The cohort is comprised of underrepresented minority graduate students and faculty who meet monthly to learn about mentoring strategies and to discuss topics related to successfully completing graduate school, for example, writing strategies, career advice, difficult conversations with advisors and mentors, negotiating scholar-activist roles, and time management.
As a part of the cohort, you will have the opportunity to:
The GMC recruits cohort members by application, invitation, and word-of-mouth. Due to the number of requests we receive, we are not always able to complete a one-to-one match; however, students invited into the cohort work together as a group with the director.
Once part of the cohort, each member signs agreements that outline their responsibilities to each other and the center. Mentoring occurs through faculty, peer, and small group formats. Using The Mentor's Guide (Zachary, 2012) and The Mentee's Guide (Zachary, 2009), The GMC requires the cohort to identify goals and establish accountability strategies for each semester through introspection on their cultural assumptions, roles, expectations, journeys, and feelings about "being at the table" at a primarily white institution (PWI). Mentor and mentee complete the assigned documents from these texts. Documents are available in Box to allow each pair the chance to work on them at their own pace within the semester.
The cohort meets once a month. Each pair must meet at least one additional time, but may meet as often as they find beneficial to them.
Each one-hour monthly meeting begins and ends with a short meditation after which the cohort shares epiphanies, successes, and challenges about themselves, their research, and life in general within the contexts of the Five-Fold Path. For example, a discussion on negotiating with advisors may focus on understanding the department culture, finding balance, and creating community; the cohort may also provide strategies to resolve the situation, including the center mediating more difficult issues.
We ask faculty and students to commit to at least one semester. Although we accept new members into the cohort each semester, many of the cohort members remain with The GMC until graduation.
Yes. We understand, however, that due to research, conferences, and/or fieldwork that sometimes you will be unable to attend all meetings. The important thing is that mentor and mentee meet regularly and that the mentee attend the full cohort meetings with or without the mentor.
After reviewing the application form and/or speaking directly to faculty and student, we pair the team based on personality, working methods, research, and specific requests. We recognize that emotional and social support are key to academic success and make all attempts to pair students with a faculty member who will be able to support and challenge the student.
Faculty are paired with one student. Most students are in PhD programs and we have found that one-to-one pairing with mentor works well to model how to build a relationship. The cohort, however, also serves as the "mentor". In cases where we have more students than mentors, if a mentor is able to mentor more than one student, we will support that. However, The Center has a tiered mentoring approach that allows the director, graduate assistants, and senior graduate students to mentor students in a group or through peer mentoring.
We will re-pair you both.
