Prying the Doors Open: Women of Color Mentoring in the Field of Communication

Author(s):  
Manoucheka Celeste ◽  
Ralina L Joseph

Abstract For the past few decades mentoring has moved from being a buzzword in a few select programs into a major institutional goal. From large corporations to small universities, leaders recognize the importance of those with more experience guiding junior employees and students. Colleges and universities have taken the lead nationwide in mentoring efforts, with many having exemplary peer mentoring programs for undergraduates, and some institutions deploying mentoring to support faculty and students. The discipline of Communication has also begun to place more emphasis on mentoring. Yet, some populations, specifically women of color and other minoritized people, do not always have access to networks or programs and are left on their own to navigate institutions and processes. That few women of color faculty inhabit academic spaces in Communication departments, as in other departments across campuses, creates additional challenges for students and faculty, who often lack mentors and yet carry the additional burden of mentoring. This introduction to the special forum in CCC brings sets up the critical insights on mentoring our senior and emerging contributors offer.

The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History boldly interprets the history of diverse women and how ideas about gender shaped their access to political and cultural power in North America over six centuries. In twenty-nine chapters, the Handbook showcases women’s and gender history as an integrated field with its own interpretation of the past, focused on how gender influenced people’s lives as they participated in migration, colonialism, trade, warfare, artistic production, and community building. Organized chronologically and thematically, the Handbook’s six sections allow readers to consider historical continuities of gendered power as well as individual innovations and ruptures in gender systems. Theoretically cutting edge, each chapter bursts with fascinating historical characters, from young Chicanas transforming urban culture, to free women of color forging abolitionist doctrines, to Asian migrant women defending the legitimacy of their marriages, to working-class activists mobilizing international movements, to transwomen fleeing incarceration. Together, their lives constitute the history of a continent. Leading scholars from multiple generations demonstrate the power of innovative research to excavate a history hidden in plain sight. Scrutinizing silences in the historical record, from the inattention to enslaved women’s opinions to the suppression of Indian women’s involvement in border diplomacy, the authors challenge the nature of historical evidence and remap what counts in our interpretation of the past. They demonstrate a way to extend this more capacious vision of history forward, setting an intellectual agenda informed by intersectionality and transnationalism, and new understandings of sexuality.


Author(s):  
Rachel F. Seidman

The seven women in this section were born between 1966 and 1976, at the height of the burgeoning feminist movement. They discuss not only the impact of feminism on their own lives, but on their mothers as well. Some reflect on whether or not the world is a better place for their daughters than when they were growing up. Coming of age in the 1980s and 90s, these interviewees reached maturity during the rise of Reagan Republicanism and what Susan Faludi termed the “backlash” against feminism. None of these women set out at the beginning of their careers to be professional feminists; it never crossed their minds as a possibility. About half of the women in this chapter have been involved in one way or another with the intersecting worlds of journalism, academia, social media, and business, and half—all of them women of color—have worked in direct-service and non-profit organizations. With long careers and experience in a variety of contexts, these women help us understand how feminism has changed over the past twenty years, where the movement is headed, and some of the reasons why even those who undertake its work do not always embrace it wholeheartedly.


2018 ◽  
pp. 977-994
Author(s):  
Margarita Levin Jaitner ◽  
Áine MacDermott

Academia plays an important role in shaping a country's cyber readiness. In the past years, nations have started investing in new cyber-related programs at colleges and universities. This also includes promoting academic exchange with partner countries, as well as putting effort into improved cooperation between industries and scholars in the area of cyber. In many cases the efforts focus largely on computer science and closely related branches of science. However, the very nature of the cyberspace as both a continuation and a reflection of the physical world require a broader perspective on academic assets required to create and sustain sound cyber defines capabilities. Acknowledging this premise, this paper sets out to map branches of science that significantly contribute to the domain known as ‘cyber' and searches for new aspects for further development.


Author(s):  
Lenora M. Hayes

Contingent faculty are an important part of the workforce in higher education because they are mainly tasked with teaching entry-level undergraduate courses. However, there is not much knowledge regarding their rise to majority faculty appointments in U.S. colleges and universities, the constitution of this new faculty, the past and present issues they face regularly, or what the future holds for them. This chapter will review the literature about the historical growth of non-tenure-track hiring in U.S. colleges and universities, provide a description of the composition of this faculty, and outline specific issues they deal with while addressing opportunities advancement as well as their overall satisfaction with their work conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-287
Author(s):  
Lindsay S. Athamanah ◽  
Marisa H. Fisher ◽  
Connie Sung ◽  
Jinny E. Han

Peer mentoring programs provide an opportunity for individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to learn, socialize, and work together in supportive and inclusive environments. In this study, we used a phenomenological research design to explore the impact of a college campus-based peer mentoring program on the experiences and perceptions of participating college peer mentors ( n = 13) toward high school students with IDD who were enrolled in a school-to-work transition program housed on campus. Using thematic analysis across four different data sources, we identified three main themes that peer mentors discussed based on their experiences in the program: (a) mentors’ personal development: constructing meaning of self, (b) mentee growth: perceived work and social impact, and (c) campus community benefits: normalizing disability. Peer mentors reported their own attitudes toward individuals with IDD were changed based on participating in the peer mentoring program and they observed improvements in their mentees’ personal and work-related social relationships. We discuss how these outcomes have impacted the peer mentors’ attitudes, career choices, and lives in general. We also provide implications for future research and practice regarding development and implementation of peer mentoring programs in the community.


1971 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 213-214
Author(s):  
Henry Van Engen

Events in the past ten years have made it necessary and desirable for colleges and universities to increase their course requirements in mathematics for elementary school teachers. There has been little or no opposition to this trend except as one finds it in individual colleges when there is a proposal to change course requirements. In mathematics the change has been in the direction of doubling or trebling the number of credits in mathematics required of prospective elementary teachers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 204
Author(s):  
Lili Duan

With the introduction of the policy of expanding enrollment in colleges and universities, many colleges and universities in the country have added specialties and increased enrollment scale. In the past 20 years, the number of college graduates in China has increased rapidly. The employment situation of many college graduates is not optimistic because of the shortage of professional skills and fierce competition. Although many colleges and universities now have the courses of career planning and employment guidance, to give college students the psychological guidance of employment , vocational training and planning, to help college students improve their competitiveness in employment. However, these guidance can help students to carry out career planning, targeted learning and practice, but in practice, because of different grades, different periods of students' personal needs, psychological characteristics, employer needs and so on, the original guidance can not meet the needs of students' employment competitiveness and growth, talent. Based on this, this paper discusses how to carry out the guidance of career planning for college students more effectively from the perspective of effectiveness and whole process.


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