ABSTRACT
This chapter combines evidence from the literature and personal experience to probe and illuminates the lived experience of African American (Black) women in academic engineering and the role that mentoring plays in career development. It highlights the absence of experiences and voices of African American females within the history of and the bodies of work in engineering, especially within the literature on mentoring. The chapter argues that the success or failure of mentoring programs and mentoring relationships for African American women rests on the awareness of an explicit effort to address key barriers within these cross-race, cross-gender relationships. It discusses three key theoretical frameworks that can elucidate our perspectives on the unique experiences of African American women and other under-represented groups: unconscious bias, identity conflict, and presumed meritocracy. The chapter ends by describing a very effective mentoring relationship for African American women in academic engineering, the mentor–protégé relationship.
