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Michigan State University

MSU Libraries Mentoring Resources

Guidance for Mentors

A mentor may fulfill all or a combination of roles:

Encourage
  • Develop a deep understanding of potential and strengths
  • Boost confidence
  • Nominate mentees for awards
  • Write letters of support
Support
  • Advocate
  • Sponsor
  • Recommend
  • Validate feelings and experiences
  • Be a safe space
Inform
  • Share knowledge about library and professional organizations
  • Share opportunities for research, service, and jobs
  • Share unspoken and unwritten norms (should be added to handbook for clarity :) ) 
Connect
  • Establish networking opportunities
  • Act as a conference buddy
  • Introduce mentees to others you know
Strategize
  • Awareness of professional and career goals
  • Awareness of career path or trajectory
  • Act as a role model
Collaborate
  • Invite mentees to participate in research projects
  • Nominate mentees to be on committees or participate within communities
  • Include mentees in professional development
Mentoring for the First Time (also great as a refresh!) 

Inclusive Mentoring

Mentorship is crucial for developing a sense of belonging for BIPOC employees, increasing much needed retention efforts in a predominantly white field. Many organizations and libraries in particular, are rooted in white centeredness, which creates barriers to success for BIPOC employees. Policies, rules, and procedures are often built around traditional white values, and BIPOC employees are forced to navigate that bureaucracy on their own. Mentoring is a powerful tool for demystifying these processes, and works to eliminate barriers to successful promotion and tenure, job satisfaction, and can lead to leadership and management roles. In order for these mentorships to be successful, inclusive mentoring practices are essential. 

What is inclusive mentoring?

"Inclusive mentorship is a co-constructed and reciprocal relationship between a mentor and mentee who take a strengths-based and identity-informed approach to working together to support their mutual growth, development and success." (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017)

How do I become an inclusive mentor?

1. A big part of inclusivity is awareness of your own privilege and power, and how that affects BIPOC employees, including your mentee. Inclusive mentors interrogate their privilege, and work to recognize the ways in which systems are built to not only uphold them, but to work against BIPOC employees.

Book recommendation: Me and white supremacy: combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor

2. Recognize the bureaucracy in your organization, and pay attention to policies, procedures, and white cultural norms. Focus on decentering whiteness by working to create new organizational norms and centering the stories and experiences of BIPOC employees.

Article recommendation: "Nice White Meetings": Unpacking Absurd Library Bureaucracy through a Critical Race Theory Lens

3. Increase cultural humility practices and develop a strong skillset in cultural competence. Learn about your own implicit biases and develop a practice to reinforce behaviors that support cultural competency while also minimizing behaviors that undermine it. 

Training: Leading with Cultural Competence

 
Additional Resources

Youtube video from NASEM on Culturally Aware Mentorship
Youtube video from the National Research Mentoring Network on Cultural Responsive Mentoring