elementary or secondary school students are often limited to tutorial services for developing basic skills.

 

            A latent function of the career model of mentoring is to reinforce an elitist and individualistic lesson.  The unintended message to students is that if these successful women and minorities can achieve career success in the face of obstacles, it must be simply faulty socialization, lack of motivation, or other individual deficits that keep more women and minorities from attaining the same heights.  Students fail to see the larger social system in which the struggles of all women and minorities – whether successful or not – take place.

 

            In a community-service-oriented mentoring program, like most community service projects, students are supposed to learn from their experiences.  However, we know that learning from experience is neither easy nor automatic.  In the absence of any activities designed to facilitate learning, students often learn nothing or learn the wrong lesson.  Mentors who participate in community-service projects are often motivated by a sense of charity, usually rooted in their religious faith.  Others see it as an opportunity to link their college experience to future job opportunities.  Usually, the only outcome reported by the mentor is the personal satisfaction of helping those who are less fortunate.  Again, like most community-service projects, the mentoring relationship does nothing to challenge students’ stereotypes of disadvantaged people, and at worst it encourages victim-blaming attitudes.

 

            In response to these shortcomings, Trinity College proposed to develop a course titled “Mentoring and Diversity,” to combine a structured mentoring program with classroom learning.  Trinity is a Catholic liberal arts college for women.  Because it is an urban college, the student population is quite diverse.  The general curriculum is interdisciplinary, focusing on development of leadership values and skills; thus the course is designed to be interdisciplinary.  The semester discussed here was taught by a team of sociology and chemistry faculty members.  The academic section of the ration of race, class, and gender scholarship; the theme of women in mathematics and science was emphasized.  The mentoring component was designed to match Trinity students who would be mentors with female students from two high schools.  One group came from Bell Multicultural High School, which is an inner-city D.C. public school and a model of multicultural education.  Eighty percent of Bell students are Hispanic and recent immigrants from disadvantaged backgrounds.  The smaller group came from Paint Branch High School, which is located in a middle-class suburban area of Maryland.  The participants from this latter group were in a parent-sponsored organization at their high school that encourages young women to pursue careers in math and science.

 

            It was hopted that the students from Paint Branch would be mentored by Triity students majoring in math and science.  High school students were expected to attend four workshops focusing on diversity training, development of leadership skills, and exploration of careers in math and science.  They also were expected to “shadow” their mentors for two half days, attending classes and having meals at Trinity.  In addition to these structured activities, mentors were required to meet with their partners in between evens (see Table 13.1).

 

            Another unique feature of this program was the inclusion of mothers of the high school students.  The mothers were expected to participate in a campus open house and a tour at the beginning of the project, and to attend a leadership conference in the middle of the semester.  In this conference, successful African American and Hispanic women gave presentations on their commonalities as well as their unique experiences in the workplace.  The primary objective of the conference was to challenge students’ and other participants’ stereotypes and misinformation about their own group as well as members of other ethnic groups.  In the process, we hoped that their recognition of common themes in Hispanic and African American work experiences would lead to strategies for forming multicultural alliances.  The mothers also were to participate in an awards ceremony at the end of the semester.  For the majority of the Bell students and their mothers, this would be their first time on a college campus.

 

            The program was initially designed to establish a formal mentoring relationship between college women and at-risk Hispanic high school students.  The Paint Branch students were added to the project to give a math-and-science focus to the project and thus increase the likelihood of obtaining funding for it.  This component would allow identification of the specific barriers to math-and-science achievement experienced by women and minority students.

 

What was the rationale for targeting low-income girls and their mothers?  According to the Census Bureau, in 1990 among all women of color, Hispanic women had the highest drop-out rate of any group in high school and were identified as the students most at risk.  They also had the lowest enrollment rates on college campuses.  In 1990, about one in twelve Hispanic women had completed college, compared to one-fifth of white women, one-eighth of African American women, and one out of eleven Native American women.  According to Tinajero (1991), the most significant factor determining whether Hispanic females enter college is their mothers who would be able to actively model educational and career aspirations for their daughters would be very small.  There is, then, a need to make mothers partners in the postsecondary experience for Hispanic female students.

 

Expected Outcomes

 

Shrewsbury (1987) suggests that feminist pedagogy is characterized by three concepts: community, empowerment, and leadership.  These were the general goals both for the structured activities and for our classroom.  We hoped to create a community of learners (mentors, protégés, and teachers) who learn and practice leadership skills and feel empowered by these experiences.  In line with these general goals, we developed more specific expected outcomes for the participating high school girls:

 

·        Encouragement to complete high school education and raise their expectations of attending college

·        Exposure to higher eduation and various professional careers, particularly in math and science

·        An increase in mothers’ commitment to their daughters’ education by involving the mothers in the mentoring process

 

For Trinity students, we hoped to use mentoring relationships as a pedagogical tool to encourage three additional outcomes:

 

1.      Develop a deeper understanding of difficult and complex issue related to race, class, and gender.  Specifically, we hoped they would gain awareness of individual and organizational factors that encourage female participation in careers in math, science, and technology.

 

2.      Develop mentoring skills.

 

3.      Encourage mentors and protégés to recognize the significance of such mentoring relationships so that they would want to be mentors in the future; this was our long-term goal.

 

 

Project Implementation

 

Sixteen Trinity College students enrolled in the course.  None were mathematics or science majors.  Despite our efforts, we failed to recruit any math or science majors to act as mentors.  This was due to the small number of students in these majors as well as scheduling conflicts.  Among sixteen students, four were Hispanic, one African American, one Chinese American and on from Indonesia.  The remainder were of European descent.

 

            A Bell High School counselor, appointed by the Bell principal, selected ten students from that school.  She described them as motivated students who “needed a push” to consider going to college as a real possibility; they were in grades eleven and twelve.  All were recent Hispanic immigrants except one, who was Vietnamese.

 

            The Trinity College science faculty member, who was a parent advisor of the Paint Branch Science Club, selected six students.  They were all tenth graders, five white and one Chinese American.  Lack of support by the Paint Branch principal resulted in sporadic participation on the part of these students.  We had hoped that the mentoring relationship between Trinity students majoring in math and science and Paint Branch students would provide the raw material to counter the American myth about who can do math and science, which emphasizes the importance of innate ability.  Rather than presenting theory and research information, the learning process for the course was designed to be reality-based and active.  However, a number of factors, including the absence of any math and science mentors and sporadic participation by Paint Branch students, made it necessary to cover this topic with the more traditional method of class presentations and discussions.  Although Paint Branch students’ interest in careers in math and science went unused, as the following section shows, their middle-class background became an unexpected pedagogical tool for exploration of the impact of social class.

 

Project Impact

 

The major challenge of this kind of experiential format is the unpredictability of the outcome and how to best use the outcome to teach about race, class, and gender.  In our case, the ethnic and social class diversity among mentors and mentees created a learning context for Trinity students.  Their diversity provided the context for exploration and discussion of race and class in shaping options and influencing their behavior as women.

 

            The semester began with a review of the literature on mentoring, discussion of the nitty gritty of being a mentor, and match-up of Trinity students with their mentees.  We discussed research findings on the benefits of same-sex (and same-race) mentoring relationships, particularly for minority women (Dreher and Cox, 1996; Jackson, 1996; Kalbfleisch and Davies, 1991; Wilson, 1992).  We agreed, as a class, that since it was practical, and diversity was the theme of the class, cross-race or cross-ethnic mentoring relationships should be encouraged.  However, we still gave students the option of choosing a protégé from either Bell Multicultural or Paint Branch High School.

 

            This discussion triggered an intense argument outside of the classroom between a group of Hispanic and white students who both wanted to have Hispanic mentees.  The Hispanic students suggested that their white classmates could never develop as strong a mentor-mentee rapport as they themselves could based on their common ethnic background.  The white students angrily argued that compared to their middle-class Hispanic classmates, such painful experiences as coming from a working-class background or being rape victims would make them equally good partners for these underprivileged Hispanic girls.  We recognize that both groups perceived Bell students as victims and were competing for the role of the rescuer.  After a few private meetings with the students, the discussion was brought into the classroom.

 

            This episode was used to bring to life some of the assigned readings in Andersen and Collins (1995).  One of the main points made by those authors is that race, class, and gender do not create automatic connections.  Sharing common enemies or victim status cannot be the reason for solidarity.  The readings and classroom discussions made it clear that partnership in misery does not necessarily produce partnership for change.  The conclusion was reached in the class that, to be an effective mentor or ally, it is more important to be able to see the world through the partner’s eyes, develop compassion, and be able to act on behalf of the partner.  The definition of a good mentor that emerged from our discussion was not the traditional idea of mentor-as-expert but rather mentor-as-ally or advocate who will be there for the partner and support growth and change.  Clarification of the role of the mentor was significant in light of the discomfort expressed by the majority of the Trinity students about assuming the position of the all-knowing expert.

 

            At the beginning of the semester, all mentors were asked to write anonymously about their expectations and fears of participating in the project.  A majority (80 percent) expressed discomfort with the idea of being perceived as an expert by their protégé.  The second most common anxiety expressed by the Trinity students was that they might fail to develop a relationship with their partner and thus would fail to make a difference in the partner’s life.  Defining mentor as ally or advocate allowed for cross-race and cross-ethnicity mentorship and also made assuming the role more comfortable for Trinity students.

 

            Our mentoring program provided many unique opportunities to challenge and combat stereotypes held by Trinity students about people of color and their situations.  For example, all the mentees and their mothers were invited to an introductory reception held at Trinity College.  Though all the Paint Branch students attended the reception with their mothers, only one mother of a Bell Multicultural student attended the reception with her daughter.  Trinity students were required to write a reflective paper after each even, but only one student noted the discrepancy in mother’s participation as significant in her reflection.

 

            The issue was raised in class.  Students were asked whether they though that social class was a factor I the discrepancy.  They tried to dismiss it as n individual choice or lace of assimilation on the part of the mothers who did not attend.  One student said that “these mothers [recent immigrants] did not realize that attending school activities was important and that this program is teaching Bell students that they should attend school activities for their children in the future.”  Information received from counselors at Bell High School was used to challenge Trinity students’ stereotypes and misinformation.  It was suggested that some of the parents might not be here in the United States, and other parents might have been working or could not afford to pay for a babysitter.  The one Vietnamese couples wanted to attend the reception by communicated to the Bell counselor that they felt uncomfortable and embarrassed since they do not speak any English.  This incident helped Trinity College students understand how the social structure of inequality contributes to different life chances and choices for people of various races and class backgrounds.

 

            Other incidents highlighted the privileges that exist in the system for white, middle-class and upper-class people while people of color and/or from lower-class status face disadvantages.  During a grassroots leadership workshop attended by high school mentees, students were asked to suggest social problems and solutions.  The passion and anger of the Bell students made the condition of their school the main focus of the worship.  They said that although their school is a D.C. public school it does not have a cafeteria or a gymnasium.  They talked about various actions they had taken as a community to get these facilities installed.  Students blamed Bell students’ apathy for their failure to obtain the needed facilities.  The discussion focused on different courses of action the Bell students should continue to take, such as demonstrations in front of the office of the superintendent of D.C. public schools, or contacting the media.  One of the continuing education students from Trinity raised an interesting question.  She said that neither her white, middle-class children nor the Paint Branch students who were sitting there had to go the streets to demand basic facilities for their schools; she wondered why we were asking Bell students to do so.

 

            Through this incident, the students learned that instead of blaming the victims (that is, the Bell High School students) for their lack of activism, they should examine the social contexts in which disadvantaged people are educated.  They came to appreciate the frustration, anger, and courage of the Bell students who were demanding basic services.

 

            Overall evaluation of student journals and their final reflective papers suggested that the combination of mentoring activities, workshops, readings, and classroom discussions contributed to the effectiveness of the course in raising consciousness about issues related to race, class, and gender.  The mentoring component of the course allowed Trinity students to listen to people who have been silenced, by placing those people’s stories in the enter.  It allowed the students to hear authentic voices of low-income immigrant girls directly, and in their own terms, rather than being interpreted through the lens of the dominant culture.  Their voices helped make clear the multiple nature of reality for people of different ethnic, racial, and social-class backgrounds.

 

            It was very rewarding to see some of the Trinity students move beyond seeing Bell students as victims.  Their condescension and desire to act as savior was transformed into respect for he Bell students’ strength and resilience in spite of the difficulties they face as women and minorities.  One Trinity student wrote, “When we are able to share our feelings, our struggles, we are able to move on and realize that we are not alone.  Just as my mentee realized she is not along in certain struggles and she need not be ashamed.  And she need not be a victim, rather a survivor.  But above all she must see the beauty inside her, and the power she possesses; the power we all possess.”

 

            Another Trinity student, who came for the Dominican Republic, wrote this about her partner: “We are both very strong women who accept challenges, but she is already in charge of her life independently.  Even when I am acting independently from my parents (e.g. I do not ask my mother for money), they still pay for my college tuition.  In my subconscious, I know that if I need money, my mom would help me.  My friend Elisabeth has nobody to count on.  She came here with nothing in her pockets to start a new life from the bottom.  That is why I have learned more from her.”

 

            A number of students wrote in their final reflective papers that they can no loner look at their environment without seeing things through the lens of race, class, gender.  One of the white students wrote, “This course has been an eye opener for me in the sense that I have never really sat down and thought about racism or sexism before.  But with this class it seems I am seeing examples of them everywhere.”  An African American-Mexican student expressed similar views: “Entering this course I thought that I practically know everything there is to know about my own environment.  I found that my views changed, from the way I view my own culture to the way I deal with others.” She wrote that learning about the constraints that racial and sexual barriers imposed on women of color was “scary for me because I know that it will be really hard.  This course was like a serious reality check for me.  Being what I am I was not exposed to the privileges that the Caucasians are exposed.”

 

            Some wrote that the course had contributed to their personal growth or spiritual journey by encouraging self-reflection, which led to a deeper understanding of their place in society and a sense of activism.  As an example, one student wrote:

 

I never realized that I live with privileges that are not God-given rights while others are suffering because of my luxuries.  And at the same time I could identify with oppressed people because of my gender.  This has left me very perplexed as to what to do.  The “poor me” syndrome is wielding its head when I think of the no win situation that many people like myself and other less fortunate than I live with.  It frustrated me to find that there is no easy solution for elimination of the oppression that I live with.  How do I begin to give up what I have been socialized to believe is essential to survival?

 

She concluded her paper by declaring, “I cam be an activist and I can make much needed change in this society with the help of the others.”

 

Project outcome goals for the high school students included encouraging minority high school girls to learn about and to attend college.  We were quite successful in achieving these goals.  The program demystified college life for these schoolgirls.  In out final interviews with them, we asked how they felt they had benefited from this program.  They mentioned being introduced to college life and having the opportunity to meet real-life college women as the most important benefit of the mentoring program.  Many of the Bell students stated that before participating in the project they had not known anybody who attended college; their perceptions of college life came from watching TV.  The Vietnamese student commented that her mentor was the first white person she had gotten to know personally.  A number of them mentioned that before the program they had never thought about going to college, but it made them think that college is an attainable goal.  Three of the mentees are now attending Trinity College

 

The high school girls mentioned other benefits in their interviews.  They said that the program gave them the opportunity to learn and expand their minds.  They believe that being around all females gave them a “feminine perspective”; one can assume they meant “feminist perspective” because they said it empowered them to think anything is possible.

 

Mentors and mentees were asked to provide feedback on how to improve the program.  Trinity students unanimously suggested dropping the math-and-science component and making it a separate course.  They said we attempted to cover too much in too short a period of time.  They complained that it is quite a challenge to deal with the complexity of race, class, and gender in one semester.  They also suggested that we not include students form Paint Branch High School in our future mentoring programs because these students were already college-bound and had parental support and the financial means to attend college.  They believe that minority students form disadvantaged backgrounds are the ones who would benefit most from the mentoring relationships.

 

Both mentors and mentees suggested the mentoring should have been greater focus of the class, and we should have had more structured mentoring activities and contact hour.  Both groups thought that shadowing experiences were the most beneficial in demystifying college experiences.  By attending classes with their mentors, Bell Multicultural High School student discovered that attending college was something well within their capabilities.  A few Trinity students suggested that mentors should have develop better appreciation of the mentees reality.

 

Recommendations for Elaboration

 

In many ways, this course was very successful. With further expansion of its components and some reorganization, it can be an even better teaching and research tool.

 

            The following recommendations are based on what we, the faculty, Trinity College students, and the high school students involved learned form the mentoring and diversity project:

 

·        Lobby for full support of high school principals, it is essential to the success of this program.  Students may have to miss some classes.  The principal at Bell High School was supportive of the project and allowed students to participate in the project even when teacher objected.  At Paint Branch High School, the principal was not fully supportive; therefore, a number of times when students were supposed to participate they did not come.

 

 

·        Ensure that funding for the program is adequate.  At a minimum, funding is needed for transportation both groups of students, for two receptions (one at the beginning of the program and one at the conclusion), and for meals for the high school students while they are at the college.

 

·        Limit the academic content of the course to the literature on mentoring, race, class, and gender.

 

·        Coordinate supervised outreach by the college students; visiting mentees’ classes, as the mentees do the college studnets’ classes, and meeting with the mentees’ mothers provides excellent learning, sharing, and participatory possibilities.  It expands the college students’ understanding of issues of race, class, and gender; it further involves the mentees in the process since the classroom visiting is not one-sided, and it encourages greater participation in the program by mothers of the mentees.

 

·        Organize regular discussions group meetings between mentors and mentees to encourage dialogue and mutual understanding of issues.  Meetings should be based on assigned readings that are comprehensible to both groups and on daily experiences of the member who participate.  Provide a defined starting point for discussion of issues of advocacy, victimization, and transformation, prior to and during the mentoring process.  This provides mutual understanding, elimination of fear, and awareness of some of the issues of self-determination and change for both mentors and mentees.

 

·        Expand the grassroots component to include mothers of the mentees.  This encourages involvement of mothers in the mentoring process and helps them understand the importance of their support in the process.  Efforts at outreach to encourage them to attend are essential.

 

·        Expend more effort to encourage mothers’ understanding of the obstacles faced by their daughters, and how to help their daughters overcome these obstacles and becomes advocates for themselves as well as their children.  After adequate classroom preparation and discussion, the college student mentors can play a central role in this process.  This can be an important learning component of the course for both the mentors and mentees.

 

It is important to encourage all young women and girls to continue their education.  This is especially true for women and girls of color who do not come from the middle or upper class since they are much less likely to have realistic impressions of what the experience is about and what its benefits are.  We can help them understand this through such a course as “Mentoring and Diversity.”  At the same time, the course provides important learning experiences for participating college students.  It helps them understand social stratification in very real ways, in term of the issues of race, class, and gender, and it demonstrates how as students they can play an important role in changing some of those issues.

 

This report ends with a poem that one of the Bell students wrote for her mentor.

 

One day I went to Saint peter in heaven

and he told me that the best gift I could ever ask for

is a good friend.

He also said, don’t come her,

You are enjoying that gift down on Earth.

Thanks, Vivienne, for being my gift.

 

References:

 

Anderson, M., and Collins, P.H. Race, Class, and Gender:  An Anthology. (2nd .ed.) Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1995.

 

Association of American Colleges. “Passing the Torch: The Rewards of Mentoring.”  On Campus with women, 1991,  21(2), 1-2.

 

Atkinson, P. “Mentoring: Today and Tomorrow.”  Unpublished paper, presented at the University of Washington, Cot.13, 1991.

 

Bell, E. D., and Drakeford, R. “ A Case Study of the Black Student Peer Mentor program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and its Policy Implications.”  College student journal, 1992, 26(3), 381-385

 

Bova, B. M. “Mentoring Revisited: The Hispanic Woman’s Perspective.” Journal of Adult Education, 1995, 23(1), 18-19.

 

Carden, A. “mentoring and Adult Career Development: The Evolution of a Theory.”  Counseling Psychologist, 1990, 18(2), 275-299.

 

Cook, M.F. “Is the Menotr Relationship Primarily a Male Experience?” Personnel Administration, 1979, 24(11), 82-86.

 

Dickey, C.A. “The Role of Quality Mentoring in the Recruitment and Retention of Women Students of Color at the University of Minnesota:. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1996.

 

Dreher, G.F., and Cox, T.H., Jr. “Race, Gender, and Opportunity: A Study of Compensation Attainment and the Establishment of Mentoring Relationships.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1996, 81(3), 297-308.

 

Goldstein, E. “Effect of Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Role Models on the Subsequent Academic Productivity of Scholars.” American Psychologist, 1979, 34(5), 407-410.

 

Halcomb, R. “Mentoring and Successful Women.” Across the Board, 1980, 26(2), 13-18.

 

Jackson, C.H. “African American Women’s Mentoring Experiences.”  Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Aug. 1996.

 

Kalbfleisch, P., and Davies, A.B. “Minorities and Mentoring: Managing the Multicultural Institution.” Communication Education, 1991, 40(3), 266-271.

 

Kim, A. “African American Women in Education Administration: The Importance of the Mentors and Sponsors.” Journal of Negro Education, 1995, 64(4), 409-422.

 

Merriam, S.  “Mentoring and Protégés: A Critical Review of the Literature.” Adult Education Quarterly, 1983, 33(3), 161-173.

 

Missirian, A.K. The Corporate Connection: Why Executive Women Need Mentors to Reach the Top.  Upper Saddle River, N.J.:Prentice-Hall, 1982.

 

National Science Foundation/ACM [Association for Computing Machinery]. “NSF Grant to Fund Mentoring Project for Women and Minorities.” Communications of the ACM (AC Membernet), Jan. 1992, p. S2.

 

Pearl, A., and others. “Becoming a Computer Scientist: A Report by the ACM Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Science.” Communications of the ACM, 1990, 33(11), 47-57.

 

Phillips-Jones, L. “Establishing a Formalized Mentoring Program.” Training and Development Journal, 1983, 37(2), 38-42.

 

Redmond, S.P. “Mentoring: A Career Training and Development Tool.” American Behavior Scientist, 1990, 34(2), 188-200.

Shapiro, E., Haseltine, F., and Rowe, M. “Moving Up: Role Models, Mentors and the Patron System.”  Sloan Management Review, 1978, 19(3), 51-58.

 

Sheehy, G. “The Mentor Connection: The Secret Link in the Successful Woman’s Life.” New Yorker, Apr. 1976, pp. 33-39.

 

Shrewsbury, C. “What Is Feminist Pedagogy?” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 1987, 15(3/4), 6-14.

 

Tidball, M. E. “Perspectives on Academic Women and Affirmative Action.” Educational Record, 1973, 54(2), 130-135.

 

Tinajero, J. V. “Raising Career Aspirations of Hispanic Girls. Fastback 320.: Bloomington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa Foundation, 1991.

 

Wilson, S. A. “The Effect of the Race and Gender on the Formation of the Mentoring Relationships for Black Professional Women.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve, 1992.

 

About the Author

 

Roxana Moayedi has been a Professor of Sociology at Trinity College in Washington, DC since 1991 and directs Trinity’s Service-Learning Program.  She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the American University, Washington, DC, a Management Diploma from the Institute for International Studies and Training, Japan, and a B.A. in Sociology from the National University; Tehran, Iran.  Married with two sons, she is a native of Iran.

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[1] In:  Davis, Sara N.; Crawford, Mary; and, Sebrechts, Jadwiga, Eds.  Coming Into Her Own: Educational Success in Girls and Women.  Jossey-Bass:  July 1999. (ISBN: 0-7879-4490-4)