Mentorship Award

At Spencer, we are dedicated to the belief that high-quality research training and mentoring is a cornerstone of our field and worthy of recognition. As such, we are excited to announce the call for nominations to the Spencer Mentor Award, a grant intended to support the ongoing mentorship of the awardees. This award will provide $15,000 grants to awardees who have demonstrated extraordinary contributions to supporting the research training and career trajectories of graduate students and junior scholars who engage in education research, broadly construed.

We see mentorship as critical to our goals of supporting and broadening access to rigorous, high-quality education research training. We recognize that mentorship comes in many forms and encourage nominations that make explicit and value the full range of these possibilities. Through this award, we hope to give added recognition to the importance of mentoring and acknowledge mentors who have enriched the lives, research, and careers of students and colleagues, and in doing so, improved our field.

Mentors must be nominated to be considered for this award (self-nominations will not be accepted). Nominations are due by 12:00pm noon central time on Tuesday, January 25, 2022, and the award will be publicly announced in April 2022, at Spencer’s annual American Education Research Association (AERA) reception in San Diego, California.

Nominators

The person submitting the nomination should be familiar with the mentor’s field of work and their contribution to research training and mentorship in their field (i.e., a current or former student, advisee, postdoctoral fellow, colleague, department chair, dean, or others familiar with the nominee’s work and mentorship).

The person submitting the nomination may not nominate more than one person per deadline.

Nominations may not be submitted by members of the mentor’s immediate family.

Self-nominations will not be accepted.

Nominees

Mentors that are nominated are expected to work in and contribute to the field of education research and have a strong history of mentorship.

Mentors must be affiliated with a university or non-profit research organization that will act as the administering organization if the mentor is chosen to receive the $15,000 grant award.

Mentors may not be nominated more than once per deadline. The person submitting the nomination should inform the mentor so that nominations can be coordinated if necessary.

Nominations are due by 12:00pm noon central time on January 25, 2022 and should be submitted by filling out the Nomination Form here.

Nomination Form Elements:

• Mentor Information – you will need to provide the name, organization, and email address for the mentor being nominated.

• Nominator Information – from you, the nominator, we will need your name, organization, and email address, along with an uploaded Letter of Nomination.
  • Letter of Nomination – this letter should be written by you and make a compelling argument for why this person is deserving of the award. Your letter should describe the mentor’s contribution to research training and the development of scholars in the field as well as their contributions in other important forms of mentoring that may be important for us to consider. In addition, the letter should include your relationship to the mentor and how long you have known and/or worked with the mentor and in what capacities. The Letter of Nomination should be no longer than 1000 words, double-spaced, in 12-point font.
     
• Letters of Support – 3 letters of support should be uploaded and the name and contact information for each author will be needed. These 3 letters of support should be no longer than 1000 words each, double-spaced, in 12-point font.
  • 1 Letter of Support from the mentor’s Dean, Department Chair, or Supervisor – one of the letters must be come from a colleague familiar with the nominee from a distinct position of oversight and speak to the mentor’s contribution to supporting the research training and professional development of graduate students and junior scholars through that lens.
  • 2 Letters of Support – two additional letters of support should be collected from individuals familiar with the nominee, such as current or former students, advisees, postdocs, colleagues, or others familiar with their work and mentorship. We recognize mentorship can take many forms and encourage letters that make explicit the full range of these possibilities. We encourage these letters to address how the mentoring relationship provided training and/or other professional opportunities, impacted their own scholarship, and any other dimensions of mentorship they feel are important to highlight. We encourage the authors to use specific examples in their letter.
     

Mentor Acceptance of Nomination

Once the nomination form has been submitted (by January 25th), the mentor will be contacted and asked to accept this nomination and provide additional information about themselves, including demographic data and a current CV or resume. The mentor’s acceptance will be due by February 9, 2022.

Note: We will only accept one nomination for a given mentor. Please be in touch with the nominee in case others are also planning on nominating them so that those efforts can be coordinated.

Review Process

Nominations will be reviewed by committee and notifications of the final decisions will be sent via email no later than March 2022.  The Spencer Foundation Mentor Award will be announced publicly at Spencer’s annual AERA reception in April 2022 in San Diego, California.

Awardees: the recipient(s) of the Spencer Mentor Award will receive a $15,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation to further support their mentoring work in the field.

Questions

If you have questions about this program, please email mentoraward@spencer.org.

Q: Can I save my nomination form and return to it later?
A: You can save the form as you are working on it, but if you close the browser tab or window, you will lose your work. You will need to enter all of the information and upload all of the letters before you are able to Submit your nomination.

Q: Can a letter of support be signed by multiple people?
A: Yes, the letter of support can be signed by a group, but there must be a single person assigned as the nominator.

Q: Can the letter of support from a Dean, Department Chair, or Supervisor be from a former supervisor, rather than their current?
A: Yes, as long as this person was their supervisor at some point in their career.

2020

Marilyn Cochran-Smith
Cawthorne Chair in Teacher Education for Urban Schools
Lynch School of Education
Boston College

Kristine Jolivette
Paul W. Bryant and Mary Harmon Bryant Endowed Professor
Department of Special Education and Multiple Abilities
The University of Alabama

Chance Lewis
The Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Urban Education and
Director of The Urban Education Collaborative
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Mike Rose
Research Professor
Social Research Methodology
Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles

William Smith
Department Chair
Department of Education, Culture, & Society
University of Utah

Cally Waite
Associate Professor
Teachers College, Columbia University, and
Director of the Social Science Research Council’s Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program

2019

Alfredo Artiles
Professor
Graduate School of Education
Stanford University

Margarita Azmitia
Professor
Psychology Department
University of California, Santa Cruz

Brian Powell
James H. Rudy Professor
Department of Sociology
Indiana University Bloomington