Investing In Quality Mentoring Relationships Can Contribute To Success In Graduate Programs, Especially For Students Of Color.

The graduate student experience can be a time of great stress and uncertainty for many. One of the most important aspects of graduate school, that can help alleviate that stress, is securing a mentor. It can determine success in program of study and your readiness to access postgraduate or postdoctoral opportunities. This is especially true for students of color because they have additional stressors due to navigating white-dominated institutions. This experience can oftentimes be alienating. Mentors of color are crucial to students success because they provide cultural and social capital in fields where women and minorities are underrepresented. In addition to focusing on the individual development and growth of your student, graduate mentors of color also have an important role of focusing on institutional change.

A Pre-Tenure Job Is Like Dating. Here Are Three Dating Mistakes Even “Good” Institutions Make That Contribute To Black/African American Faculty Leaving. 

In her weekly newsletter the Monday Motivator, Dr. Kerry Ann Rockquemore, President and CEO of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, wrote a post entitled “Don’t Act Like You’re Married When You’re Only Dating!” In this post, she cautions new faculty against overinvesting in their institution to the detriment of making progress in their research. Likening the pre-tenure years to a prolonged, dating relationship is apropos. Tenure represents an unparalleled level of job permanence but there is no guarantee you will get “the ring”, and your institution spends many years figuring out if you are “the one”. Moreover, in the first few years of “dating”, you are also trying to figure out if you can live with “this person”. Do they meet your needs? Do they value you the way you value yourself? Can you be happy with them for the long-term? As with dating, there is no perfect person or, in this case, job, and sometimes even “good” institutions make mistakes that contribute to faculty leaving.