“I think academia is very difficult to navigate, and a lot of students of color and underrepresented minorities don’t have familial resources—such as parents who went to graduate school—so they don’t really have some of the ways of knowing what mainstream students do,” says Sabrina Bonaparte, a sociology grad student. “Being a woman of color in a classroom, sometimes I hesitate to voice my opinion or provide an alternative perspective,” Bonaparte says. “The conversations I have with my mentors (as I have multiple) allow me to talk about my work or my position as a graduate student, freely, outside of the classroom setting, in an environment where I feel more comfortable to speak openly.” While individual departments offer mentorship opportunities to graduate students, the Graduate School and GO-MAP—the Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program—play a critical role in helping students of color survive at the UW. “For underrepresented minority students— many of whom are often just one of one or two underrepresented students in their department— GO-MAP provides a university-wide community that gives them a sense of belonging and a chance to meet students of color from other departments in social settings that are very inviting,” says Juan Guerra, associate dean of the Graduate School and director of GO-MAP. In fact, says Guerra, such mentorship goes beyond helping students survive; it helps them thrive. Mentoring represents a signature service of the UW Graduate School that has garnered national attention. In fact, the UW Graduate School is the first organization to become a “columnist” for Inside Higher Education, a major national online publication. “I don’t really think I’d be here if I didn’t have good mentors,” says Bonaparte. To combat the heavy workloads and stress associated with grad school, Bonaparte’s adviser, Sociology Professor Charles Hirschman, has helped her manage her workload, given her guidance and helped her set realistic goals for work projects. He also introduces her to colleagues at professional conferences and via e-mail so she has the opportunity to meet the big names in the field, which she likely wouldn’t have the opportunity to do otherwise. The kind of mentoring students need during their academic career is always in flux, says
Biochemistry Professor David Kimelman (right) has been mentoring graduate student Savannah Benally. Photo by Karen Orders.
Rebecca Aanerud, ’90, ’93, ’98, assistant dean of the Graduate School. Not only do relationships sometimes fall apart, students’ needs change during their academic career. “Mentoring at the graduate level will change in the course of somebody’s graduate education,” Aanerud says. “So the mentoring that has to happen when students first enter is going to be different than when they are finishing up course work, when they are doing exams, when they are working on their dissertation.” That’s where the Graduate School and GOMAP come in: they provide students the opportunity to come together from across campus and meet other grad students and faculty. GO-MAP, for example, helps students in different fields figure out how to navigate very similar issues, from how to choose a mentor—be it in chemistry or fine art—to how to prepare for graduate exams. As part of its drive to address the needs of underrepresented students, GO-MAP also offers two brown-bag lunch seminars—Voices in Academia and Voices in the Community—which connect faculty, staff or community members with a small group of students for discussions. Voices in Academia, in particular, enables students to connect with faculty outside of their department. Faculty mentors provide guidance on subjects such as how to publish a scholarly research paper
“ I don’t really think I’d be here if I didn’t have good mentors.”
or how to attend a conference or present a paper. Mentors from the community may offer students advice on how to enter the job market and much more. One of Lockerbie’s mentors, Paul Panetta, not only helped shape her decision to work for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, he provided guidance on how to effectively handle political and sticky situations. “I used him a lot as a sounding board for how to deal with difficult situations or interactions with other people—my advisers, or other grad students, for example,” says Lockerbie. “He provided a lot of guidance for me on how to handle things gracefully; how to smoothly interact and be aware of political situations and such, and those pieces are valuable to me still today.” More than just serving as a sounding board, Panetta critiqued Lockerbie as she prepared to present papers to scientific audiences, and even went so far as to become a member of her doctoral committee. Over the past 20 years, the percentage of minority enrollment in the UW Graduate School has steadily increased—from 7 percent in 1988 to nearly 18 percent in 2008. (The fastest growth in minority graduate student enrollment has occurred since 2004, when enrollment was 14.1 percent.) With the strength of the Graduate School’s mentoring initiatives, it’s clear that graduate students of color at the UW will continue to experience more success than ever before. Julie H. Case is a Seattle-area freelance writer 9
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