The role of holistic student mentorship in academia

Recruitment and retention of diverse students and future faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is essential for ensuring the STEM fields, like ecology, become more inclusive and relevant to people that represent the diversity of our global society. As such, positive and impactful mentorship must be a priority to support and affirm students in their journeys within academic systems and beyond. Here, we integrate elements of effective and intentional mentorship models and expand beyond these approaches to offer a Holistic Mentorship Framework that embraces the mentee and mentor as individuals with diverse lived experiences, academic goals, personal aspirations and struggles, and who are embedded in a culture and part of a society. The Holistic Mentorship Framework provides guidance to current and future mentors regarding how to scaffold unique mentoring plans that build upon each mentee's' prior knowledge and values. This framework recognizes the importance of the mentor and mentees' professional and personal goals to create an identity‐safe learning environment of community and belonging, where both parties experience personal and professional gains. The Holistic Mentorship Framework also offers numerous prompts to foster mentor and mentee self‐reflection, identify and repair mentoring misdeeds, and to strengthen future mentor–mentee relations. Building positive and inclusive pathways for the next generation of resilient ecologists, future faculty, and global citizens is essential for ensuring STEM is accessible and relevant. Thus, enacting a Holistic Mentorship Framework will have broad positive impacts on not only mentors and mentees in ecology, but these positive impacts will reverberate across society as we find various ways to support a more diverse and inclusive future.