African American Graduate Students Research Articles

Analysis of preservice teachers’ lesson plans to determine the extent of transfer of argumentation

ABSTRACT Argumentation research often addresses the nature of argumentation as a complex set of procedures that can aid learning of complex scientific knowledge and practices. Thus, studies might look at transfer of knowledge and processes to specific science domains or to other types of procedural knowledge, such as teacher implementation in the elementary classroom or attention to argumentation procedures. This study explored the extent of transfer of the procedures and knowledge of argumentation to preservice teachers’ lesson plans. Participants were four African American female preservice graduate students enrolled in an elementary science methods course. The students engaged in argumentation exercises in science from segments of the IDEAS project [Osborne, J., Erduran, S., & Simon, S. (2004). Ideas, evidence and argument in science (IDEAS) project. University of London Press], then participated in a socioscientific crime scene investigation. Students’ capstone unit plans were analysed to explore the extent of transfer of argumentation knowledge and procedures to students’ lessons. Schema theory as an analytic framework shows the nature of psychological and architectural features consistent with students’ abstractions and attention to argumentation. The research has implications for understanding the importance of considering transfer of learning in relation to students’ prior knowledge, especially when it comes to understanding the connections that African American students make to science pedagogy and content.

Othermothering: Exploring African American Graduate Students’ Decision to Pursue the Doctorate

ABSTRACT The faculty-student relationship is one of the most influential relationships in a college student’s life. This is especially true for African American students. However, African American students often have trouble forming quality relationships with faculty, especially at predominantly White institutions. This study sought to better understand the characteristics of faculty-student relationships that influence African American students’ decision to pursue doctoral study. Using Othermothering as a conceptual framework, 41 semi-structured interviews were conducted with PhD students who reached candidacy. Influential relationships had Othermothering characteristics. A total of four themes epitomize those characteristics: (1) caring, (2) keeping it real, (3) high expectations, and (4) identity connections.

Affective reactivity to daily racial discrimination as a prospective predictor of depressive symptoms in African American graduate and postgraduate students.

This study examined whether individual differences in affective reactivity, defined as changes in positive or negative affect in response to daily racial discrimination, predicted subsequent depressive symptoms. Participants were African American graduate and postgraduate students (N = 174; M age = 30 years) recruited for a measurement-burst study. Data on depressive symptoms were gathered at two assessment points 1 year apart. Affective reactivity data was obtained from participants via a 14-day diary study of daily racial discrimination and affect. Participants who experienced pronounced increases in negative affect on days when racial discrimination occurred had elevated depressive symptoms 1 year later. Heightened positive affect reactivity was also associated with more depressive symptoms at follow-up. The results suggest that affective reactivity (either greater increases in negative affect or greater decreases in positive affect in the context of racial discrimination) may be an underlying psychological mechanism that confers vulnerability to future depressive symptoms.

African–American Mentoring Program (AAMP): addressing the cracks in the graduate education pipeline

In this conceptual article, we focus on mentoring as a strategy to mend the cracks in the education pipeline for African American graduate students. Our article highlights the African American Mentoring Program (AAMP) model and examines the unique methods it uses to support the retention and graduation of African American graduate students from a university and their transition to the workforce. AAMP operates from a Transitional Cultural Framework and strives to bridge the gap between the students’ culture and the culture of the university. AAMP’s uniqueness is harnessed in its deep roots in culture, history, collectivism, and inter-generational sharing of knowledge. We end with implications and recommendations for universities and future research.

Constructing self-efficacy in STEM graduate education

Purpose Self-efficacy and outcome expectations influence the development of career interests, which, in turn, affect career choices. This study aims to understand self-efficacy beliefs and expectancy outcomes for African-American graduate students and faculty with a focus in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degree programs, namely, the computing sciences. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of 23 African-American graduate students and faculty members in the STEM field of computing sciences. Findings This study reveals that in different stages of the STEM trajectory, self-efficacy of STEM and computing needs to be reestablished. This research captures a novel space in the self-efficacy literature, presenting self-efficacy as a mobile construct to be re-achieved as students’ progress toward advanced STEM degrees. In addition, this study asserts that the contribution and input of teachers, parents, mentors, counselors and peers has a deep impact on the level of self-efficacy and persistence in computing sciences. Originality/value Findings suggest a greater need for interventions designed to reestablish self-efficacy at each level (e.g. undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees) of the STEM educational trajectory in an effort to broaden STEM participation at the highest levels of degree attainment.

Psychological health and discrimination experience among graduate students: findings from the Stress Coping Obstruction Prevention & Education (SCOPE) Study

Purpose– African-Americans historically report greater exposure to discrimination and also experience unfavorable outcomes associated with physical health, poverty concentration, residential segregation, and poorer education. The effects of discrimination are particularly harmful on mental health as discriminatory experiences contribute significantly to diminished mental health status and psychological distress. African-Americans pursuing graduate education may experience additional stressors, increasing the risk for poorer mental health. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of psychological health and discrimination experiences among black and white graduate students at a southeastern university.Design/methodology/approach– Participants were 505 graduate students at a predominantly white southeastern institution. Researchers collected data via self-administered online and paper questionnaires during the spring 2010 semester. Graduate students were asked questions pertaining to individual demographics, discrimination, and psychosocial concerns.Findings– Approximately 15 percent of the graduate students reported psychological distress. Additionally, black graduate students reported significantly higher levels of day-to-day and lifetime discrimination when compared to white graduate students. In addition to the proportions of psychological distress differing by race, African-American graduate students reported better psychological well-being when exposed to both day-to-day and lifetime discrimination than whites with similar exposure.Practical implications– Resilience factors and coping strategies should be examined further among African-American graduate students for greater understanding. Moreover, it is important to develop applications to improve mental health outcomes for all graduate students.Originality/value– This is one of the few studies to focus on the mental health and discrimination experiences among a graduate student population. The sample is drawn from the southeastern USA where there are long vestiges of discrimination and a sizable sampling of African-Americans who live in the USA.

Reading Ability as a Predictor of African American Graduate Students’ Technical Writing Proficiency in the Context of Statistics Courses

Assessing technical writing skills, such as writing results stemming from statistical analysis of real data, is considered by some statistics instructors as a viable way of providing authentic assessment. Unfortunately, many students find such technical wr iting extremely difficult. Because writing result sections of quantitative studies involves the ability to receive, to encode, to translate, and to reproduce material presented in statistical textboo ks, it is likely that reading ability plays an important role in the technical writing process. Th is study’s purpose was to examine this link among 115 African-American graduate students. A canonical correlation analysis revealed that reading ability significantly predicted students’ abilities to write the results of the following four statistical analyses: correlation analysis, independent samples t-test, dependent samples t-test, and chi-square analysis.

The Double-Edged Sword: Coping and Resiliency Strategies of African American Women Enrolled in Doctoral Programs at Predominately White Institutions

The Double-Edged SwordCoping and Resiliency Strategies of African American Women Enrolled in Doctoral Programs at Predominately White Institutions Marjorie C. Shavers (bio) and James L. Moore III (bio) The pursuit of a doctoral degree can be extremely challenging, as evidenced in the average doctoral student attrition rate, which is anywhere from 40 percent to 50 percent.1 Of those who remain, African Americans earned only 6.1 percent of the doctorates awarded in the 2006–7 academic school year, despite making up 13 percent of the population.2 While these statistics are discouraging, a more encouraging picture is often painted about black women, who earn approximately 65.6 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded to African Amer-icans.3 Because African American women are earning more doctoral degrees than African American men, it is assumed that they are succeeding, and their experience at predominately white institutions (pwis) is often ignored.4 This is dangerous because despite their higher graduation rates African American women have been found to be the most dissatisfied and isolated students on pwi campuses.5 Consequently, research literature focusing specifically on African American women attending pwis is infrequent.6 This suggests that despite their ability to succeed academically, they are facing a variety of obstacles that are often overlooked. We conducted this study to explore the experiences of African American women doctoral students at pwis, and this manuscript, as part of a larger study, focuses specifically on strategies that African American women use to persist academically and cope in doctoral programs at pwis.7 In spite of research that has identified the negative effects of isolation, exclusion, and marginality, African American graduate students at pwis continue to report experiences shaped by these obstacles.8 With African American women being the most dissatisfied and isolated students on pwi campuses,9 these negative effects are even more concerning for them. Several studies address the experiences of African Americans students at pwis,10 and others explore strategies to overcome barriers to success at pwis.11 However, the research literature that focuses specifically on African American women enrolled in pwis is scarce.12 [End Page 15] Additionally, there is limited research available on the unique experiences of African American doctoral students at pwis and even less on the experiences of African American women.13 The lack of knowledge of the black woman’s doctoral experience is an example of the unique challenges faced by black women, which have been routinely ignored and excluded from the discussion of student experiences.14 This study aims to give voice to the unique experiences of black women in doctoral programs at pwis. theoretical framework African American women have unique experiences that are shaped by the intersection of race, gender, and class.15 Consequently, we used a theoretical research lens that could appropriately explain and comprehend the experiences of black women in order to capture their stories in a genuine and authentic manner.16 We used black feminist thought (bft) as a theoretical foundation and an interpretive lens. The theoretical constructs of black feminist thought access feminist and critical theories, while leaving room for the unique perspectives of African American women.17 Critical theory challenges dominant-group thinking and emphasizes experiential knowledge.18 This theory focuses on the effects of racism, while transforming oppressive conditions as men and women begin to gain a sense of who they are.19 Similarly, feminist theory places an emphasis on women’s experiences and challenges traditional male ideology, which has dominated thinking and research.20 The bft theoretical framework is founded in both feminist and critical race theories as a way to understand and validate the experiences of black women in their creation of knowledge.21 bft combines many tenets from critical race theory and feminist theory but recognizes that the intersection of race, gender, and class is often overlooked, which causes the experiences of black women to often be left out of both the previously mentioned theoretical frameworks. In 2005 Moore, Madison-Colmore, and Smith argued that African American women might be the most targeted group for racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression.22 Some of the major tenets that we used throughout the study are...

BOOK/MEDIA REVIEWS

Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales: African Americans' Paths to STEM Fields, edited by Henry T. Frierson and William F. Tate. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group, 2011, 332 pp. $134.95, hardcover.The research collected in Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales: African Americans ' Paths to STEM Fields seeks to add new rigor to investigations of why African American students earn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees, and work in STEM occupations at a considerably lower rate than White students. While these disparities and their long persistence are well known anecdotes, stock stories, and folktales seem to dominate explanations of the phenomenon, rather than provide evidence. The papers organized by Henry Frierson and William Tate do an excellent job filling this gap, improving our understanding of the multiple dimensions of STEM disparities. Moreover, the book's weaknesses offer an opportunity for future research to grow out of Frierson and Tate's volume.The book is divided into five parts. The first (chapters one through three) describes the undergraduate experience for African Americans more broadly. The second part, chapters four through six, focus on males and the third part, chapters seven through nine, on females. Part four, chapters ten through twelve, addresses methods of ameliorating STEM disparities although these strategies are also alluded to in earlier chapters. Finally, part five, chapters thirteen through fifteen, reviews the experience of African Americans in PhD programs and faculty positions. The structure of the book is an appealing feature of Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales, because it highlights the quite different experiences of African Americans by gender and career stage. For example, the analysis of African American females in STEM degree programs provided in chapter seven reveals that they are approximately twice as likely as African American men to earn STEM degrees, a difference that is strongest in the life sciences. However, chapter 8 demonstrates that the strong performance of African American females relative to males in degree attainment is not replicated in the gender composition of STEM faculty, where women are outnumbered by men, even at HBCUs. African American men and women thus experience disparities at different points along the STEM pipeline.Chapter one identifies STEM programs that are successful and unsuccessful at producing African American graduate students relative to what would be predicted on the basis of the school's characteristics, particularly the racial composition of its undergraduate population. A similar approach is used in chapter twelve although the analysis in this later chapter is limited to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Assessing questions about STEM disparities to the data in this way is essential, and these chapters form important bookends for the volume, but it is necessary to note the limitations of these analyses as well. Outliers, both positive and negative, are always anticipated in any population. Chapter one and twelve's identification of programs that produce an unexpectedly high number of African Americans is therefore only a first step in understanding success in remedying STEM disparities. A crucial question is whether this success is random or the result of a specific practice, and whether that practice can be duplicated elsewhere or scaled up.Such questions are ably taken up in subsequent chapters. Perhaps the best example is the exceptional analysis of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Meyerhoff Scholar's Program (MSP) in chapter three, a program that is referenced by other contributors as well. The Meyerhoff program offers scholarships, advising, mentorship, peer support, internships, and research opportunities to African American-and after 1996, non-African American-STEM students. What is particularly appealing about the third chapter is that it offers a convincing counter-factual (those students who decline MSP offers, but continue to study STEM elsewhere) which can be used to help attribute the resounding success of Meyerhoff students to the Meyerhoff program itself. …

Lessons Learned From a Decade of Focused Recruitment and Training to Develop Minority Public Health Professionals

From 1999 to 2009, the Eliminating Health Disparities Pre-doctoral Fellowship Program provided specialized education and mentoring to African American graduate students in public health. Fellows received a public health degree, coursework in understanding and eliminating health disparities, experiential learning, mentored research, and professional network building with African American role models. We describe successful strategies for recruiting and training fellows and make 5 recommendations for those seeking to increase workforce diversity in public health: (1) build a community of minority students, not a string of individual recruits; (2) reward mentoring; (3) provide a diverse set of role models and mentors; (4) dedicate staffing to assure a student-centered approach; and, (5) commit to training students with varying levels of academic refinement.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN AND BLACK HISTORY IN TRANSITION

During our very first conversation, which took place in 1974 at the Southern Historical Association meeting, Hope Franklin and I discovered that we shared a mutual appreciation of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Hope Franklin's greatest debt was owed to the historically black colleges and universities that provided him an excellent education and his first employment opportunities. It was a debt he honored throughout his long and distinguished career. And, thus I begin this essay with a brief discussion of at black colleges and universities because I began my teaching career at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Dr. Franklin also had spent much time teaching and researching in the black colleges and universities, and following his death in March 2009, I contacted William C. Hine, my coauthor of African American Odyssey and professor of African American History at South Carolina State University, for information about Hope Franklin's relationship with that black land-grant institution. William Hine reported that in 2005 Franklin had delivered the commencement address and that it had been his second commencement speech at S.C. State. Forty-five years earlier Dr. Franklin had addressed the graduating class of 1960. Black History had been taught and addressed at South Carolina State since 1897 when a student at the then Colored Normal, Industrial, and Mechanical College commencement ceremonies, Ella Robinson, discussed The in History, and another read a paper on Frederick Douglass, who had died two years earlier. According to Hine, an impressive series of Black History events, lectures, celebrations, and courses had informed S.C. State's intellectual culture. At the 1935 celebration of Negro History Week, the dean of Arts and Sciences, Kirkland W. Green, poignantly asked, What kind of gospel can a minister preach to a congregation of lynchers'? Green insisted that Christianity should be respected at home before missionaries are dispatched to propagate it abroad, and eloquently concluded, has traveled through four hundred years of American history amidst thorns of torture, ridicule, scorn, degradation, and shame. These thorns have torn his flesh and wounded his soul. Bathed in blood and tears, he prayed and sang for the coming of a new day when he would come into his own, into possession of his birthright, freedom, recognition and a man's chance--the right to live his best self and to fulfill his God given mission. Millions waited for that day and died. (1) William Hine concluded, John Hope Franklin did not invent [the field of] African American history, ... but Hope Franklin taught that history. He wrote that history. And he changed that history. For that we cart be ever grateful. (2) Hope Franklin left a rich body of work and a bank of wonderful memories. And there is more for which we can be forever grateful, and that is the existence of an infrastructure of 105 historically black institutions of higher learning that educate annually approximately 300,000 students. According to a 2004 survey of the U.S. Department of Education, While HBCUs enroll barely 15 percent of African American undergraduates, they award 28 percent of the bachelor's degrees. Additionally, black colleges grant 15 percent of the master's degrees, and 9 percent of the doctoral degrees earned by African American graduate students. (3) Many of these institutions have modest enrollments and meager or invisible endowments, and they are plagued by accreditation issues and enrollment challenges. Yet, their enormous contributions to the transformation of American society, to the development of new cadres of scholars--especially the leading black women intellectuals of the last quarter of the 20th century--suggest an importance that far exceeds their number. It would be well worthwhile for predominantly white institutions and historically black institutions to organize a series of summits involving both groups in the educational complex of the United States so that everyone could fully appreciate and understand the value of HBCUs in both the training of future scholars and the generation of new knowledge, paradigms, and perspectives that fueled the recent transformations in arts and humanities in the academy. …

Reading Ability as a Predictor of Academic Procrastination Among African American Graduate Students

The present study examined the relationship between reading ability (i.e., reading comprehension and reading vocabulary) and academic procrastination among 120 African American graduate students. A canonical correlation analysis revealed statistically significant and practically significant multivariate relationships between these two reading ability variables and graduate students' levels of academic procrastination. Specifically, the first canonical correlation analysis revealed a statistically significant and practically significant multivariate relationship between reading ability and academic procrastination resulting from fear of failure. The second canonical correlation analysis revealed a statistically significant and practically significant multivariate relationship between reading ability and academic procrastination associated with writing a term paper, performing administrative tasks, attending meetings, keeping up with weekly reading assignments, and, most notably, performing academic tasks. Implications are discussed in the context of designing and implementing strategies designed to improve African American student performance and instruction in graduate-level courses.

Reading ability and computer-related attitudes among African American graduate students.

This study examined the degree that African American graduate students' reading abilities predict their attitudes toward computers and the educational use of the Internet. A canonical correlation analysis revealed that students with the lowest levels of reading ability tended to report the least computer confidence, least positive attitudes regarding computer liking, and least positive attitudes toward the educational use of the Internet. Findings of the study provide support for the hypothesis that reading ability differentially impacts African American graduate students' computer-related attitudes. The findings also suggest that reading ability may impede African American students' acquisition of computer and Internet skills and may negatively impact their achievement levels in graduate courses requiring computer-based skills.

"Difficult yet rewarding": The experiences of African American graduate students in education at an Ivy League institution.

"Difficult yet rewarding": The experiences of African American graduate students in education at an Ivy League institution.

The Affirmative Activism Project

Recently the MLA and its affiliate ADE produced two significant reports that highlight the professional challenges currently facing the profession, one from the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion and the other from the ADE Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of African American Faculty Members in English. While the MLA report focuses on the increasing demands being placed on faculty members in the tenure and promotion process, the ADE report details the particular difficulties that African American graduate students and faculty members contend with as they navigate the various stages of ca reer development. These two issues are not unrelated. Both reports make important and concrete recommendations on how to create more diverse academic communities that foster the expansion of the field in terms of scholarly contributions and on how to promote specific institutional prac tices that work to ensure that the professoriat more adequately reflects the population at large. These publications provide a much-needed institu tional context for understanding individual narratives of racialization and marginalization many of us witness in the profession. These reports, the result of massive effort and care, will only prove significant, however, if they are circulated, discussed, and integrated into the ongoing conversa tions all of us engage in about what it means to be part of the academy. This article and the two others (by Williams and by Justice and Barker) published in this issue of Profession under the heading taken from the ADE

Beyond Survival in the Ivory Tower: Black and Brown Women's Living Narratives

In this paper, we analyze our personal narratives and explore what it means to be African American and Latina graduate students at a predominately white university in the Southeastern U.S. We examine the meaning(s) of occupying our positions within locations that have denied us the right to be legitimate knowledge constructors. We analyze negotiations of race, gender, and class dynamics in our narratives and within the university's institutional discourses. Implications point to the benefits of employing Critical Narrative Analysis as a tool for facilitating the personal and professional development of women of color in similar locations, addressing the question of how women of color succeed and thrive in such an environment.

There is a Significant Relationship Between Computer Attitudes and Library Anxiety Among African American Graduate Students

Objective – To investigate whether African American students’ computer attitudes predict levels of library anxiety.
 
 Design – A user study in which two instruments were administered to a group of graduate students to measure computer attitudes and library anxiety.
 
 Setting – The College of Education at an historically black college and university in the United States of America.
 
 Subjects – Ninety-four, predominantly female, African American graduate students, ranging in age from 22-62 years old, and enrolled in either a statistics or a measurement course. 
 
 Methods – Two instruments, the Computer Attitude Scale (CAS) and the Library Anxiety Scale (LAS) were administered to all the study participants. The Computer Anxiety Scale contains forty Likert-type items that assess individuals’ attitudes toward computers and their use. It includes four scales which can be administered separately:
 
 1. Anxiety or fear of computers
 2. Confidence in the ability to use computers
 3. Liking or enjoying working with computers
 4. Computer usefulness
 
 The LAS contains forty-three, 5-point, Likert-format items that assess levels of library anxiety experienced by college students. It also has five subscales as follows:
 
 1. Barriers with staff
 2. Affective barriers
 3. Comfort with the library
 4. Knowledge of the library
 5. Mechanical barriers
 
 Main results – There were twenty correlations between the library anxiety subscale scores and the computer attitude subscale scores. Four of these correlations were statistically significant. Liking or enjoying working with computers was statistically significantly linked to affective barriers, comfort with the library, and knowledge of the library. There was also a statistically significant association between an attitude of computer usefulness and knowledge of the library.
 
 Conclusion – These findings suggest that in this group of students there is a medium to strong relationship between computer attitudes and library anxiety.

A Reconceptualization of Mentoring in Counselor Education: Using a Relational Model to Promote Mutuality and Embrace Differences

The author examines cross-gender and cross-cultural mentoring in counselor education from a relational perspective. It is suggested that focusing on commonalities among students who are of different gender or culture will help establish a sense of mutuality in the mentoring process. Scenarios are provided to illustrate a relational model of mentoring with female counselor education students and students of color. ********** Although effective mentoring has been examined for many years in business settings, only recently has the counseling field looked at mentoring processes. Because there is significant diversity among students entering the counseling field, the provision of responsive cross-gender and cross-cultural mentoring can have a significant impact on the future success of counselor education students. Some have suggested that male proteges desire instrumental-or career-focused mentoring, whereas female proteges desire relational mentoring (Cullen & Luna, 1993; Ragins, 1989; Schwiebert, 2000). However, Liang, Tracy, Taylor, and Williams (2002) noted that in a formal mentoring program, gender matches were less important than the overall quality of the mentoring relationship. It is interesting that most research demonstrates that men and women deliver the same kind of mentoring (Frierson, Hargrove, & Lewis, 1994; O'Neill, Horton, & Crosby, 1998). Researchers have noted that both positive and negative aspects are involved in cross-gender relationships. Johnson and Huwe (2003) noted that even when a sexual attraction is not present in a cross-gender mentoring relationship, the mentor and protege may fear the perception of sexual attraction. In addition, Noe (1988) stated that often, the relationship between the mentor and the protege is interpreted as sexual in nature, leading to jealousy, resentment, and malicious gossip (p. 70). Findings from cross-gender mentoring relationships in business settings, however, suggest that if a female protege has a male mentor, her mobility and even salary level may be influenced positively (O'Neill et al., 1998; Schwiebert, 2000). This finding is likely due to the differential positions of power that men hold. Similarly, literature regarding the effectiveness of cross-cultural pairings of mentors and proteges is mixed. Bowman, Kite, Branscombe, and Williams (1998) have reported that cross-cultural mentoring can be less beneficial to the protege than an ethnically similar mentoring dyad. Students of color may find it difficult to find mentors from similar ethnic backgrounds of the limited number of people of color in counselor education. Even if students of color do develop a relationship with another person from their culture or a different underrepresented culture, the relationship may be conflicted. Blanchett and Clarke-Yapi (1999) stated that because mentors share some racial or ethnic characteristics with a protege, the assumption that they can automatically identify with the protege ignores issues of class, gender, and research interest (p. 60). One study involving psychologists of color found no evidence to support that relationships with ethnically similar mentors were more satisfying or provided more benefits than mentoring relationships with European American psychologists (Atkinson, Neville, & Casas, 1991). Along the same lines, Bowman et al. (1998) stated that African American graduate students who attend predominantly White institutions may flounder as they encounter not only a paucity of support but few African American role models or mentors. Although the research leaves many questions unanswered regarding the effectiveness of mentoring dyads involving cultural or gender differences, clearly counselor education students can benefit from effective mentoring. Some have suggested that students of color are most in need of good mentoring and that they may not succeed in academe without adequate support (Bowman et al. …

Mabel Carney at Teachers College: From Home Missionary to White Ally

This article discusses the career of Mabel Carney, head of the Department of Rural Education at Teachers College from 1918 to 1941. Carney was deeply involved with African American and African education, traveling to Africa and the American South, teaching courses on “Negro education,” and working closely with both African and African American graduate students. When she retired from Teachers College in 1942, she was given an honorary doctorate from Howard University for her support of African American education. She died in 1968. Carney is barely mentioned in educational histories of the period. Her life and contributions to African American struggles for higher education reveal a little-known history. But her story also illuminates the instability of conceptions of race, the uneasy positioning of white women reformers, and the ways that progressive white educators’ understandings of race changed in the interwar years in response to broader political events and social movements.

Mabel Carney at Teachers College: From Home Missionary to White Ally

This article discusses the career of Mabel Carney, head of the Department of Rural Education at Teachers College from 1918 to 1941. Carney was deeply involved with African American and African education, traveling to Africa and the American South, teaching courses on “Negro education,” and working closely with both African and African American graduate students. When she retired from Teachers College in 1942, she was given an honorary doctorate from Howard University for her support of African American education. She died in 1968. Carney is barely mentioned in educational histories of the period. Her life and contributions to African American struggles for higher education reveal a little-known history. But her story also illuminates the instability of conceptions of race, the uneasy positioning of white women reformers, and the ways that progressive white educators’ understandings of race changed in the interwar years in response to broader political events and social movements.