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Posted on July 22, 2021 at: 11:30 am
Anti-assimilationist Mentoring Plan
Sub-committee chair: Deconstructing Syllabi
The education system in the United States puts Black, Indigenous, and people of color into what Love names “perpetual survival mode” (2019: 39). The academy and sites of higher education are institutions imbued with power and privilege. The character of success at the university is presented as benign meritocracy, yet in practice, women, and members of the BIPOC community are often excluded. There is a long history of exclusion and lack of support for these groups and those who do have a measure of success in the academy are often forced to adapt or assimilate to a structure that was not built for them. Moreover, for graduate students at predominantly white institutions may be difficult to find a mentor that they see themselves represented in, as the exclusion and underrepresentation of BIPOC faculty remains pervasive. This situation creates a twofold problem: first, graduate students may not establish a strong mentoring relationship that allows them to feel integrated into their program (see: McCallum 2020); and, second, students may end up merely surviving their program, rather than thriving. There are greater structural issues that must be addressed at all levels of the university, and multiple approaches will be necessary. One approach that can be put into practice immediately is considering how we mentor graduate students who are from groups, which have been continuously excluded and are underrepresented in our disciplines. Here, I offer a series of suggestions, including how to better understand student experiences and what steps to take in mentoring practices, which may allow for breaking out of the assimilationist model imposed by the university and considering additional options for mentoring students to be their full selves.
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Posted on at: 10:21 am
This year’s Callahan fellows research was sponsored by the History Department, in partnership with the UD Anti-Racism Initiative, and was funded by the Ray Callahan Experiential Learning Fund. Fellows were charged with investigating the history and legacy of racial inequality at the University of Delaware and its predecessor institutions. They presented draft versions of their work at the inaugural workshop of the Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession at UD subcommittee on June 21, 2021. The blog posts are a further public presentation of this work – and part of an ongoing series of examinations of UD’s history.
Collin Willard, “Beyond Its Limits: A Case Study in University Expansion and Gentrification in Newark, DE,” University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative (blog), July 13, 2021.
Edward Redmond, “The Presbyterian & The Politician: Uncovering and Comparing the History of Reverend Eliphalet Wheeler and Andrew Gray,” University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative (blog), July 13, 2021.
Posted on July 13, 2021 at: 3:05 pm
By Edward Redmond, Ray Callahan Experiential Learning Fund Fellow, Spring 2021
Was someone an enslaver? This is a deceptively simple question that took me a little less than half a year to answer regarding Reverend Eliphalet Wheeler Gilbert and Andrew Gray, two key figures in the University of Delaware’s early history. The research process was difficult and long but led to the uncovering of interesting information and opened avenues for further research. But, this all leads us to a simpler question: who were these men?
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Posted on at: 1:59 pm
by Collin Willard
Ray Callahan Experiential Learning Fund Fellow, Spring 2021
Anyone who has ever set foot in Newark, Delaware could tell you that it is a college town. Positioned in the center of town, the University of Delaware’s vast campus dominates Newark’s built environment. Businesses along Newark’s Main Street cater to student tastes, and students make up a sizable portion of Newark’s population. Large real estate management companies offer a variety of off-campus housing options in just about every part of Newark, from apartment complexes to single family homes, and nearly everything in between.
However, Newark was not always like this. Prior to the 1970’s, University of Delaware students primarily either lived on campus or commuted to class. Newark had several distinctive neighborhoods within its core that housed working-class families. One such neighborhood was home to the New London Road community, where Newark’s Black population lived throughout the 20th century. This neighborhood, shown in the figure below, encompassed most of the northwest portion of Newark’s core, including New London Road and Avenue, West Cleveland Avenue, Ray Street, Church Street, Corbit Street, Rose Street, and Terry Manor. Today, however, this area of Newark is largely student housing and university property.
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