The new Graduate Mentorship Center seeks to provide graduate students with services and training that will allow them to be better mentored. At the same time, they will also learn better how to mentor others through workshops and speakers, said Maria Hamilton Abegunde, newly named director of the Graduate Mentorship Center.
Abegunde earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Northwestern University, a Master of Arts in women and gender studies from DePaul University, and a Ph.D. from IU’s Department of African American and African Diaspora studies, the first person to do so.
National research shows that the two greatest factors affecting degree completion are money and mentoring, said James Wimbush, vice president for equity, diversity and multicultural affairs and dean for the University Graduate School.
“So, what we’re hoping to do with the mentorship center is to actually create resources around community building but also providing students with the types of assistance needed to help them as they do their research, write their dissertations,” he said.
The new center was funded by the President’s Diversity Initiative last year and is to be housed in the Unviersity Graduate School as soon as next semester.
“I had spoken with the president about diversity and the diversity building we had tried with the Graduate School, but that we just simply didn’t have the adequate resources available to do all of the wonderful things that we had on our wish list,” Wimbush said.
He also said that funding for recruitment, helping students finish dissertations, and funding for mentoring were among priorities on his wishlist.
“Completing our degrees can be very isolated,” Abegunde said. “We spend a lot of our time at our desk and at the library.”
A personal relationship between the mentor and the mentee, therefore, is important, she said.
“A mentoring relationship is a structured relationship, but it’s also a caring relationship and one that’s built on trust in which both the mentor and the mentee accept certain responsibilities,” Abegunde said. “And part of that is that the relationship helps focus on the needs of the mentee.”
Abegunde said she plans to create new programs within the center and integrate existing programs into the center.
She added that one of her tasks will be to know more fully what is already offered by talking to a wide range of students and faculty both groups and individuals.
“I think it’s really important to have input from students across the board,” Abegunde said.
