This award recognizes excellence in graduate student mentorship, and is aimed at senior or mid-career scholars who have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to teaching and mentorship throughout their careers, particularly those who have taken the time to successfully guide their MA and PhD students through field work and the thesis or dissertation writing process. Previous recipients of the MASA Graduate Student Mentor Award are Peter Brown (2012), Frances Barg (2011), Mary-Jo DelVecchio-Good and Byron J. Good (2010), Carole Browner (2009), Joe Dumit (2008), Lenore Manderson (2007) and Mac Marshall (2006).
Attributes to Consider
- Communicates clearly and supportively with students and offers consistent, positive guidance; provides timely and productive feedback on written work.
- Creates a friendly, encouraging and academically challenging environment; makes an effort to teach medical anthropology in innovative and effective ways.
- Encourages students to submit abstracts of their own at conferences, write and submit their own work to journals, teach well and value teaching and begin to function on their own in those public arenas that include medical anthropology.
- Has a good track record of retaining students: remaining on committees, retaining advisees, and actually graduating a good proportion of their advisees.
- Inspires students to pursue their own research, teaching and advocacy goals in medical anthropology, despite the daunting nature of graduate school and the dissertation process.
- Helps students connect with other professionals in their field outside of their own departments and helps familiarize them with the unwritten rules of their professional community.
- Steps back and allows students to learn from their own mistakes; lets them step forward on their own and begin making their own decisions; lets them define and take appropriate risks.
Nomination Procedures and Application Materials
A minimum of three letters of nomination to be submitted from current and/or former students outlining the ways in which the candidate has been a strong mentor, advisor and/or teacher. One additional letter may also be submitted by a junior colleague who has also been mentored by the candidate; however, this is not a requirement. Each letter should consider the above criteria and address any other attributes or practices that have led to supportive, successful mentoring. Nominations for the faculty mentor award will remain open for three years for consideration by the award committee.
Submissions
Nomination and support letters will be accepted until the deadline of August 1st. Please send all nomination letters to Mary Rebecca Read-Wahidi (mrread@crimson.ua.edu). The award recipient will be honored during the SMA Business Meeting and Award Ceremony at the November 2013 AAA Meeting in Chicago.