Multifaceted mentorship community: resisting historical mentoring to create mentee-initiated and sustained mentorship for women doctoral students

ABSTRACT

In the absence of an institutionally sponsored doctoral mentoring program, a small group of women doctoral students developed a new model of mentoring by initiating and sustaining a multifaceted mentorship community (MMC). Using an autoethnographic approach, we present the development of this new model and insights into a mentee-initiated, multifaceted mentorship community that supports doctoral students. Our findings indicate the MMC helped doctoral students understand and navigate the politics of the university, created a collaborative culture that crowded out isolation, and provided sustainable mentorship. This study offers guidance for doctoral students and faculty in need of alternatives to traditional mentoring models. The MMC model may also be useful in educational and business environments outside of higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentorship
• doctoral students
• higher education
• mentoring model
• doctoral program
• women in higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In recognition that race is a social construct designed to establish white supremacy (Haney-López, 1995), that within this system, People of Color have established racial identities representing strength and solidarity amidst oppression (Ross, 2011; Smith, 1992), and that the racial category white represents cultural erasure and a façade of normalness and neutrality (Miller, 2015; Rogers & Mosely, 2006; Sleeter, 1996); we choose to capitalize racial labels for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color while leaving white lowercase.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dea Marx

Dea Marx is the curriculum, articulation, and transfer specialist at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her research centers on the role of mentoring in the policies, practices, and pedagogies that support students from historically underserved populations.

Leah Panther

Leah Panther is an assistant professor of literacy education at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research broadly considers how educators leverage youth sociocultural strengths to support literacy instruction in diverse schooling contexts. This includes humanizing qualitative methods that foreground participatory, sustained relationships with local communities. Current research projects have more narrowly considered culturally sustaining pedagogies to contend with racialized trauma, curricularizing antiracist practices in the English classroom, and disruptions within teacher education.

Rhianna Thomas

Rhianna Thomas is an assistant professor of early childhood education at New Mexico State University. Her research interests include anti-racist and critical literacy education in early childhood classrooms and communities. She also examines child guidance and classroom management practices in early childhood, especially in regard to equity. Dr. Thomas often employs arts-based methodologies including poetic inquiry.

Hilary McNeil

Hilary McNeil serves as the Coordinator of Clinical Experiences and School Partnerships in the Institute for Urban Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  Additionally, she teaches and supervises in the elementary education program within the Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies division. Her research interests include teacher preparation for urban schools and preparation for elementary literacy instruction.