Alhassan on UMass Team Awarded ADVANCE Mutual Mentoring Grant
Content
Professor of Kinesiology Sofiya Alhassan is part of a UMass mutual mentoring team that has received an ADVANCE Mutual Mentoring Grant for the 2023-24 academic year. The ADVANCE program aims to bring faculty together to build inclusive mentoring communities, engage in collaborative research teams, and participate in equitable shared decision-making.
Alhassan, who serves as the Associate Dean in the Graduate School's Office of Inclusion & Engagement, is a member of the mutual mentoring team Black Women United. Black Women United seeks to increase the advancement of Black women faculty and to drive institutional transformation to create environments where diversity is encouraged and supported. This network of Black women, where community, fellowship, and comradery can be developed, will encourage women across various levels to champion one another, provide advice on how to continue advancing within the institution, and find balance with one another. This team is co-led by Cheryl Swanier (Computer Science) and Felicia Griffin-Fennell (Sociology) and includes, along with Alhassan, Judyie Al-Bilali (Performance and Theater for Social Change) and Maria Rios (WEB DuBois Library).
ADVANCE evaluated proposals in collaboration with the Office of Faculty Development, which also offers a mutual mentoring grant program. The UMass ADVANCE grant is funded by a five-year (2018-23) $3.1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to support gender and intersectional equity for faculty in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The UMass ADVANCE program draws on the power of collaboration to support equity among faculty by gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity and nationality.