By Linda Carozza, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Kiara Medina, B.A., Jennifer Rosenstein, M.A., M.S.L.I.S

Aims

The current article is the third in a series addressing the lack of faculty mentorship for underrepresented minorities (URM) in the health professions, particularly in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). The recruitment and education of diverse speech-language pathologists and other related professionals is an urgent public health issue. Incidence of clinical populations including adults with neurogenic disorders and children in school based and other programs who require the expertise of licensed and certified professionals will continue to rise, therefore the availability of qualified speech-language pathologists must grow to meet this demand. In the first article, Addressing the Lack of Mentorship for Underrepresented Faculty in Communication Science and Disorders (CSD), historical and sociological perspectives dating back several decades were outlined. The review conducted by the present research team indicates that small strides have been made, although not nearly enough to address the expanding multicultural population requiring professional services.

Importance

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association certifies new graduates into the profession, and individual State licensing boards oversee state-wide credentialing on an ongoing basis. This has been in place for many years; however, our service population has drastically changed.

In part two of this series, Closing the Gaps: Mentorship as a Key to Equity in Communication Science Disorder (CSD), Part II, a review of the literature across several professions serving the public indicated that while programs have made strides in offering mentorship for underrepresented new faculty, the models have been insufficient in both quantity and quality. There is no ‘one size fits all’ and graduate programs training future professionals must design programs to meet the needs of their student bodies and the populations they will serve.   

Current practices 
Most graduate CSD programs do not have a centralized function for mentorship beyond the traditional academic ladder to tenure and promotion. This itself is counter-intuitive, as the recruitment and retention of faculty of color have been woefully underemphasized. The mentorship of junior professionals should be regarded with the same respect as faculty achievement in teaching, research and scholarship, the traditional triad of academic success and the awarding of tenure. At this point, faculty have been entrenched in a ladder that replicates the work of previous scholars but does not create new pathways for alternative scholarship. Espen et al (2025) and Sevelius and colleagues (2024) support this notion. They describe current mentorship and state that the outcomes may be far reaching for faculty satisfaction and achievement, but we have to start on the ‘ground floor.’ Faculty should be designated as mentors and receive the same academic recognition as others publishing in niche areas. Mentoring should not be an add-on – it should be part of a faculty center of excellence and be awarded the same respect and privilege as research and publishing. Formal mentoring programs, unique to specific institutions and the populations their graduates will serve, are essential. Senior faculty must be trained on how to mentor effectively, and have mentorship built into the expectations for promotion and tenure. 

Current Mentorship Models and Best Practices

Mentorship programs are essential tools to support the retention and professional advancement of URM groups in higher education and the workforce. These models help create supportive networks that give a sense of belonging, professional identity, and success, in addition to trying to correct systemic imbalances.  

Beech et al. (2013) provide an analysis of organized mentoring programs from URM faculty in their review of mentorship efforts at academic medical centers. Many of these initiatives, which were institutionally supported and administratively coordinated, stressed deliberate matching of mentors and mentees, as well as defined expectations and frequent evaluations. Among URM faculty, they found that these structured models resulted in higher scholarly productivity, greater job satisfaction, and stronger institutional commitment. More importantly, successful programs incorporated cultural awareness into the institutional ethos and mentoring relationships, recognizing that for URM, individual mentorship should cover both psychosocial support and career development. This dual emphasis fits the needs of URM faculty and students navigating historically exclusionary academic environments.  

Philips et al. (2016) emphasize the long-term advantages of official mentoring through a longitudinal analysis of faculty retention over 7 years. The research focused on both individual and group mentoring programs, and on the retention of URM and international faculty in predominantly White institutions. The program, which combined both individual and group mentoring, produced significant results demonstrating a 92% retention rate for faculty who participated versus those who did not. The international faculty reached 100% among the mentees versus 61% among those who did not participate. The mentoring model addresses two main issues: the necessity for supportive relationships that go beyond departmental boundaries and the reduction of faculty isolation, a common experience for URM faculty. The faculty reported that mentoring helped them navigate tenure expectations, develop research strategies, and build community across disciplines.  

Maldonado, Oni, and Hynd (2023) conducted a study in speech language pathology (SLP) that demonstrated the transformative power of culturally sensitive mentorship for undergraduate students. Their study on mentoring theory involved a one-to-one matching of eight undergraduate SLP students and eight ASHA certified SLPs (four White, four of color) to assess the psychosocial and professional effects of mentor-protégé relationships. Results revealed that mentorship greatly improved the mentees’ psychosocial support, professionalism, and educational motivation. For instance, many appreciated the chance to engage in an open race-based discussion in a safe, validating space, as well as learning how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues impact the profession. Ultimately, researchers found that race-based mentoring should be seen as an institutional standard rather than a supplemental enhancement. They also recommended purposeful mentorships championed by diverse SLPs, and DEI standards to help the profession hire and retain more persons of color. Therefore, their findings suggest that culturally responsive mentorship not only reduces barriers but also increases diversity in the speech language pathology profession. 

Together, these studies demonstrate that when mentorship is intentionally structured with equity at the core, it can counterbalance the marginalization of URM students and faculty. Today’s best practices call for institutionalized, relationally based, culturally aware mentoring to establish an inclusive academic and work environment where URM individuals are not only retained but also actively assume leadership roles.  

Call to Action and Recommendations 

Creating a supportive academic environment means taking real, intentional steps to back URM faculty in meaningful ways. Mentorship is not something that should be added as an afterthought, it must be built into the framework of how an institution functions. That includes putting actual funding behind it, and ensuring it's culturally responsive. URM faculty should not be expected to carry the weight of mentoring and diversity initiatives alone. Mentoring plays such a key role in retention, career and leadership advancements that it must be accounted for in faculty workloads, promotion, and tenure processes. Clear accountability, budgeted support and dedicated time for mentoring are essential, especially for early career scholars who often navigate predominantly white spaces that can stifle their voices. Without deliberate reform, institutions risk perpetuating the same exclusion and burnout that weaken the academic pipeline and the profession's ability to effectively serve diverse communities. When we look at the field of Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) and Communication Science Disorders (CSD), the need for this kind of change becomes even more urgent. We are having more conversations about health disparities and culturally responsive care, but those conversations have not translated to real structural inclusion. Stronger mentorship for URM faculty doesn't just build better academic leaders, it shows students and future clinicians what inclusion actually looks like in practice. A more representative professoriate can help reframe clinical education, expand research on minority populations, and improve the cultural competence of the next generation of SLPs.  The need for more URM faculty mentorship is a professional imperative for the SLP and CSD fields to support future professionals and the populations they will serve.

Bibliography/Resources

Beech, B. M., Calles-Escandon, J., Hairston, K. G., Langdon, S. E., Latham-Sadler, B. A., & Bell, R. A. (2013). Mentoring programs for underrepresented minority faculty in academic medical centers: A systematic review of the literature. Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 88(4), 541–549. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e31828589e3 

Esplen, M. J., Fiksenbaum, L. M., Lin, E., Darani, S. A., Teshima, J., Vigod, Szatmari, P., Lanctôt, K. L., Ho, C., Silver, I., Soklaridis. Identifying the mentorship needs among faculty in a large department of psychiatry, support for the creation of a formal mentorship program. BMC Medical Education, 2547.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-06629-y 

Maldonado, C., Oni, J., Hynd, C. (2023). The Effects of mentorship with speech-language pathologists of color on the professional readiness and emotional support of undergraduate speech-language pathology students. Journal of the National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.58907/hsqk2809

Phillips, S. L.; D. (2016). High retention of minority and international faculty through a formal mentoring program. To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, 35(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/tia.17063888.0035.104

Sevelius, J. M., Harris, O. O., & Bowleg, L. (2024). Intersectional mentorship in academic medicine: A conceptual review. International Journal of Environmental Research and   Public Health, 21(4), 503. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21040503 

About the authors

Dr. Linda Carozza, PhD, CCC-SLP is a faculty in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Pace University and also holds a faculty appointment at NYU Langone Health. She is an active clinician-researcher with extensive experience in adult neurogenic communication disorders. Carozza’s original research reported on the breakdown of language retrieval in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.  Dr Carozza’s additional studies include works on quality of life approaches to improving communication, 3 books in speech-language pathology and many related chapters and articles.

Kiara Medina is a graduate student at Pace University in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program. She holds a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College. Kiara is interested in how mentorship may benefit marginalized students. 

Jennifer Rosenstein is the director of the Beekman Library on Pace University’s New York City campus.  She holds master’s degrees from Syracuse University and Teachers College, Columbia University.  She has also worked as a secondary school librarian and English teacher in the New York City public schools.