ABSTRACT
This chapter examines sponsorship of graduate and professional students from underrepresented (race and gender) identities. Sponsorship emerged from mentoring and socialization scholarship as a complement that focuses primarily on advancing the protégé’s career by leveraging the networks and influence of the mentor. Sponsorship not only involves positively socializing the protégé to the organization but also includes “promoting” opportunities for the protégé’s professional development and growth. Mentoring is the process whereby a more experienced colleague (mentor – faculty member) socializes a junior colleague (protégé – graduate student) to the cultural norms of an organization. Scholars contend mentoring should be a bi-directional/reciprocal process, but it often exists as a one-directional socialization process in the academy. Additionally, the chapter examines the student-faculty sponsorship of the authors through a collaborative autoethnographic dialog.
