Mentoring ethnic minority students for careers in academia: The WICHE Doctoral Scholars Program

The need for academic mentoring of ethnic minority doctoral students in counseling psychology has resulted in a call for training programs to build environments that not only provide financial assistance, bur also work toward enhancing qualitative aspects of training that may be important in the students' preparations for future academic careers. This article describes the Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education's (WICHE) Doctoral Scholars Program that provides both external funding and strategies designed to encourage faculty-student mentoring. The extent to which WICHE has influenced doctoral training in the counseling psychology program at the University of Utah is described from the perspective of the WICHE director, a WICHE faculty mentor and two WICHE doctoral scholars. The importance of the faculty mentor as a facilitative agent in the training of ethnic minority students and in helping them to prepare for careers in academia is highlighted.