Degrees of Success: Mentorship in Black and White
Through a summer research experience with a Caucasian mentor, a
minority nursing student learns to challenge racial stereotypes-both
in others and in herself
By Miriam Ezenwa, BSN
Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented as nurse researchers.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds the STAR (Stipends for
Training Aspiring Researchers) Program to enhance recruitment of minority
students into research careers. In the summer of 2002, after completing
my third year as a student in the BSN program at Hunter College in New
York City, I had the opportunity to spend nine weeks participating in
a STAR research project at the University of Washington School of Nursing
in Seattle.
In the STAR Program, each student is matched up with a faculty mentor
based on his or her indicated area of research interest.
During my application process, I visited the nursing school's Web site
for the profiles of faculty who were doing research on pain and end-of-life
care, the subjects in which I was interested. I picked out the names
of the two faculty members whose work was closely aligned with my area
of interest. After reading the profile of Dr. Diana J. Wilkie, I knew
that her research was what I wanted to pursue. However, as a student
of color, an immigrant to the U.S. and a first-generation college student
in my family, I was terrified and intimidated that I could be working
with a white mentor who had numerous publications and quite a few titles
after her name.
The fact that she was white was what mostly concerned me, because I
had heard anecdotes from other minority students about how they had
found certain majority faculty members difficult to work with. I thought
about it for a while and decided to find out for myself. Because I was
committed to accomplishing the goals I had set for myself, I was willing
to try.
A few weeks after my acceptance into the STAR Program, I received a
very interesting email from my mentor. With her permission, I am sharing
what Dr. Wilkie wrote:
"Hi, Miriam. I am delighted to learn that you are interested in
working with me and my team this summer. We are engaged in several
really interesting projects related to pain or end-of-life care. I
look forward to speaking to you on the phone later today or tomorrow.
Our Web site listed below describes our work if you have not seen
our new site. If you have any questions, please ask. Email is the
easiest way to touch base with me since I have lots of travel planned.
"I understand that your first day will be June 17. I will be out
of town that day but I'll be back on June 18 and would like you to
go with me to a special event held here on June 18-20. I will arrange
for one of our team members to meet you on 6/17 and orient you to
our lab.
"Once again, I am honored that you want to work with us and are
interested in this important health care topic."
I read her message many times, trying to analyze it. Would she really
be as understanding as she sounded? Finally, I concluded that I had
to give her the benefit of the doubt and reserve my judgment until the
time when I would meet and work with her.
Fears and Stereotypes
After my acceptance into the STAR Program, I was faced with the challenging
task of preparing to move to Seattle for the nine-week period. Having
lived in New York City for almost seven years, the thought of moving
to an unfamiliar territory where I knew absolutely no one was quite
unnerving. It was far more overwhelming to me than the first day I arrived
in the United States, because I had some relatives in New York.
My biggest fear about moving to Seattle stemmed from a comment one
of my African-American friends made when I told her about my plans.
She tried to discourage me from going to the western part of the country,
saying that Seattle is a primarily white area that was not friendly
to black people. My friend also told me that Seattle had many "rednecks"
(as she put it) and wooded areas, and that these bigoted people might
lynch me. I now know that these perceptions were stereotypes. But back
then, at the sound of the word "lynch," I immediately flashed
back to the American history book that I read when I first came to the
U.S., and the information I learned when I took a Black politics class
at my college. With these thoughts, my knees almost buckled.
As soon as I got off the phone with my friend, I called the coordinator
of the McNair Scholars Program at my school, because I am a member of
that program. I told her what my friend had said. The coordinator was
upset and said, "Why did she tell you something like this? She
should know better than that." I asked her point blank, "Is
it true? Do they still lynch people in the U.S. in the 21st century?
Because if they still do, I don't plan to become a statistic."
After the coordinator calmed me down, she told me that lynchings don't
happen anymore. But at the same time, she warned me that I should not
wander in neighborhoods where I should not be at night. I thought, "It
is going to be hard to know which ones are safe."
Throughout my stay in New York, I never had to worry about which neighborhoods
I should be in or which ones were forbidden for me. Then I decided that
I would be fine in Seattle because I would not have any classes or work
to keep me out late at night. Although I felt better about my decision
to move to Seattle, it still bothered me that minorities still feel
threatened by their white counterparts in this day and age.
Encountering Discrimination
The title of my STAR research project was "Feedback About TNEEL
(Toolkit for Nurturing Excellence at the End-of-Life Transition)."
TNEEL is a teaching tool developed by nurse researchers at the University
of Washington to assist health educators in teaching about end-of-life
care. The project team had sent more than 8,000 TNEEL CDs to accredited
schools of nursing and clinical educators in the U.S. and had mailed
30,000 brochures to hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and medical schools.
Seven TNEEL workshops were held throughout the country. The TNEEL team
had received a great deal of feedback through emails, workshop evaluations
and verbal comments. The purpose of my project was to analyze this feedback
so that the team could use these findings to generate a marketing strategy
for promoting the adoption of TNEEL.
At the lab where I worked, things were going great for me. The team
members of the Cancer Pain & Symptom Management Nursing Research
Group were willing to share their experiences with me. They helped me
get over the fear I had always had about using computers. My mentor
introduced me to the research process, taught me to believe in myself
and gave me so much confidence that I started to figure out things that
I never thought I could do before.
I was very pleased when Dr. Wilkie invited me to go with her to the
American Nurses Association (ANA) biennial meeting in Philadelphia.
At the conference, I met many amazing nurses who were eager to share
their knowledge and experiences with me. My interactions with them strongly
reminded me of why I was drawn to the nursing discipline. One of the
nurses I talked with gave me a gift with the inscription, "Nurses
are the true spirit of caring." When I read that, I smiled at her
and said, "I know that I am in the right profession." This
gift is special to me, and I posted it on my refrigerator to remind
myself why I wanted to become a nurse.
While making the travel arrangements for the conference, Dr. Wilkie
asked me whether it would be all right if we shared a room in the hotel.
Initially, I was shocked and then embarrassed that I would be staying
in such close proximity to my mentor. I was concerned that I would not
be able to rest properly, because I would be constantly worried about
being in her presence and about whether I would disturb her if I snored.
But I felt better when she told me that she had shared a room on a few
occasions with her colleagues in the past and that she was very good
at sharing.
My mentor arrived at the hotel a few hours before I did, because she
had traveled from Washington, D.C. and I was traveling from Seattle.
She checked into the room and was waiting for my arrival. She sent a
cab for me at the airport and instructed the driver to call her on our
way to the hotel so that she could meet us downstairs. When we arrived,
Dr. Wilkie was waiting for us as she promised. She paid the driver and
proceeded to help me with my luggage. We headed to the front desk so
that I could check in.
Then something happened that humiliated me and upset my mentor. The
receptionist at the front desk, who was an African-American woman, gave
us a hard time about my checking into the same room with my mentor.
She said that I could not stay in the room with Dr. Wilkie, and that
my name was not in their computer. I politely explained to her that
I was in my mentor's office when she made the arrangement for the room,
and that she had specifically asked for a room with double beds, to
share with a colleague.
The receptionist did not even pay attention to me. Since I was too
tired to argue with her, I kept quiet and let my mentor handle the situation.
When the receptionist suggested that I get a different room, Dr. Wilkie
sternly said to her, "I reserved this room for Miriam and me, and
we will be rooming-in together." The way she stressed the word
"together" made the receptionist realize that my mentor was
not going to concede.
The receptionist finally registered us to stay in the same room, because
Dr. Wilkie insisted and was also ready to speak with the manager about
the situation. I was baffled at how unpleasant this woman was to us.
But throughout the entire process, my mentor remained poised, calm,
professional and well mannered. I really admired her and I learned from
her behavior. When we discussed the incident afterwards, I complimented
her for the way she dealt with the problem. My mentor told me that in
situations like that, there was no reason to raise one's voice and that
the best thing to do was to quietly insist.
I became self-conscious because of that incident, and also because my
mentor and I received strange looks from people when we dined or walked
together. I began to wonder when, if ever, this issue of "black
and white" would ever be resolved.
I thought about all I had observed during my stay in Philadelphia and
concluded that the "integration" we say we have achieved in
America still has a long way to go in terms of its complete adoption.
I also believe that separatism continues to be practiced in the United
States, although very subtly. As a nation, we still constantly try to
divide ourselves into separate groups-such as black and white, immigrant
and non-immigrant, those who have an accent and those who don't-instead
of considering ourselves as one united people and celebrating our differences.
And these differences will enrich our beautiful country.
Learning to Trust
Because I was initially so intimidated by my mentor's accomplishments,
I constantly felt inadequate around her, sometimes even stupid. I was
terrified each time she introduced a new idea or new concept about my
project, because I didn't know how to proceed or elaborate that concept.
Because I have always been in charge of my own affairs, including work
and school schedules, since I came to America, I was concerned that
I had no control over the pace or the direction of my project, or how
to synthesize the different aspects of my project into a whole.
However, Dr. Wilkie always told me to trust that I knew enough to do
what needed to be done, and she always encouraged me to come to her
if I had any questions. She let me try to complete tasks on my own,
then showed me more efficient and scientific processes for accomplishing
the same task. Then she would tell me that people learn better after
having tried on their own.
When I had accomplished the different parts of my project, my mentor
carefully guided me through the synthesis, after I first tried to do
it on my own. I gained a little more confidence each time she showed
approval or complimented what I had done. When I wrote my report, she
didn't change my words but sometimes showed me a different way to reword
it. Finally, I completed my project and was amused when my mentor admitted
that she deliberately assigned some tasks to me because she knew that
I would need those experiences to complete my entire project. At this
realization, I appreciated her even more.
In working with Dr. Wilkie, I learned to trust her as a mentor who
has my success at heart. This trust was earned because she guided me
through the research process, trusting me even when I did not trust
myself. As a result, I gained control of my project and I felt an overwhelming
sense of accomplishment.
Keeping an Open Mind
Ever since I participated in the STAR Program, I have made a point
of learning from my daily encounters with people, ideas and experiences.
During my summer research project, I made careful observations and analyses
of individuals and events, and I have enriched my knowledge about people.
I have also learned things about myself, and the learning process continues.
By sharing my experience in this article, I hope to encourage other
minority students to not be deterred by their fear of research and to
be open-minded about working with someone outside of their own race
or ethnicity.
The assumptions I had made about my mentor because she was white turned
out to be totally wrong. Had I not persevered, I would not have had
the chance to find out what a wonderful person she was and would have
deprived myself of the opportunity to work with a world-renowned pain
expert. Through her mentoring, I also learned not to give up before
I even tried, and to try again if I wasn't successful at first.
Dr. Wilkie also taught me that I could turn a "no" answer
into a "yes" by following up on suggestions, feedback and
constructive criticism. She once shared with me some of her own experiences
with perseverance by saying, "Sometimes when I submitted a grant
proposal, it was not funded at first. But I could not accept that decision.
So I used the suggestions provided by the reviewers, submitted it again
and eventually it was funded."
In summary, my experience in the STAR Program helped me grow and develop
not just as a student and researcher but also as a person. When I returned
to Hunter College in September 2002, I was determined to apply to graduate
programs in nursing. I now have the confidence to follow my dream of
becoming a minority nurse researcher.
Acknowledgment
The research project described in this article was supported by funding
through NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute grant #5 T35 HL07763-10,
UW "Stipends for Training Aspiring Researchers" (STAR) Program.
The Toolkit for Nurturing Excellence at the End-of-Life Transition (TNEEL)
was developed at the University of Washington through a grant funded
by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Diana J. Wilkie, RN, PhD, FAAN,
Principal Investigator. This project was assisted by the following TNEEL
team members: David Hughes, RN, BSN; Nai-Ying Ko, RN, PhC; and Hsien-Tzu
Chen, RN, MS.
Miriam Ezenwa graduated from the BSN program at Hunter College (New
York, N.Y.) in May 2003. She is now pursuing graduate study in the accelerated
BSN-to-PhD program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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