Current Public Health Associate Professor, Alisha Redelfs, has connected belonging to a public health perspective, implementing mentorship across Brigham Young University.
The Office of Belonging was created to fulfill recommendations made by the Committee on Race, Equity, and Belonging (COREB) report. Since its creation, belonging has been one of the central missions at BYU.
Redelfs got involved with the Office of Belonging after completing research on mentorship. After attempting to implement changes based on their findings, they faced challenges without being recognized as an official council.
“We were just spinning our wheels trying to move forward, but without any institutional support, because we weren’t official, we weren't connected to anything,” Redelfs said. After the Office of Belonging was announced, they reached out.
“The ball started rolling from there, and now our Council is under the Office of Belonging,” she said. The Mentorship for Belonging Council at BYU is a temporary council that promotes mentorship to students on campus.
Mentorship, Redelfs argues, has a direct relationship to Public Health. Research shows that students who have a strong mentor during their experience in college are more likely to graduate on time, obtain better grades, have networks and connections after they graduate, and receive higher-paying jobs.
From a Public Health perspective, the benefits from mentorship can address some of the root problems of the social determinants of health. “If we can get better mentors to larger groups of people it can even the playing field and allow more people to have positive benefits down the road,” she said.
Not only can mentorship address the social determinants of health, but it can also improve the overall health of students. “The more we feel included, the more we feel like we belong, and the less stress we experience,” Redelfs said.
Although on the surface the word ‘belonging’ seems more like a sentiment, there are real complications that can arise when someone is deprived of this feeling. “It might seem like it’s really fluffy and sounds great and nice, but it really does have a connection to Public Health,” she said.
Currently, the Mentorship for Belonging Council is working on a couple of projects to continue promoting belonging across BYU. One of these projects involves collecting and interpreting data to understand the characteristics of a student who gets mentored early versus someone who gets mentored later, or a student who doesn’t get mentored at all.
Using this information, Redelfs and the Mentorship for Belonging Council can create goals to improve mentorship across BYU. Creating an atmosphere of mentorship at BYU has the power to create change in many students’ lives.
“Having a mentor is not going to be the only thing that changes the trajectory of someone’s life, but it can be a significant piece in making a difference,” Redelfs said. Through the work of the Mentorship for Belonging Council, students have the opportunity to feel seen and heard at Brigham Young University.
To learn more about the work of the Mentorship for Belonging Council, listen to Cultivating Belonging with Alisha Redelfs and Julianne Grose.
