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amara Bertrand Jones (higher education M.S. ’00, program evaluation ’06) has been interested in the experiences of underrepresented populations—particularly Black women—in academia since her days as a graduate student at Florida State. “My experience as a graduate student, particularly as a doctoral student, was very meaningful,” said Bertrand Jones. “I was a part of a great supportive network of other black women who were pursuing graduate education, and they were my role models.” This group of women encouraged Bertrand Jones to pursue doctoral studies, and out of their relationships grew Sisters of the Academy (SOTA), of which Bertrand Jones is a founding member. SOTA is an educational network of Black women in higher education that fosters success in teaching, scholarly inquiry and service to the community. They also facilitate professional development and collaborative scholarship among Black women in higher education. “[SOTA] was definitely a core part of the motivation for my research, but it was also our relationships, the support that we were able to provide for each other,” said Bertrand Jones. “We were able to not just support each other emotionally, but also academically in terms of being able to be critical partners of our ideas and research.” This idea of “critical partners” was demonstrated when Bertrand Jones was preparing for her doctoral proposal and shared what she had written with two of her sister scholars. “They read it, and they said, ‘No, this is not good enough.’ It was a couple of weeks before my proposal presentation, and they tore it up!
Photo by Cheryl Skinner Rischer
Our Lived Experiences Black Women in Academia By Jennie Kroeger
10 | THE TORCH - COLLEGE OF EDUCATION MAGAZINE
“They really challenged me. I had to rewrite my proposal in a week, because I needed to submit it to the committee. It was one of the most stressful things that I’ve ever done, but it was so impactful because it was my friends who were challenging me, who were supporting me and who were very clear about what the standard was and how they could help me meet that standard.” This experience became the foundation for how Bertrand Jones thinks about peer relationships, mentoring and the development of scholarly identity. The relationship with her network, the formation of SOTA, and her own experiences being a Black woman in the academy led Bertrand Jones to study this area in a more systematic way. “I realized some things were happening that were not just my experience. I think sometimes as women, we have that feeling of, ‘Is this just me?’ And then you talk to other women and find
