Students and faculty standing for a photo at the first
Research and Mentorship Program cohort meeting.
@MC_WGRC / INSTAGRAM
By Isaiah Rosario, Sports Editor
The Women and Gender Resource Center (WGRC) Research and Mentorship Program was recently awarded a $10,000 grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). This grant allows female-identifying students and faculty to engage and research topics related to gender and sexuality justice.
The vision for the WGRC Research and Mentorship program came about from assistant professor of the electrical and computer engineering department, Wafa Elmannai, Ph.D. She then brought the idea to associate professor and chair of the previous modern languages and literature department, Evelyn Scaramella, Ph.D.
Elmannai’s hope for the program was to create a female research program that allowed female-identifying students to experience “intellectual exhilaration” through research collaborations and mentoring opportunities.
“It was fortunate that I could discuss this idea with Dr. Scaramella, former director of the WGRC, and we together expanded the concept to include all other MC fields: liberal arts, education, engineering, business, science, and health professions,” Elmannai said. “I therefore consider my experience at the WGRC to be extremely valuable. Having the opportunity to meet women who work in different fields of study but have common goals and objectives, such as research and education, is a wonderful experience. It has been a very beneficial experience for me both personally and professionally.”
The student-faculty pairings for the program are: Angela Meister and Katharine Wheeler, Ph.D. (Revitalizing Reading: A Study of Literature Choices in High School Classrooms), Cassidy Recio and Ricardo Dello Buono, Ph.D. (Criminalization of Femicide in Costa Rica), Damaris Rincon and Lydia Crafts, Ph.D. (New York City’s Migrant Crisis: Unraveling the Failure to Assist Migrants), Jessica Coyle and Kimberly Fairchild, Ph.D. (The Psychological Needs of Experienced Versus Anticipated Victims of Street Harassment) and Qiwei Li and Wafa Elmannai, Ph.D. (Cloud Computing Adoption and Impact in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
“It’s critical,” Scaramella said about the faculty-student mentorship. “Many professors will tell you that they landed in the field that they’re currently in and are doing it because of a close relationship with a faculty member that they had in their undergraduate years. Manhattan College prides itself on being a university that mentors relationships with faculty with excellent education and we wanted to increase opportunities for sustained collaboration between students and faculty around research practices.”
Recio, a senior sociology student in the program, is researching femicide in Costa Rica. Her research began because of a final assignment she had in her sociology class. This research is especially important to her as she is from Costa Rica.
The grant has meant a lot for students and faculty associated with the program as it has allowed students to expand their research to levels that they have not imagined.
“What [the grant] means to me mainly is that I like that we’re getting the resources needed that maybe the school is not able to provide right now for women specifically, and especially in topics like this [femicide] that aren’t topics as mainstream as other topics would be,” Recio said. “Now we all have this more specific kind of research that we can do with the help of faculty members too. It’s such an incredible opportunity to even be part of it.”
“Supporting my community is a dream come true for me,” Elmannai said. “I am grateful for the support of the AAUW. In addition to being encouraging for me, this should also be an encouragement for students and faculty at MC … it is also an opportunity for students to plan, carry out an investigation, analyze their results, and present their findings to the MC community in a research forum. Having the opportunity to support our MC female students and colleagues is a great pleasure for me.”