Space to Blossom: Fostering Holistic Successes and Reclaiming Our Right to Thrive Through Identity-Informed Mentoring

• In Event: 43.028 - Mentoring, Monitoring, and Moving Through Higher Education

Abstract

Female faculty of color in higher education bring unique, critical understandings that tend to be unrecognized, undervalued, or rejected within the academy. Universities can be unwelcoming or even hostile to female faculty of color, denying them spaces to flourish as individuals and academics. This study offers a counternarrative, by examining the complexities of intra-group mentoring for two Asian-American female teacher educators over a five-year period. The authors explore how their experiences as Asian American women in academia impacted their relationship; their acculturation processes in academia and their subsequent successful advancements in rank. In co-creating spaces to blossom through identity-informed mentoring relationships, female faculty color can reclaim their rights not only to exist, but to thrive, in the academy.

Authors

• Betina Hsieh, California State University - Long Beach

• Huong Tran Nguyen, California State University - Long Beach