By Caitlyn Meisner | Staff Writer
Women in the Academy (WITA) empowers female doctoral students throughout their research and prepares them for life after graduate school.
WITA, a graduate school professional development program, was originally developed in 2017 by Dr. Laine Scales, who was the associate dean of graduate studies and professional development at the time. Dr. Sara Dolan, now in Scales’ role, attended the initial conference as a faculty member in the psychology department.
“Dr. Scales and the graduate assistants who work with her brought in speakers about all sorts of topics of relevance for women who are graduate students,” Dolan said. “From there, the idea of providing mentoring for women graduate students arose. There have been mentoring groups — like the ones that we’re developing — for at least five years to talk about topics of relevance for women who are in academia.”
According to an older version of the WITA mentor handbook, the program was initiated after a survey from the BU Women’s Colloquium was sent out to female graduate students, gauging interest in a program similar to the faculty colloquium.
According to Hina Abel, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate, a new mentor-mentee group starts at the beginning of each academic year. Mentor groups are selected based on interests and topics of discussion, not disciplines. Abel said examples include a STEM-focused group and a primarily online group for students pursuing their degrees remotely.
Dolan said their goal is to encourage mentor groups to be interdisciplinary.
“The idea or the hope had been — and it was fulfilled — that the students in the groups would come across disciplines from different departments and programs so that they could share different perspectives,” Dolan said.
Both Abel and Dolan said a survey was sent out at the beginning of the fall semester, but they had to close it early because there were too many graduate students interested and not enough mentors to lead groups.
“Within a day, literally within a day, we had to close the survey and let [the graduate students] know that we’ve just had an overwhelming response,” Abel said.
Abel and Dolan also both said that they were surprised by how many responses they received and that they recognized the need for mentor groups at Baylor.
According to Dolan, there are 383 on-campus doctoral students and 375 online doctoral students.
Currently WITA has 67 female graduate students, Abel said, 10 of whom are online. She also said there are eight on-campus faculty mentors and two online faculty mentors.
While they have opened WITA to master’s students, Abel said the group wanted to be more intentional and focused. Dolan said she hopes to expand the program in the coming years but wanted to start small and assess where the group can go in the future.
Abel said there are many topics of discussion available to the doctoral students, including how to teach, how to do research, how to manage stress, how to publish a paper and how to navigate the job market.
“We’re also talking about isolation in departments,” Abel said. “WITA brings people from across the institution together, which is really good for networking for graduate students.”
Abel also said she thinks female faculty and graduate students need the opportunity to network so much more, as they tend to be pushed out of networks or are not invited to them at all.
This year, WITA is able to provide compensation to its mentors — the first time it has been able to do so. Dolan said the money is donated by different departments on campus that recognize WITA as a good thing.
“We are able to offer small financial stipends, just to thank them [and] acknowledge them,” Dolan said. “Women especially do uncompensated work all the time. These kinds of relationships that they have with graduate students are not compensated.”
Abel said her experiences in WITA have made an impact on her personal and spiritual life.
“Seeing that Baylor is concerned about women faculty and students in this program, it’s also a great thing to see that people are just going to open up their resources,” Abel said. “Funding that they can use for anything else — they’re going to give it to women and help them flourish.”
Abel also said she has felt empowered while working with WITA.
“It’s definitely an empowering experience to be part of something that’s making an effort in helping women be their best selves and to keep growing and flowering in whatever domains they are in,” Abel said.
Dolan said she hopes to provide a space for female graduate students.
“I hope that it provides more connections for women graduate students with women faculty,” Dolan said. “I hope it provides some opportunities for women graduate students to learn about the issues that women in academia have to navigate. [Through WITA], women graduate students can be inoculated against some of the stresses that women faculty face.”
