Faculty Development Educational Seminar Series: How a Predominantly White Faculty Can Empower BAME Students by Dr Musarrat Maisha Reza

Dr Reza will cover three aspects on interracial mentoring, (1) Expectations and Perceptions (2) The Mentoring Relationship and (3) The Racial Component and their role in ensuring a successful mentorship experience. Whilst we cannot apply cookie cutter solutions to close the mentorship gap for BAME students, this may be a useful step to empower white faculty members to successfully mentor BAME students.

Dr Reza is a lecturer in Biomedical Sciences (Education and Scholarship) and the Race Equality Resource Officer at the College of Medicine and Health. She received her PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2017. She was born in Bangladesh and was raised in Singapore as part of a first-generation immigrant family, experiencing both sides of the fence; privilege, and discrimination.

Moving to the UK in 2018, she began her lectureship journey (biological sciences) with University of East Anglia where she dedicated much of her time to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policies and recommending strategies for BAME student retention, progression and sense of belonging. Outside academia, she remains a stalwart in her activism on young people's participation in decision making and have represented them on high level international panels to world leaders ensuring no young person is left behind in fulfilling their potential. Dr Reza finds her role as a Race Equality Resource Officer highly inspiring and is looking forward to contributing to a more diverse and inclusive college ecosystem.