17: Sis, You Good? Mutual Mentorship as Care: Centering Well‑Being Among Black Women Scholars

Mentorship in higher education is often framed through traditional, hierarchical models that prioritize career advancement, professional development, and research productivity. While these models may offer guidance on tenure expectations and institutional navigation, they fail to address the emotional, spiritual, and communal needs of faculty, particularly Black women who exist at the intersection of race and gender-based marginalization.

This chapter introduces a Critical Circle of Care, a transformative mentorship model that extends beyond professional guidance to include holistic support for four Black women navigating the academy. Traditional mentorship models, often reinforce institutional power dynamics by positioning senior scholars as gatekeepers and junior scholars as passive recipients of knowledge (Tillman, 2001), but the Critical Circle of Care is reciprocal, affirming, and strongly rooted in communal healing. Grounded in Sista Circle Methodology (SCM) (Johnson, 2015), this model acknowledges the unique challenges Black women face in academic spaces, particularly the emotional labor required to navigate whiteness (Matias, 2016).