The School of Graduate and Studies and Douglass Residential College selected five graduate students to participate as mentors with the inaugural Mentoring for Social Justice and Community-Building Project for the 2022-23 academic year. These stellar graduate students will receive training in justice-oriented approaches to mentorship and will be partnered with a team of Douglass undergraduate mentees, with whom they'll facilitate a series of participatory dialogues on topics related to social justice and community engagement.
Learn more about the mentors and the projects they designed that will structure their mentoring relationships below.
Mentor Biography:
Julie Aromi is a fifth year doctoral candidate in library and information science. She studies archives and race, and is writing her dissertation about the 1991 riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and the way archives and archivists help create certain historical narratives while silencing others. On campus, Julie has taught “Social Informatics” in the ITI major, participated in the grad workers’ union, and now works with the GradFund office, where she helps other graduate students to apply for funding. Julie is a mixed race Afro-Puerto Rican, and is passionate about helping other women of color learn to navigate and excel in academia. She attended Princeton University as a first-generation college student, earned two masters degrees at Queens College CUNY, and is excited to have the opportunity to connect with and learn from the students of Douglass College.
Mentoring Project Description:
Academia comes with a lot of “hidden curriculum,” the things we’re not told that we need to know, and often don’t learn until it’s too late. Especially for first generation students and women of color, this hidden curriculum can hold people back from doing the work they’re capable of, as they spend their energy on survival instead of scholarship. This mentorship group is an opportunity for women of color who are considering going on to graduate school to learn about how to navigate academia, how to advocate for themselves, and how to make positive changes in higher education while weathering difficult situations. We will set goals together, encourage each other towards those goals, and check in along the way. We’ll learn skills together, plan and work through graduate school searches and applications, and learn about where to find examples, role models, and answers to questions in the process. And we will talk about the realities of being a woman of color in these sometimes hostile institutions and the world at large, share our experiences, and consider ways that we can build solidarities to effect positive change for our communities and others. This group is a community where students will prepare for this next phase in their lives, and keep moving toward their goals with the support of a community.
Mentor Biography:
Lailatou is originally from Burkina-Faso (West Africa), and English is her 5th language. Lailatou came to the United States of America in 2012 to further her education. She is the first in her family ever to hold both an undergraduate and graduate degree. Additionally, Lailatou is a former alumna of Essex County College (A.S in Biology/Pre-Med), Rutgers University Newark (B.A in Biology, Chemistry minor), and Montclair State University (M.S in Biology). She had the opportunity to work at Rutgers Newark Learning Center as a Math tutor (all levels up to Calculus 2), at Montclair State University as a Graduate Assistant (GA) teaching undergraduate biology labs, and at Essex County College as the GS-LSAMP/S-STEM Coordinator.
As a science “lover,” Lailatou will be starting her second year as a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the Microbial Biology Program. Therefore, she is more than happy to help any students towards their academic careers and goals: Time management to effectively pass your classes as an A student, choosing the right major, applying to graduate schools and summer opportunities for minority students, mentoring, writing a resume/CV/Cover Letter and a Personal Statement, requesting a letter of recommendation, balancing life and school, applying for scholarships and more. In sum, she looks forward to connecting with ALL students, especially WOMEN, regardless of their ages, grades, majors, race, religion, and cultures.
Mentoring Project Description:
Lailatou will meet with students first to get to know them and be able to establish a connection. After this, she will go over their expectations and career goals to understand what they are planning for their futures to help them in that direction. Additionally, she will monitor their progress to see if they are still on track with what needs to be done to get to their goals. Next, she will go over the challenges they face and how to overcome them. Furthermore, she will outline all the necessary steps they must take to get into graduate schools. Finally, we will reflect on ourselves by giving feedback on how this mentoring went, the advantages, and how we could improve it next semester when we meet. Thank you!
Mentor Biography:
Marina is doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education. She has experience in language learning and teaching. She is currently researching the case of Lincoln Annex, a neighborhood school that, despite community resistance, got displaced to make space for the expansion of the local medical industry. Marina feels incredibly humbled by all the opportunities she had to engage with, learn from, and collaborate with community organizations in New Brunswick, NJ. She worked as an adult ESOL facilitator in different settings, particularly appreciating when that work is aligned with community organizing and advocacy. She also had plenty of opportunities to observe how strong and resourceful community organizers often do the work that the state refuses to do for migrant workers—what she calls reproductive labor, or the work that keeps people alive and well, while also bonding communities together.
Mentoring Project Description:
How well do you know New Brunswick? I’m talking New Brunswick that goes beyond Easton, George, and College Age. The city that speaks Spanish, that carries migration stories, and where people often have to luchar (struggle, organize) to access basic needs. This project is an invitation to engage with that comunidadthat inhabits French street and beyond. We’ll do that from a perspective that sees not only oppression or inequality, but that recognizes people and their organizations as strong, creative, and resourceful. We’ll understand what an asset-based orientation to community works means, and reflect on how to enact that. We’ll learn from community organizers, analyze the local socio-political landscape, and together come up with ways to collaborate with the community work that is already taking place in the city. This project welcomes people with different levels of previous engagement with the local community and/or other Latinx migrant communities—but any Spanish proficiency, migrant background, or community work experience will certainly be incredible assets.
Mentor Biography:
Liana just finished her 3rd year as a PhD student in the Geography Department where she studies New Jersey labor politics and the environmental landscape of the warehousing industry. She is active in the Rutgers grad and faculty union and is part of the prison abolition movement in New Jersey. She has a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA. Her current side project is learning how to grow vegetables in her tiny Brooklyn apartment.
Mentoring Project Description:
In this mentoring project, we will explore how to make change in our immediate community, Rutgers New Brunswick, using qualitative social science and other research methods. We will investigate commonalities and differences in our university experiences, discuss the ethics of conducting research in our own community as well as practical research design and organizing strategies. If participants would like, we can also delve into how to turn research project ideas into successful graduate school applications and the general process of applying to grad programs.
Mentor Biography:
Ariela Parisi is an international grad student from Argentina. She is doing her Ph.D. at the Spanish and Portuguese department and is learning Portuguese as well. Ariela’s research project studies the intersection between Memory Studies and Speculative Fiction in the Southern Cone and Brazil. Ariela is particularly interested in the representation of Human Rights violations in Science Fiction, and Horror stories and movies. At Rutgers she also teaches Spanish as a Second Language, Spanish for Community Engagement, and Introduction to Latin American Literature. Ariela loves organizing events for the S&P department so her students can have the chance to learn from international speakers, professors, and activists from Latin America. She also enjoys getting involved with the Latinx Community of New Brunswick, and she and her students have done volunteer work at several nonprofits from their neighborhood. Ariela is looking forward to meeting other Latinx students from different fields and collaborating with them to keep bringing the community and Rutgers together.
Mentoring Project Description:
This mentoring project is designed to be an affinity group and community engagement project for Latinx students. The project aims to bring together the Latinx community of New Brunswick and Rutgers students. Also, this project is conceived as a space to provide insight and support to students interested in working with community engagement, social change, and/or community-based research. Students will be able to share their academic challenges, achievements, and find guidance and encouragement not only from the mentor but fundamentally from their peers. The main goal of this project is to create a system of support within those who share a similar experience and background and commit to create meaningful interchanges between Rutgers and the community.