Michael MacKenzie is a second-year William T. Grant Scholar. As an assistant professor, his mentoring was focused primarily on undergraduate and graduate students of color, as well as first-generation students. In his new role as an associate professor, he will be mentoring postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. Michael seeks to learn how to better identify the challenges faced by junior scholars of color as they navigate the tenure-track process, and how to increase his capacity in mentoring across racial and ethnic lines. Overall, he sees this award as an opportunity to create further opportunities for the development of scholars of color. Toward this end, he will share skills and ideas gained from this award to deepen his fellow faculty’s skillsets around mentoring junior colleagues. The award will support his mentee, Adrian Gale, an African-American doctoral candidate for a dual PhD in Social Work and Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan. Gale expects to graduate in Spring 2016, and this award will support him as a postdoctoral fellow. Gale’s research examines the ways in which youth’s social identities and contexts work together to impact school outcomes. Gale’s goals for this award are to increase his expertise with inequalities in adolescent development for system involved youth, increase his methodological skills in longitudinal design and multi-level research methods, and establish a network of educational disparity scholars.
MacKenzie proposes to use the award to develop the different skill sets involved with mentoring junior colleagues, as compared to students.
