About Mentoring for the Future
Organized by the graduate students of the School of Global Languages and Literatures at Penn State, this is a free exploratory program for persons who have not had enough information about graduate studies, who may not have considered graduate studies for a variety of social, economic, or cultural circumstances, and who might want to know more.
The mentoring program invites applications from persons of diverse backgrounds who are curious about or interested in pursuing graduate studies in comparative literature; English; Spanish; French; Arabic, Germanic and Slavic languages; and associated fields of literary studies such as Asian studies; women’s, gender and sexuality studies; and more.
Participants attend a two-day remote workshop series with twenty to twenty-five fellow participants. In this program, they learn about these fields of study, and they prepare application materials for related graduate programs. Participants are also able to schedule meetings with Penn State faculty and participate in long-term mentorships with current graduate students.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this workshop has been held virtually since 2021.
We especially encourage applications from advanced undergraduates (juniors and seniors), recent bachelor of arts degree graduates, and terminal master of arts degree students from diverse cultural, economic, geographic, and ethnic backgrounds. Additionally, we encourage applications from persons who have an interest in more than one language or who have pursued advanced coursework in a second language.
We're moving after 2023!
History
This program originated from conversations around racial justice in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. That summer, a group of graduate students in the Department of Comparative Literature drafted a statement of support and commitment to the cause. Below is an excerpt of that statement:
“As graduate students, we are a part of structures that reinforce the oppression of black and brown bodies in a systematic fashion. To counter this, we design pedagogical and research strategies that aim to undo the damage of this structural violence. However, we acknowledge that the work we do in the classrooms and in our research goes only so far. Therefore, we will strive not just to eradicate anti-Black racism in our scholarship and Academia, but we commit to engage in the efforts to change policies at the local, state, and national level.“
The complete statement is available for download under Bookmarks.