ARLINGTON, Va. – Michael Williams worked a conference this weekend with the same strategic precision that he uses to trouble-shoot and solution-create for Microsoft clients and that helped him conduct prize-winning research as a cybercrime major at Georgia Southern University.
Inside and outside a ballroom buzzing with activity at the Marriott Crystal Gateway hotel, it could have been easy to get confused or overwhelmed as 1,000 other future, current and past minority Ph.D. students and faculty sought face time with recruiters from more than 80 colleges and universities across the nation.
Williams, 21, was at the 25th annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring (ITM) to network and add to his contacts as he prepares to graduate in the spring and enter a doctoral program in computer science with a focus on cybersecurity. The Texan’s top preference is Johns Hopkins University, but he’s keeping his options open while he attends his fifth career-connected conference in the last month.
“I want to be able to set the tone for how I want a Ph.D. program to look, get in contact with people and see how well you work with them,” he said before entering a ballroom full of recruiters. “For a mentor, the most important thing for me is can they advocate for you, whether you’re in the room or not in the room.”
Presenting mentoring and options to promising scholars such as Williams is what the institute, hosted by the Southern Regional Education Board’s Doctoral Scholars Program, is designed to do as the nation’s largest annual gathering of underrepresented minority Ph.D. students, graduates and faculty.
The program promotes access and equity in the teaching ranks of higher education, where racial minorities remain underrepresented while demographic data project growing disparities between the numbers of students of color on college campuses and numbers of faculty and administrators of color.
ITM participants come from various scholar programs – SREB-State Doctoral Scholars, Ronald E. McNair, Gates Millennium, to name a few – and participate for as many as three years, each year attending different sessions relevant to their progress toward completing a doctorate and securing a job in academia. This year, the number of former students attending who have become faculty is about the same as the number of current students.
