Mentoring as Academic Resistance Work

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Description

Mentoring is vital for thriving in the academy (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019). Whether it takes place in a dyad or group (Higgins and Kram 2001), mentoring supports personal growth while enabling the transfer of knowledge and skills necessary to succeed across an academic career. Effective mentoring is linked to higher self-efficacy, persistence, research productivity, and career satisfaction for mentees (Garcia et al., 2025; Gutiérrez et al., 2021; Maton et al., 2016; Shen et al., 2022).
Creating effective mentoring relationships is challenging under the best circumstances. We are living through a time that most in higher education would not describe as ‘best’. Funding cuts, the dismantling of infrastructures that promote equity, and the attacks on sociological scholarship prevalent within higher education make it difficult to prioritize mentoring.
Yet, mentoring may hold the key to getting us through this moment. Mentoring can serve as a form of academic resistance work or a type of fugitive pedagogy (Givens 2021) where principles of equity and support for research that aims to reduce inequality can continue to flourish even as these ideals face attack in the public sphere. Indeed, as scholars of mentoring note, equity-minded mentorship is a courageous action that can advance inclusive and welcoming scholarly communities (Griffin and Johnson, 2025).
To consider this possibility, this workshop convenes a panel of scholars who write about mentoring and/or cultivate mentoring opportunities. The panelists will discuss how programs that embed mentoring can serve as a buffer in this moment and respond to participant questions. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to 1) gain a better understanding of how mentoring can counteract the isolation and exclusion political attacks intend to foment, 2) reflect on their own mentoring practices considering the current climate, and 3) consider mentoring strategies to incorporate going forward.
References:
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. The Science of
Effective Mentorship in STEMM. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
https://doi.org/10.17226/25568.
Garcia, A. L., Dueñas, M., & Rincón, B. E. (2025). Culturally responsive mentoring: A psychosociocultural perspective on sustaining students of color career aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 18(Suppl 1), S461–S472. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000587
Givens, Jarvis. Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021.
Gutiérrez Á, Guerrero LR, McCreath HE, Wallace SP. Mentoring Experiences and Publication Productivity among Early Career Biomedical Investigators and Trainees. Ethn Dis. 2021 Apr 15;31(2):273-282. doi: 10.18865/ed.31.2.273. PMID: 33883868; PMCID: PMC8054872.
Higgins, Monica and Kram, Kathy. 2001. Reconceptualizing mentoring at work: A developmental network perspective. Academy of Management Review 26(2):264–288.
Maton, K. I., T. S. Beason, S. Godsay, M. R. Sto. Domingo, T. C. Bailey, S. Sun, and F. A. Hrabowski III. 2016. Outcomes and processes in the Meyerhoff Scholars Program: STEM PhD completion, sense of community, perceived program benefit, science identity, and research self-efficacy. CBE—Life Sciences Education 15(3):ar48.
Shen MR, Tzioumis E, Andersen E, Wouk K, McCall R, Li W, Girdler S, Malloy E. Impact of Mentoring on Academic Career Success for Women in Medicine: A Systematic Review. Acad Med. 2022 Mar 1;97(3):444-458. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004563. PMID: 34907962.

Sub Unit

• Workshops / Professional Development Workshop

Presenters

• Amanda Evelyn Lewis, University of Illinois-Chicago

• Michelle Marie Christian, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

• George L. Wimberly, American Educational Research Association

• Sweeney Windchief

Session Organizers

• Melissa Wooten, William T. Grant Foundation

• Richard Reddick