From the Lab to the Field: Pioneering Approaches to Undergraduate Mentoring in Archaeology

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "From the Lab to the Field: Pioneering Approaches to Undergraduate Mentoring in Archaeology" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There is a growing recognition in the field of Archaeology of the need to center diverse voices in research. However, the recruitment and retention of diverse scholars at every level, from undergraduate enrollment to the tenure track, remains a challenge. Access to mentoring is crucial to the success of marginalized and underrepresented students in academia. Within archaeology, mentoring is an important pathway for undergraduates into research and ultimately into graduate school and beyond. The mentoring of undergraduates occurs on many scales, from individual labs or research projects to department-wide programs or field schools. However, these efforts are often invisible to the people outside these projects. The opacity of the process of student mentorship at many levels is a barrier to entry for others and limits our collective growth in mentoring best practices in archaeology. The purpose of this session is to highlight the impact of mentoring on undergraduates in archaeology by showcasing a variety of mentoring efforts, particularly those by early career archaeologists and by historically marginalized scholars who currently are disproportionately responsible for mentoring underprivileged students. This discussion will generate conversation both about the importance of mentoring and how to successfully mentor the next generation of archaeologists.