Gail Ferguson is a research grantee who is implementing a longitudinal, mixed-methods intervention to improve White mothers’ ability to communicate with their children about race and racism. In addition to maintaining an undergraduate research team of 15 students per semester, Ferguson has mentored 2 postdoctoral scholars, 7 doctoral students, and 2 master’s degree students throughout her faculty career. Ferguson will use this award to strengthen her ability to lead multiracial teams in ethnic-socialization research, mentor immigrant and native-born Black students, and support female graduate students of color develop coping mechanisms that destigmatize help-seeking. Ferguson’s mentee, Trinity Barnes, is a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota. Barnes’ goals include developing a cohesive program of interdisciplinary research that investigates how to interrupt problematic racial socialization, sharpening her writing skills, and expanding her quantitative and qualitative analysis skills. Barnes will support Ferguson’s Foundation-funded study and pursue an independent research project that explores the relationship between media representation and racial socialization among Black youth. With Ferguson’s guidance, Barnes will lead the qualitative coding of parent-child interactions and manuscript development for a paper related to the Foundation-funded project. Ferguson will also guide Barnes’ recruitment of adolescents to an online survey study and subsequent hierarchical linear analyses for the media representation study.
With this award, Ferguson strengthen her ability to lead multiracial teams in ethnic-socialization research, mentor immigrant and native-born Black students, and support female graduate students of color develop coping mechanisms that destigmatize help-seeking.
