Last week, between July 22 and 25, EC3 PhD students Elvira González-Salmón and Victoria Di Césare attended the 2024 RESPECT Fellows Workshop at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. Both students are part of the inaugural cohort of the RESPECT Fellowship, a prestigious program that started back in March 2023 under the leadership of Dr. Cassidy R. Sugimoto. Its ultimate goal is to empower and amplify the voices, knowledge, and experiences of minoritized doctoral students impacted by enduring race and gender inequities.
Even though the RESPECT mentoring experience was mostly conducted online on a monthly basis, from the very beginning it included an in person immersive workshop to collaborate with mentors and peers in a more direct way. Last week’s enriching event confirmed the positive impact it had on the students, as they were able to connect deeply and fruitfully with other PhDs from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Russia and South Africa, as well as with mentors Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Thema Monroe-White and Diego Kozlowski.
Apart from presenting their ongoing research, receiving feedback and working on specific collaborative projects within the Fellowship, the doctoral students had the opportunity of learning from and engaging in discussion with reknown scientists Dr. Ebony McGee, from Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Lauren Klein, from Emory University. As Elvira tells us,
This experience was very enriching both in terms of hard and soft skills. On the one hand, hearing the nuanced comments and discussions provided by the mentors taught us a lot and made us want to work even harder to try to be like them one day. On the other hand, we learned a lot about how to travel to a new continent, how to behave in a new culture and academic environment, and about how science works in different parts of the world. There’s much to think about, thankfully we have the summer to process this great experience!
