The goal of the Mentoring for Social Justice and Community-Building Project – sponsored by the School of Graduate Studies and Douglass Residential College – is to foster mutually beneficial relationships between current graduate students and undergraduates committed to aligning their scholarship, advocacy, and collaborations with social justice principles. Through training graduate students in justice-oriented approaches to mentorship and partnering a cohort of graduate student mentors with Douglass undergraduate mentees, the project aims to generate sustainable near-peer mentoring relationships shaped by common interests, experiences, or aspirations.
The selected cohort of graduate student mentors participates in a year-long experience during which they attend two training sessions on social justice mentoring, facilitate dialogues with mentees on a justice-oriented topic of their choice, host virtual office hours for mentees, and co-create a presentation with their mentees at the conclusion of the one-year experience reflecting on their learning.
Upon participating in the project, graduate student mentors will be able to:
- Co-create a mentoring agreement with their undergraduate mentees.
- Facilitate engaging and inclusive dialogues.
- Define equitable strategies for mentoring undergraduates.
- Apply social justice frameworks to mentoring relationships with undergraduates.
Graduate student mentors are compensated for their time and eligible to receive a digital microcredential from the School of Graduate Studies recognizing their contributions to socially just mentoring.
The 2022-23 project was supported by the Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement's IDEA Innovation Grant Program.
The 2022-23 program cycle is complete. More information coming soon.