Background Mentorship has been well-established in the literature as fostering scientific identity and career pathways for underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Mentorship is prioritized by programs that aim to increase diversity and support future leadership in STEM fields, but in-depth understanding of mentorship in these contexts remains limited. Drawing on qualitative interview data, we sought to understand the relationship between mentoring and scientific identity among a diverse sample of 24 students in one such program, in order to inform program development. Results Qualitative analysis of the data revealed that mentorship, especially research mentorship, was common and played a role in formation of scientific identity. Students with research mentors tended to say they strongly identified as scientists, whereas those who lacked research mentorship varied in their level of scientific identity. In interviews, research-mentored students described mentors as colleagues who gave them opportunities to grow and as examples to look up to. Students valued mentors with whom they identified on the basis of demographic similarity or shared values, as well as those who challenged them in their academic and research endeavors. Conclusions Our analysis highlights how different mentoring experiences can contribute to development of future STEM leadership. We discuss implications for practice, including the need for tailored mentoring approaches and research-focused mentoring, and offer several recommendations for research and programming.

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This article problematizes a particular category in immigration politics: refugee. Drawing on a content analysis of 356 television news segments that aired on five major news networks between 1980 and 2016, we examine how the category “refugee” has been used in public discourse, to whom it has been applied, and the factors that shape characterizations of those who receive the label. While existing research finds that the media disproportionately associate the term “immigrant” with economic, criminal, and national security threats, we find that U.S. television news coverage associates the term “refugee” with sympathy. We find that these sympathetic portrayals are contingent upon and most common in stories about migrants in distant locales. When the news media cover individuals likely to settle or who are already settled in the United States, coverage takes a more negative tone. We also find evidence that U.S. border politics and foreign political interests affect which migrants receive the refugee label and how they are portrayed. We conclude with implications for the sociological study of classification and for immigration politics more generally.