A scoping review of compassion, empathy and belonging in undergraduate mentorship programs

Abstract Undergraduate students experience significant stress while navigating post-secondary education. Stressors such as increased workload and time management challenges can negatively impact students’ academic performance, sense of belonging, and overall well-being. Faculty-led undergraduate mentorship programs have been successful at helping students overcome academic, social, and emotional barriers that can hinder student success. However, faculty-led mentorship programs emphasizing compassion, empathy, and/or belonging remain largely unexplored. To this end, the purpose of this scoping review is to determine what is known from the existing literature regarding the implementation of faculty-led mentorship programs to support undergraduate post-secondary students’ experiences of compassion, empathy, and/or belonging. Six databases (i.e., PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, ERIC, and Scopus) were searched from February-April 2024, yielding a total of 2832 citations. Following removal of duplicates, title/abstract screening, and full-text screening, 16 articles met eligibility criteria and were included in this review. Themes resulting from this scoping review indicated that (1) no mentorship programs explicitly targeted compassion and/or empathy; however, the majority of programs reported on belonging, (2) of the programs that focused on belonging, most were embedded in other larger programs, (3) within these mentorship programs there was an increase in sense of belonging among student mentees, and (4) most of the mentorship programs were primarily Western-centric. The findings from this review provide a foundation for the development of inclusive mentorship programs to support undergraduate students’ experiences of belonging.