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E–Mentoring female underrepresented public health student researchers: Supporting a more diverse post–pandemic workforce

Within higher education, underrepresented students continue to face inequalities and discrimination to this day,1 with unique challenges emphasized during the COVID–19 pandemic. Mentoring, whether through formal or informal counseling or coaching, is one way to offer assistance to such students.2 Mentors can provide critical support as students contemplate and pursue completion of higher degrees and pursue occupations that directly serve their communities. During COVID–19 lockdowns, as classes and work became remote, mentoring also transitioned online to electronic mentoring or e–mentoring. E–mentoring was implemented formally by some universities,3 and informally by independent researchers. One female independent researcher of color had a research team consisting of 7 female colleagues in 6 countries and 7 female student researchers (she mentored 2 in–person, e–mentored 5). Since all the students represented different racial and ethnic backgrounds, they offer this unique collection of e–mentoring case studies during the pandemic. The lead author mentored all 7 student authors of this paper. The senior author, also a female independent researcher of color shared her e–mentoring experiences. All of these e–mentoring relationships were created informally. Sharing these independent field reports should not be assumed to be a representation of any of the students’ 6 universities, rather as a sample of what can be achieved by invested e–mentors. By sharing these anecdotal experiences, the authors, particularly the lead and senior authors, hope to call upon all researchers of underrepresented groups to consider e–mentoring to support underrepresented student researchers for the benefit of diversification in the public health research field.