Associate Dean Pamela Lightsey and Colleagues Receive Grant from Wabash Center
Associate Dean Pamela Lightsey, along with two other womanist colleagues, Dr. Wil Gafney and Dr. Valerie Bridgeman, had their application for the Peer Mentoring Cluster approved by the Wabash Center. The purpose of their grant is stated as: “Peer Mentoring Clusters program supports faculty of color who are former participants in Wabash Center programming and want to gather a small group for further networking and vocational growth. Minoritized faculty of color face particular challenges and pressures, and can benefit from networks of peer-to-peer mentoring. Peer mentoring conversations can surface ways to meet the demands of mid-career teaching and administrative jobs, and can provide faculty of color with strategies to not only discern challenges and pressures, but to navigate them as well.”
Congratulations to Pamela and her colleagues on this important work. Below is a Q&A with Pamela on what this grant award means to her and what she hopes it will accomplish.
Describe your feelings about the meaningfulness of the work. What will this mentor cluster provide minoritized faculty of color?:
I’m honored and excited to be a recipient of this grant. As Womanist scholars, our project title is Womanist Separation for Wholeness. Women and faculty of color face unique challenges in academia. The peer-to-peer mentoring cluster allows faculty of color opportunities to reflect on those challenges, share helpful experiences as well as strategies for success. In the case of the makeup of our cluster, it also allows me to deepen my work as a scholar who is interested in interdisciplinary research.
Do you and your colleagues have a proposed itinerary for the three meetings you will lead, or will the discussions about self-care and managing commitments be more organic?
We have a bibliography of works that we will be reviewing during our times together. These books will help us reflect on our commitments to activism, academia and the church.
The Peer Mentoring Cluster program requires that you meet three times. Will there be added online conversation as well, between these in-person meetings?
We have no additional planned meetings but as a natural consequence of our time together will likely be having conversations (email, phone) between meetings.