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

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International 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.

Available for download on Tuesday, May 06, 2025

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