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The purpose is to gain insight into the benefits of mentoring and using femtoring as an inclusive approach for minoritized and underrepresented students and faculty, who are often challenged in feeling welcomed, included and valued at higher education institutions.

This study used a qualitative inquiry design, in which focus groups, interviews and participant testimonios were collected throughout spring and fall 2022. Testimonio and plática (dialogue) techniques were employed to allow participants to describe their journeys in college and as members of the femtoring/mentoring program.

Undergraduate students as mentees/femtees enjoyed finding a place and space to develop meaningful and positive relationships with other students and Latinx faculty. Faculty and graduate students as femtors/mentors perceived their relationships with students as enriching and energizing, practicing values like transparency, honesty and care.

The study included participants of a specific mentoring program whose experiences and opinions might differ from others. Additionally, persons from other minority groups could experience inequities and unfair practices in college in different ways and find other forms of support.

Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) must create programs that promote student–faculty community and collaboration. It is also critical to inform international faculty about Latinx students’ characteristics and needs. Training sessions for graduate students and faculty in leadership and mentoring at HSIs are equally significant in fostering an inclusive and supportive educational environment.

This paper contributes to the literature on mentoring practices to support Latinx students in their college journeys and prepare faculty of color for their mentoring and coaching roles. Femtoring and communities of wisdom concepts were applied to a specific femtoring/mentoring program.

This study explores the opportunities for a gender-inclusive architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, focussing on the gap between architectural education and practice. This study focusses on three research questions: (1) What factors influence women architects' career retention and advancement in the AEC industry? How can practice outcomes be linked with educational approaches for gender inclusion in the AEC industry? (3) What critical factors can enable structural changes in architecture education, including AEC-related subjects and practice/career pathways towards gender equity?

This paper is based on a systematic literature review (SLR). The established timeframe for selecting papers in this study considered the last 20 years, as various seminal studies in feminism and gender inclusion in architecture emerged in the early 2000s through the definition of keywords used in two prestigious databases. The academic articles selected were filtered through a process of inclusion and exclusion, following criteria for suitability and relevance using a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) diagram.

This study revealed key trends in the literature review consistent with the research questions, including (1) the disproportionate struggles women face at individual, interpersonal and organisational levels and the gender-based bias from entry and progression in the AEC industry that also requires multi-level interventions; (2) traditional architecture education affects female students and educators who find networking, social capital and leadership opportunities to challenge gender-based stereotypes and promote workplace equity, and finally, (3) observe enablers for fostering equity in architecture and education, which should not be limited to policy-driven interventions but structural transformations through transparency, mentorship, leadership, awareness raising and empowerment of women and men, promoting inclusivity and gender equity in the AEC industry.

This study considers a global understanding of gender equity in the AEC industry, regional and country-specific analysis needs to be considered in future studies. The study's focus is on women’s inclusion, acknowledging the limitations of conventional binary gender concepts; future studies need to include the experiences of LGBTI + communities and other underrepresented groups. The literature review considers only academic articles; future research should also consider industry reports, government initiatives and organisational documents for a broader understanding of diversity efforts in business.

This paper observes the issues for gender-inclusive architecture within the context of a male-dominant AEC industry through linking architectural education and practice. Studies rarely focus on this link and address workplace issues. This study highlights this link and extends the discussion through the critical literature review, providing a new ground for geographic-specific or intersectional studies.

Interdisciplinary PhD programs can be challenging as the vital information needed by students may not be readily available; it is scattered across the university’s websites, while tacit knowledge can be obtained only by interacting with people. Hence, there is a need to develop a knowledge management model to create, query and maintain a knowledge repository for interdisciplinary students. This study aims to propose a knowledge graph containing information on critical categories (faculty, classes, dissertations, etc.) and their relationships, extracted from multiple sources, essential for interdisciplinary PhD students. This study evaluates the usability of a participatory-designed knowledge graph intended to facilitate information exchange and decision-making.

The authors used data from multiple sources (such as university websites, faculty profiles, publication and dissertation metadata and crowdsourced data) to generate a knowledge graph in the Neo4J Bloom platform. The authors recruited 15 interdisciplinary PhD students using convenience sampling from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa at various PhD stages to design and populate the knowledge graph. Next, the authors conducted a mixed methods study to perform its usability evaluation. First, the authors engaged the students in a participatory design workshop to identify relevant graph queries. Second, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews to determine the usability of the knowledge graph and rate the queries. Each interview was coded with structural and thematic codes and was further analyzed using sentiment analysis in R programming language.

The usability findings demonstrate that interaction with this knowledge graph benefits PhD students by notably reducing uncertainty and academic stress, particularly among newcomers. Knowledge graph supported them in decision-making, especially when choosing collaborators (e.g. supervisor or dissertation committee members) in an interdisciplinary setting. Key helpful features are related to exploring student–faculty networks, milestones tracking, rapid access to aggregated data and insights into crowdsourced fellow students’ activities. However, they showed concerns about crowdsourced data privacy and accessibility. Although participants expressed the need for more qualitative data in the graph, they noted it helped identify people to talk to about the topics of their interest.

The knowledge graph provides a solution to meet the personalized needs of doctoral researchers and has the potential to improve the information discovery and decision-making process substantially. It also includes the tacit knowledge exchange support missing from most current approaches, which is critical for this population and establishing interdisciplinary collaborations. This approach can be applied to other interdisciplinary programs and domains globally.

This study aims to delve into the evolution, trends and implications of scientific production related to service learning (SL) and community engagement for sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs). Because HEIs play a crucial role in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), experiential learning approaches are needed to actively involve students in sustainable development.

In total, 869 publications from Web of Science and Scopus databases were analysed using a bibliometric approach that included performance analysis and science mapping. Subsequently, a systematic literature review was conducted on 118 publications, focusing on their contribution to SDGs and alignment with United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s fields of expertise.

The findings reveal two significant trends: a substantial shift from curriculum development (2000–2010) to education for sustainable development (2011–2022), and the effectiveness of experiential learning teaching approaches, such as the integration of SL with community engagement and the use of innovative research methods in promoting the acquisition of sustainable development competencies. Additionally, community-based research, participatory action research and capacity development emerged as the primary topics.

While this research is based on publications from two prominent databases, it may not include significant studies published in other databases.

These findings suggest that stakeholders should incorporate experiential learning activities and innovative research approaches to enhance education in, for and from sustainability.

This study offers a fresh perspective on the intellectual framework of experiential learning teaching approaches concerning sustainability in HEIs.

Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The study’s aims were to (1) Explore challenges, barriers and successes of students of color, as a result of the instructor’s approach to teaching in a remote learning environment; and (2) Determine what types of practices and approaches students of color found supportive in adjusting to a remote learning environment.

This qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore the experiences of students of color, reflecting on in-person and remote learning environments. A total of 18 students from a large public university participated in the study.

The findings suggest significant adjustments were made by both students and professors during the pandemic. Although academics were important to students, there was an emphasis on the impact on social interactions with peers and the ability to build meaningful relationships with professors. Students displayed a sense of compassion and empathy toward professors and themselves.

The results from the study provide some insight into how higher education can move forward, potentially conducting future research that includes the perspectives of both students and professors to determine how to best provide support in the aftermath of a pandemic.

This qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore the experiences of students of color, reflecting on in-person and remote learning environments.

In this study, students’ perceptions of the effective practices of their research mentors were examined. The research mentors implemented the practices informed by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) mentorship competencies to mentor underrepresented students in engineering education research in a virtual environment.

This research experience for undergraduates (REU) program, situated in the United States of America, consisted of undergraduate students (i.e. mentees), graduate students and faculty mentors who all had at least one underrepresented identity in engineering (i.e. Black, Latiné/x, and/or women). Using qualitative methods, we used data from reflection surveys and follow-up interviews with REU mentees to understand the outcomes of the mentorship strategies employed by the mentors in the program. The data were analyzed thematically using CIMER model constructs and social capital theory as guiding frameworks.

The results indicated the identified strategies students perceived as the most impactful for mentorship throughout the program. Students in the REU gained knowledge on how to activate social capital in mentorship relationships and how to better mentor others.

The findings provide insight on how to operationalize the CIMER mentorship competencies to skillfully mentor underrepresented students in engineering. Given the size of the REU and the nature of qualitative research, the sample size was limited.

The results help inform mentorship practices for underrepresented individuals in engineering education and the workforce. Further, they add to the practical knowledge of implementing CIMER best practices virtually, at a time when the world has transitioned to more hybrid and virtual working and learning environments.

This study identifies impactful strategies for operationalizing mentorship strategies informed by theory- and evidence-based CIMER mentorship competencies. In addition, this study extends knowledge about how to implement mentoring best practices and engage mentorship in a virtual environment.

Most research about combating the whiteness of teacher education neglects to analyze the whiteness of the higher education institutional contexts housing teacher preparation programs. This gap also holds true within research exploring Minority Serving Institutions’ potential to graduate large numbers of teachers of color. Consequently, this paper aims to argue that without strong institutional commitments to dismantle the whiteness of higher education, Hispanic Serving Institutions (a type of Minority Serving Institution) compromise their potential to robustly prepare and graduate K-12 teachers of color.

Drawing on an inductive qualitative analysis of interviews with teacher educators of color and students and a deductive qualitative analysis of publicly available data at two Hispanic Serving Institutions, this paper uses Critical Race Theory tenets of lived experience and intersectionality.

Both institutions enacted diversity commitments. However, findings demonstrated that institutional support neglected the multiple oppressive systems impacting students of color. Additionally, prioritizing (White) research norms invisibilized faculty of color in higher ranked professorial roles and compromised faculty pedagogy.

Findings address lesser known analyses of how the intersections between institutional climate, teacher education programs and the unique Hispanic Serving Institutional context impact student/preservice teacher and faculty/teacher educator racial diversity, demonstrate the necessity of using an intersectional lens when analyzing preservice teacher and teacher educator of color experiences, and demonstrate how racially diverse, multicultural higher education contexts can still invisibilize diversity.

Structural mentoring barriers are policies, practices and cultural norms that collectively disadvantage marginalized groups and perpetuate disparities in mentoring. This study aims to better understand structural mentoring barriers at the postdoctoral training stage, which has a direct impact on faculty diversity and national efforts to retain underrepresented groups in research careers.

A diverse sample of postdoctoral scholars (“postdocs”) from across the USA were asked to participate in focus groups to discuss their training experiences. The authors conducted five 90-min focus groups with 32 biomedical postdocs, including 20 (63%) women and 15 (47%) individuals from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups (URG).

A social-ecological framework was used to categorize both the upstream and downstream manifestations of structural mentoring barriers, as well as mentoring barriers, overall. Notable structural barriers included: academic politics and scientific hierarchy; inequalities resulting from mentor prestige; the (over) reliance on one mentor; the lack of formal training for academic and non-academic careers; and the lack of institutional diversity and institutional mentor training. To overcome these barriers, postdocs strongly encouraged developing a network or team of mentors and recommended institutional interventions that create more comprehensive professional development, mentorship and belonging.

For postdoctoral scientists, structural mentoring barriers can permeate down to institutional, interpersonal and individual levels, impeding a successful transition to an independent research career. This work provides strong evidence for promoting mentorship networks and cultivating a “mentoring milieu” that fosters a supportive community and a strong culture of mentorship at all levels.

This study investigates the progress of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act 2003, and its associated Chartered Accountancy Profession Sector Code. In doing so, we explore why B-BBEE affirmative action has not yet achieved the Code's representational intentions, including systemic subtleties inhibiting this success.

Using semi-structured interviews, we explore the lived experiences of Black aspirant Chartered Accountants (CAs) undertaking articles in global audit firms. The experiences are thematically analysed, embracing a comprehensive theoretical approach that encompasses professional and social closure, as well as boundary work, to adequately understand why affirmative transformational endeavours persistently face uphill tasks. The utilisation of multifaceted theorisation is deemed essential for a more nuanced portrayal of the intricacies inherent in the CA profession in South Africa.

The narratives presented by Black aspiring CAs unveil a complex web of exclusionary practices entrenched in institutionalised historical, professional, and social contexts. The multifaceted nature of closures, symbolised by racial, cultural, and linguistic factors, significantly impacts the experiences of Black trainees. The findings furthermore show that deliberate intervention beyond compliance with the Government’s framework is necessary for meaningful transformation.

The paper brings to the fore the current lived experiences of underrepresented Black CAs in global auditing firms. In doing so, these firms are empowered with incremental knowledge of the prevailing challenges and can thus make tangible improvements towards authentic transformation. Additionally, the results help in tracking the advancements made through affirmative action, acting as a feedback loop for future developments in transformation policy.

Contributing to the critical accounting literature, our study extends scholarship on the barriers faced by CAs and the limitations in their capacity to challenge these obstacles within global audit firms. We offer practical policy-focused recommendations that, if implemented, can address the complex socio-political realities obstructing the success of affirmative action. By sharing first-hand accounts, our study aims to empower auditing firms and other related stakeholders with actionable insights, enabling them to improve genuine inclusivity and foster equitable representation in the accounting profession.

This study aims to understand the role of seeking social support in the relationship between perceived helplessness, self-efficacy and satisfaction among graduate students during the pandemic, drawing upon the transactional model of stress and coping. Graduate students are composed of nontraditional students who are considered significantly different from traditional students. Nonetheless, research has yet to explore how seeking social support contributed to graduate students’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially to the relationship between feelings of helplessness and positive mental health. More specifically, this study examined how seeking social support from others mediates the relationship between perceived helplessness and self-efficacy, academic satisfaction and general life satisfaction among graduate students.

Using quantitative data collected from 545 graduate students at a large, research-intensive university in the USA, structural equation modeling was used to test our conceptual model.

The results of this study indicate that perceived helplessness has a direct and adverse relationship with self-efficacy. Social support mediates the negative relationship between the two variables, buffering the negative psychological experience students feel and leading to higher levels of self-efficacy and two domains of satisfaction. Self-efficacy is positively associated with academic and general life satisfaction among graduate students. Academic satisfaction positively predicts general life satisfaction, as well. A conceptual model was developed, yielding acceptable goodness-of-fit statistics.

This study adds to the postsecondary education literature and contributes to the larger discourse identifying the positive role of social support in supporting graduate students to cope with psychological challenges that may be exacerbated under stressful conditions.