The Foundation is pleased to announce that three research grantees and one William T. Grant Scholar have been awarded grants to support their development as mentors to junior researchers of color:
- Faiza Jamil, a research grantee, will mentor Nora Hochstetter, a Mexican American doctoral student at Clemson University.
- Adam Kho, a research grantee, will mentor Nicolas Pardo, a Latinx doctoral student at the University of Southern California.
- Rossella Santagata, a research grantee, will mentor Patricia Fuentes Acevedo, a Chilean doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine.
- Abigail Weitzman, a William T. Grant Scholar, will mentor Jamie Turcios-Villalta, a Latina doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin.
The mentoring grants program is a vital part of the Foundation’s commitment to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the research community. It is designed to help current William T. Grant Scholars and research grantees hone their skills and abilities as mentors while also helping junior researchers of color reach higher levels on the career ladder.
One thing that’s distinctive about this program is that it’s as much about improving mentoring skills as it is about supporting the research careers of mentees…
The program provides $60,000 for mentoring doctoral students and $110,000 for mentoring postdoctoral fellows. All mentors and mentees convene during annual meetings designed to support mentoring relationships, mentors’ learning, and junior researchers’ development as researchers.
With this award, Kho aims to flatten the hierarchies in mentoring relationships and engage in the process of co-discovery with his mentee. “There’s often this sort of power dynamic: The mentor knows all, and the mentee is learning it all. But there’s a lot to learn for everybody, especially if there are differing interests or skills between the mentor and mentee,” Kho says. “One of the goals for this mentoring grant is for my mentee Nick and I to dig a little more into something there’s not as much research around and learn together.”
The award also encourages grantees to be strong mentors attuned to the career development challenges disproportionately faced by their junior colleagues of color.
There’s often this sort of power dynamic: The mentor knows all, and the mentee is learning it all. But there’s a lot to learn for everybody…
“Mentoring across differences and intersecting identities is complex. As I mentor, I hope to grow in finding the right balance between demonstrating care and providing constructive criticism and in supporting students of color to conduct meaningful community-engaged research while also building a competitive resume,” says Santagata, who will use this award to develop strategies to help junior scholars cope with the challenges of building research careers while pursuing research-practice partnerships.
With the support of her mentor, Turcios-Villalta seeks to not only develop her quantitative methods, but also to “be able to write confidently, and be confident in putting my work out there,” she says. “I hope to step out of this more confident as an independent scholar and to be able to define my identity [as a scholar] even further.”
For Hochstetter, the mentoring award is a start in helping her build an academic support network. “In academia, there’s a hidden curriculum, and being a student of color and a first-generation student, some of that I learned by saying the wrong thing. I’m very much learning to unpack that culture, and I would love to have a network of other scholars in similar situations that I can go to and turn to,” says Hochtstetter.
“One thing that’s distinctive about this program is that it’s as much about improving mentoring skills as it is about supporting the research careers of mentees,” said Melissa Wooten, the program officer who manages the program. “We look forward to seeing how these dyads will grow alongside each other over the course of the award.”
