Mentoring the Black Female Graduate Student in the For-Profit Academy
Location
Room 217
Proposal Track
Practice Report
Session Format
Presentation
Preferred Time
Friday afternoon
Abstract
In an article written for the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, my co-authors and I discussed how we navigated the graduate school experience as Black female graduate students (BFGS) attending a university in the South (Cutts, Love, & Davis, 2012). Situated in Critical Race Feminism (CRF), our counternarrative outlined how we used our bonds as critical friends to challenge marginalization and become academically resilient. We hoped that narrating our experiences provided support for other BFGS facing similar challenges. We recommended that the academy analyze more critically the procedures for awarding assistantships, increase faculty diversity, and emphasize students’ preparedness for the professoriate. We also noted how we – two of us now tenured faculty members – use what we learned as BFGS and now as faculty to assist our students. However, as faculty member in the for-profit arena, many of the experiences that I had with my students differed from those had by my co-authors. In this presentation, I use personal narrative and interview data from my former BFGS to highlight the challenges faced by BFGS in the for-profit academy. I also provide a framework to assist other faculty working in a similar milieu.
Keywords
Graduate Student, Black Female, For-Profit, Mentoring, Faculty
Recommended Citation
Cutts, Qiana, "Mentoring the Black Female Graduate Student in the For-Profit Academy" (2015). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 2.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2015/2015/2
Mentoring the Black Female Graduate Student in the For-Profit Academy
Room 217
In an article written for the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, my co-authors and I discussed how we navigated the graduate school experience as Black female graduate students (BFGS) attending a university in the South (Cutts, Love, & Davis, 2012). Situated in Critical Race Feminism (CRF), our counternarrative outlined how we used our bonds as critical friends to challenge marginalization and become academically resilient. We hoped that narrating our experiences provided support for other BFGS facing similar challenges. We recommended that the academy analyze more critically the procedures for awarding assistantships, increase faculty diversity, and emphasize students’ preparedness for the professoriate. We also noted how we – two of us now tenured faculty members – use what we learned as BFGS and now as faculty to assist our students. However, as faculty member in the for-profit arena, many of the experiences that I had with my students differed from those had by my co-authors. In this presentation, I use personal narrative and interview data from my former BFGS to highlight the challenges faced by BFGS in the for-profit academy. I also provide a framework to assist other faculty working in a similar milieu.
