Call for Applications: MAP Inter-Campus Peer Mentorship Network

First batch application deadline: March 5, 2021
Application form: ​https://forms.gle/VuS6ihdHowX7Tq3i8

Program description

Marginalized graduate students often face many obstacles navigating graduate school, and often left with inadequate support from within their own department. The faculty of their home department might not be familiar with the needs of minority graduate students to know how to best support them. In some cases, the graduate student body of their home department might not be sufficiently diverse, such that marginalized graduate students might have the need to find an external community in addition to their cohort in the department.

The purpose of this peer mentorship network is to build a support network by connecting marginalized graduate students in philosophy from different departments together. Getting perspectives from someone in similar situations but external to the department can provide a good source of support and guidance while they navigate this stage of their career. 

Participants will have a non-judgmental space to meet people with similar experiences as a minority graduate student in philosophy academia. This network will enable participants to get perspectives on how students in other departments deal with issues affecting minority students, and to share and learn new languages and strategies to deal with concrete personal experiences.

Application and placement

The program is open to anyone who identifies as a marginalized student, is currently enrolled in a philosophy graduate program (MA or PhD), and will remain enrolled by March 31, 2021. There is no geographical restriction and you do not need to be in the US to apply. The program is not selective, and we strive to place everyone who applies into the program.

Each peer mentorship group consists of 6-8 students, ideally with a mix of participants in various stages of graduate school, as well as a mix of institutions represented. Placement in the groups will be determined by applicants’ response to a questionnaire in the application. Applicants will be asked about what factors they would like the administrators to consider when matching them with other participants into a group, including their racial or gender identity, disability status, international student status, and many others.

We will attempt to disperse students from the same institution into different groups. Ideally, for each group, there will be no more than one graduate student from the same department. This is for confidential reasons, and also to encourage students to use the network as a way to step out of the insular environment of their home department.
We will have several batch deadlines, approximately every two months. The first deadline will be March 5, 2021. Subsequent deadlines will be announced. Participants will be notified via email about their placement.

Structure and commitment

Participants will receive an email about group placement once they have been admitted. Group members are encouraged to meet with each other over video chat to clarify their expectations of the group, and to establish a communication plan.

Afterwards, there will be two parts to the network’s regular functioning:

• Each group will have a private channel on the MAP International Slack workspace as their communication channel. There will also be a private Slack channel for all the participants in the MAP Inter-Campus Peer Mentorship Network, as an avenue for more connection and feedback.
• Every month, the group will meet on zoom for a check-in to discuss issues that group members have brought up in the Slack channel.

Norms for engagement

• The network is a place for you to raise concerns or issues you have faced and would like external support, and also a place for you to help out others. Try to be welcoming and helpful for your groupmates, if you expect them to be so to you.
• Please respect the privacy of your groupmates. If someone shares some experience or some issue that they do not want to be discussed outside of the group, please do not share it beyond the group.
• Be aware that power imbalance in "progressive" spaces still exists. It is important that this mentorship network is a space for mutual support. Networking and furthering your own career interests should not be your main incentive for engaging with others in your group. 
• No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, etc. 
• Those who repeatedly violate the norms will be warned and might be removed from the group.

Feedback

• The program will end after six months, after which MAP will send out a survey to all participants to collect feedback and decide on whether and how to continue with the program.