The mentorship of undergraduate students in counselling psychology research

A Systematic Review of Barriers to Accessing Undergraduate Research for STEM Students: Problematizing Under-Researched Factors for Students of Color

While the benefits of undergraduate research experiences for students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups have been well explored, more research is needed to better understand how students of color access these experiences. We summarize a non-structured review of literature that highlights barriers to success that students of color face in relation to STEM programming at the postsecondary level. Building from this, we report on a structured review of barriers to accessing undergraduate research. We discuss implications of the relative lack of research on access to undergraduate research for students of color at postsecondary institutions. We consider how barriers for the success and persistence of students of color in postsecondary STEM, overall, may manifest as barriers to accessing the undergraduate research experiences argued to help reduce these barriers. With the hope of guiding future relevant action, we put forth recommendations for researchers and practitioners.

The Road to Becoming a Psychologist: Indicators of Success and Hardship during the University Years

In order to become a full-fledged psychologist, one must undertake a long, demanding, and quite difficult journey in academia. The academic journey holds a promise of delivering knowledge, interesting theories, and strategies on helping those who need psychological assessment and/or treatment. However, the constant expectation of keeping up with the material, of succeeding in tests and exams, and of preparing to proceed to the next educational level can be daunting and exhausting. In line with the topic of this special issue, this paper addresses factors contributing to academic success at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate levels of psychology. Utilizing the available literature on the Big Five personality classification scheme, high conscientiousness was found to be the most consistent predictor of success, although curiously, this relationship was only found to be reliable at the undergraduate level. Less robust findings included high agreeableness and low neuroticism as predictors of general academic success in all tertiary levels of education. The importance of mentorship figures in psychology, and a highlight of its lack of widespread implementation at the undergraduate level, are also addressed. Additionally, we discuss the negative implications of the impostor phenomenon and of loneliness, which students at all levels may experience as common barriers to scholastic success in psychology. Following a discussion of each factor as outlined above, there is a brief literature review regarding ways that its constraining effects may be limited or its positive effects possibly enhanced.