Mentoring and Career Development: 2020 Farrell and Riedy

As Director of the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP), Caitlin Farrell has mentored a dozen post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students. She has also led a bi-weekly qualitative research group that has supported the mentorship of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows involved in NCRPP projects. In these group settings, Farrell has addressed issues related to equity, voice, and privilege for junior scholars of color and female students of color, and, as a White woman, she recognizes how her race has provided her power and privilege in the academy and in general. With this grant, Farrell seeks to build her capacity for one-on-one mentoring and to develop a set of mentoring strategies supporting junior scholars of color that are: 1) driven by students’ voices, choices, and career goals, 2) intentional and proactive rather than reactive to specific situations, and 3) conducive to deeper self-reflection of how aspects of her own identity contribute to power and privilege in academic settings. The grant will support her mentee, Robbin Riedy, a Black Ph.D. candidate in Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Colorado Boulder. Riedy’s research focuses broadly on promoting thriving and healthy communities through inclusive, equity-centered research-practice partnerships. She has three goals for this award: 1) to support research, writing, and publication related to assessing the relational health of RPPs; 2) to develop professional networks for a career path as a faculty member in a university setting who can bridge the fields of education and health; and 3) to build trust and develop an open, collaborative relationship with her mentor where they can raise and discuss issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and other dimensions of identity and how they are felt and experienced within academia.