The main goal of our mentorship program is to give prospective first and second-year engineering students, especially those from underrepresented communities, equitable access to opportunities at UW by pairing them with a junior or senior in the bioengineering department. Through our recruitment process, we tabled at large-scale events such as the 1000+ person Engineering Launch and also reached out to identity groups such as the Engineering Dean’s Scholars Program. Programs like these specifically provide academic support to engineering students from low-income neighborhoods, which is the same demographic that our mentorship program aims to support.

Data from Autumn 2021 indicate that within the College of Engineering, women and underrepresented minorities only constitute 30% and 13% respectively of all BS degree recipients, and they only make up 22% and 6% of all PhD degree recipients. Oftentimes, students from these backgrounds are systematically barred from opportunities that prepare and enable them to pursue a career in engineering due to a number of factors. For example, women were traditionally discouraged from a career in STEM because of deeply-rooted gender expectations (Xu, 2017). Underrepresented populations often coincide with socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, and students are subsequently raised in neighborhoods that simply lack the institutions that can provide professional development opportunities. In addition, individuals growing up in lower socioeconomic status (SES) homes are exposed to toxic pollutants at higher rates, including air pollutants (Hajat et al., 2015). As defined by the EPA, these include particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and sulfur dioxide. Hajat et al. suspect that this impact is likely tied to the locations of homes; specifically, the location of homes from higher SES families is located closer to urban amenities and scenic views that do not have the same health impact that toxic pollutants have on low SES families. Given this urgent need to resolve both generational health and environmental disparities, our mentorship program is crucial for the success of future students.

From a pool of 50+ mentee applicants, our committee of four diverse BMES officers across all three bioengineering cohorts hand-picked over 30 mentees hailing from underserved and underrepresented communities. Through this selection process, we not only aimed to increase future representation of these communities in the Department of Bioengineering, but also throughout the College of Engineering as a whole. Through our year-long mentorship program, mentees have biweekly meetings with their paired mentors, and will gain their mentors’ perspectives into engineering major placement, bioengineering research, and extracurricular leadership. These are all areas that have traditionally favored students of higher income strata. Socioeconomically advantaged students are more likely to afford and hire private tutors or counselors that support students in their coursework as well as career planning decisions. They also enjoy the privilege of a broader selection of research opportunities to choose from, whether or not they are paid or volunteer-based, whereas their socioeconomically disadvantaged counterparts have to worry about securing an income to sustain themselves and can thus only consider paid opportunities, which are already rare and more competitive to begin with. Therefore, our goal is to provide students of lower income brackets and underserved communities with these same educational enrichment opportunities as their peers free-of-charge and to enhance their careers in bioengineering, competitiveness for research opportunities, and leadership potential in the future. Through these mentorship pairings, we also hope to spread awareness of equity issues such as environmental equity throughout the bioengineering department.

While some mentorship programs exist at UW, they are often driven by a niche goal. For example, some mentorship programs are aimed specifically at helping students find research opportunities. While these opportunities are undoubtedly important, they lack the breadth and depth needed to make meaningful impacts on students’ lives, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. As such, our mentorship program aims to take a uniquely broad view of mentorship and aims to support students not just in specific roles, but rather throughout a spectrum of academic, extracurricular, and networking opportunities. As such, our mentorship program is uniquely suited to make a long-term impact on students’ lives.