Date of Degree
2024
Degree Name
Ed.D. (Doctor of Education)
Department
Department of Counseling and Higher Education (CAHE)
Director
Hutchings, Quortne
Committee Members
Mac, Jacqueline; Ison, Matthew
Keywords
Chief Diversity Officers, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; community college; Inclusive Excellence; Mentoring Relationships; Rational Cultural Theory; Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis; Critical Constructivism; Community College Leadership; Relational Mentoring
Abstract
This interpretive phenomenological analysis explores community college CDOs’ experiences with mentoring relationships. Seven CDOs employed at community colleges in the US Midwest Region participated in a semi-structured interview to share how they made meaning of their mentoring experiences and their impact on their career and psychosocial development. The findings highlighted two pivotal moments when the community college CDOs in the study received mentoring experiences to form an evolutionary process: the onboarding phase, when the participants sought mentoring relationships from the institution, and the sustaining phase, when the participants were more self-directed in securing high-quality mentoring experiences. The findings illuminated five sub-themes that emerged during the evolutionary process. During the onboarding phase, participants experienced: (1) limited access to formal institutional mentoring programs, (2) informal high-quality mentoring relationships with direct supervisors, and (3) dysfunctional mentoring experiences with senior leaders. During the sustaining phase, participants experienced: (4) informal institutional collaborative mentoring experiences with colleagues and (5) high-quality external mentoring relationships. The findings will inform community college leaders on enhancing support for CDOs given the complexity of serving in the role and the growing effort to dismantle campus diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publisher
Northern Illinois University
Rights Statement
In Copyright
Rights Statement 2
NIU theses and dissertations are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors, unless otherwise indicated.
Recommended Citation
Barnes, Keith R. Dr., "It Takes a Village: Understanding Community College Chief Diversity Officers’ Experiences with Mentoring Relationships" (2024). Dissertations of Practice. 57.
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allgraduate-disspractice/57
Included in
Community College Education Administration Commons, Community College Leadership Commons, Educational Leadership Commons, Higher Education Commons, Higher Education Administration Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Justice Commons
