Prior research has focused on mentoring as a concept and its role in facilitating the personal and professional success of business leaders, faculty members, and graduate students in general, without giving equal attention to the influence of mentoring on outcomes among Black undergraduate students. Using CSEQ data from 653 African American collegians, we found that although Black men report more frequent engagement than women in both formal and informal relationships with their faculty mentors; gender neither yields a statistically significant influence on satisfaction with college, controlling for confounding effects, nor mediates the influence of mentoring on Black students' satisfaction with college. Implications for future policy, practice, and research are discussed in light of critical issues in higher education.

This qualitative study explored the socialization process of engineering doctoral students committed to a career as a faculty member. Using qualitative methods, 20 engineering doctoral students from four Predominately White Research Institutions (PWRIs) were interviewed to understand how research collaborations some doctoral students have with faculty members prepared them for a future faculty role. Findings suggest that engineering doctoral students learn about the complexities of a faculty role that include the various duties and expectations of faculty members (e.g., securing external funding, managing a research team, managerial aspect of operating from a grant). Engineering doctoral students also learn about the importance of (or value placed on) securing external funding to support research.

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Highlighting two higher education institutions that have been identified as exemplary in preparing engineering undergraduates for 2020, this work in progress paper focuses on what these institutions are doing to prepare their students. Using case study approaches, findings suggest that engineering undergraduate students gain contextual competence, design and problem solving, and interdisciplinary competence skills through curriculum redesign efforts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard University. These design efforts include innovative teaching strategies, year-long undergraduate research opportunities, and extracurricular activities.

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