Black Radical Tradition to Transform Mentoring

Community psychology graduate students occupy several roles in their institutions. This gives graduate students unique vantages to some of the underlying issues in higher education. Disparities in graduate programs, student mental health, and mentoring are key issues that graduate students may organize themselves around. In our time as graduate students, we walked the various tightropes of scholar/student-activist, student-researcher, lecturer, junior mentor, and student organizer. The typically isolating experience of graduate school is improved when students can find common cause to advocate for and with each other. For our newest episode of The Community Psychologist Podcast, we invited Georgia State University graduate student Alesha Bond. Alesha is a doctoral student in the Cognitive Sciences program in the department of psychology. She previously co-wrote a TCP article discussing the organizing students engaged in to address issues of diversity and mentoring. We talked about the necessity of student organizing to push for change and the intersections of her research and organizing. Alesha shares some accomplishments, discusses the challenge of navigating power differentials, and provides advice to graduate student organizers. Cokley, K. & Garba, R. (2018). Speaking truth to power: How Black/African psychology changed the discipline of psychology. Journal of Black Psychology, 44(8), 695-721 Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26-53. Stewart, T. J. (2020). Capitalism and the (il)logics of higher education’s COVID-19 response: A Black feminist critique. Leisure Sciences, 1-7. DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2020.1774011 Thornhill, T. (2018). We want Black students, just not you: How white admissions counselors screen Black prospective students. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1-15 We are always looking for additional topics and guests for future episodes. If there is a topic you would like to be featured in a future episode or if you would like to be a guest, please email [email protected] Hosts: Dominique Thomas & Allana Zuckerman Edited by Allana Zuckerman