Graduate Students of Color and Faculty Mentors

• In Event: Race and Contemporary Contexts

Abstract

Patton and Harper (2003) affirm that for students of color participation in “a mentoring relationship with someone who looks like them” can be “keenly important” (p. 68). However, Gasman, et al (2008), and Felder (2010) point to a key challenge—there are not enough faculty of color in the professoriate to exclusively assign them the responsibility of mentoring students of color. This research uses a survey of graduate students of color to affirm the key attributes of mentor archetypes while assessing the graduate students’ experiences with faculty mentors when participating in an “arranged” mentoring relationship. Through a lens of Critical Race Theory these experiences are then compared against Brown, Davis, and McLendon’s (1999) myths of mentoring graduate students of color.

Author

• Willie Leondias Williams, University of Virginia