ABSTRACT
Much of the current literature on the African American experience in academia utilizes the deficit model in which the individual is the focus of the study rather than the collective consciousness of the participants (John, 1997). Moreover, current publications in this area lack the thematic link to faculty development and graduate student mentoring programs. The purpose of the study (and research apprenticeship) described in this chapter was to capture the voices and experiences of African American faculty and administrators in academia in order to delineate the implications for mentoring graduate students and faculty. Issues of resiliency as well as personal and collective empowerment are presented within the conceptual framework of culture-centered theory applied to higher education research and practice (Freeman, 1998). As such, this study involves
a discussion of the implications of African-centeredworldviews (Kambon, 1996; Schiele, 1994; Tedla, 1995), African-centered research (King & Mitchell, 1995), and African-centered acts of resilience and transformation (Ani, 1994) for higher education.
