“It Felt Like a Little Community”: Supporting Rural Appalachian College Students

Abstract

Students from rural Appalachian regions often face increased career development barriers within university spaces. As part of an NSF-funded program, we provided diverse, structured supports for a group of STEM majors from rural Appalachian backgrounds. We utilized narrative inquiry to interview 10 Program participants, which allowed us to explore which supports they described as impactful, including graduate student mentors, their fellow program peers, program coordinators, campus supports, and other various campus faculty. Participants further described being impacted in a variety of ways: as an individual person, in their research pursuits, in their future plans, academically, and financially through the program’s scholarship. Specifically, they described strategies for success and the importance of belonging as impactful. Implications for future college support programming and for how to best support the career development of rural Appalachian college students, along with suggestions for future research needs and limitations to the research, are provided.

“Knowing I Had Someone to Turn to Was a Great Feeling”: Mentoring Rural-Appalachian STEM Students

“…Post-secondary STEM students encounter various challenges related to sense of belonging [5], academic stressors, mental health issues, and other hurdles throughout their collegiate programs [6,7]. Students with historically marginalized identities and those from underprivileged backgrounds often face unique and increased challenges as compared to their more privileged peers [1,8,9], while remaining underrepresented within much of the historical literature on higher education and psychology [7].…”

“…Students with historically marginalized identities and those from underprivileged backgrounds often face unique and increased challenges as compared to their more privileged peers [1,8,9], while remaining underrepresented within much of the historical literature on higher education and psychology [7]. Appalachian students often face particularly unique challenges and triumphs based on their geocultural background [6,10,11]. Furthermore, both students who are of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and first-generation college students (FGCS) are traditionally underrepresented Behav.…”

“…As many rural-Appalachian students come from low-income families and have limited exposure to academia before their immersion into the college experience, early and ongoing support in the forms of academic assistance, mentorship, and financial aid offers these students the most success in college [6,22,23]. The Committee on Effective Mentoring in STEMM defined mentorship as a professional relationship that promotes positive growth through providing both career and interpersonal support [24].…”

“…STEM students also benefit from mentorship, as it aids in research identity development, and this identity encourages students to continue their education post-bachelors-degree [30]. Rural-Appalachian undergraduate STEM students have specifically identified mentorship as being impactful for their social, personal, and academic success [6]. Therefore, more research is needed to provide knowledge on how to effectively mentor this population.…”

“…Although scholars have repeatedly established that relationships with high-quality mentors can positively affect the development of these students (e.g., [6,10,12]), and many universities have implemented mentoring programs to support underrepresented STEM students, mentoring activities vary widely and primarily focus on academic, social, or career-specific support [7,12,23]. Additionally, few researchers have examined how mentees perceive their relationships with their mentors [37].…”