Michelle M. Espino

This article examines the mentoring experiences of 58 underrepresented minority (URM) faculty at 22 research-extensive institutions. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus group data, participants discussed the importance of mentoring across the life course, the ideal attributes of mentoring relationships, the challenges to effective mentoring, and the role of political guidance. These data elicited three main themes regarding mentoring: (a) Life course practices geared toward accumulating social capital are critical, (b) major barriers are linked to the undervaluing of faculty research areas and community-engaged scholarly commitments, and (c) connections with mentors who understand the struggles specific to URMs at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) can assist with retention and success. This study provides a roadmap for shifting how we engage with URM faculty and strategies and knowledge to assess the effectiveness of mentoring to increase the retention of URM faculty.

This article focuses on the extent to which devalued forms of capital along with limited access to valued cultural capital facilitated the access and persistence of 33 Mexican American PhDs who earned their doctorates in a variety of disciplines at 15 universities across the United States. Using the framework of community cultural wealth, this study uncovered and contextualized the ways that Mexican American PhDs activated navigational capital, resistant capital, social capital, aspirational capital, and legitimated forms of cultural capital in order to access graduate school. In order to persevere in their doctoral studies, however, participants were often reminded that cultural capital was necessary for gaining access to socialization processes and support mechanisms that would lead to funding opportunities and faculty careers. This study illustrates the extent to which participants’ forms of capital (including cultural capital) were valued within hegemonic and oppressive institutions.

This article focuses on multiple truths pertaining to doctoral education as expressed by three Latina doctoral recipients. These scholars successfully navigated various educational processes with the support of one another, their families, faculty, and their chosen discipline. The authors, as sister scholars, retell their educational journeys through testimonio and analyze how their trenzas de identidades multiples (multiple strands of identity, that is, motherhood, social class, and public intellectual) now inform their work. By interrogating the extent to which intersections of identity affect educational and career pathways, the authors use plática (dialogue) to theorize their doctoral experiences and examine how their challenges and successes manifest in their professional lives in academia.

Undocumented Latina/o college students face obstacles and stressors; their stressful experiences and academic strengths merit empirical attention. This cross-sectional, mixed-methods study explored stress, depression, grit, and grade point average (GPA) of 84 non-citizen, Latina/o first-generation college students with a comparison group of 180 citizen, Latina/o first-generation college students in Maryland. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 21 non-citizens and 26 citizens, after conducting a quantitative online survey. Immigrant status moderated the relation between depression and GPA in addition to grit and depression. Qualitative findings suggested that stress for citizens and non-citizens centered on financing college, but non-citizens faced additional stress due to policies pertaining to immigration status. Both groups displayed grit in navigating obstacles and contained their emotions with positive self-talk, but most non-citizens did not turn to anyone outside of the family for support. Findings hold implications for ecological processes and achievement among Latina/o undocumented college students.

From Latinas’ locations in the margins of academe and society emerges a unique set of challenges complicated by racism, sexism, and classism. One form of resistance to these multiple marginalities involves drawing upon and (re)telling one's lived experience to expose oppression and systemic violence. Testimonio is a conceptual and methodological tool that transforms personal narrative into this type of resistance. In this article, the authors employ testimonio to document, from an intergenerational perspective, critical consequences and benefits of the academic socialization process for Latina academics. In examining the exchange between and among four established and four emerging Latina scholars, the authors uncovered an innovative methodological technique for bridging testimonios across lived experience; this technique is referred to as reflexión and enhances the level of knowledge construction that testimonio offers in formulating a collective consciousness across generations and social identities, crafting theories about Latina scholars in academe, and demonstrating that lived experience is integral to knowledge creation.