Dr. Ijeoma Kola [00:00:00]: Welcome to Episode 10 of the Cohort Sistas podcast. I am so excited that we've reached the 10th episode milestone, especially since I personally never saw myself as the kind of person to host a podcast. But the Cohort Sistas community asked for this, and so I had to give the people what they wanted. So far we've had an amazing array of guests from various disciplinary backgrounds, some of whom work in the academy and others who don't. Some who always knew that they wanted to do research and others who came to this journey circuitously. And in just 10 episodes, we've had over 3000 downloads and even landed on some education charts all over the world, including in Namibia, Ghana and South Africa. So this is definitely a global movement and I'm really excited that we're sharing these amazing stories on the Cohort Sistas podcast.
[00:01:06] So for this episode, I wanted to pop in and do something a little different. Since people find Cohort Sistas through a variety of ways — through social media, word of mouth, from their friends and colleagues, and just kind of randomly happening across the podcast — I wanted to make sure that there was at least one episode that clearly shares who we are, how we came about, and what we do.
[00:01:30] So, who are we? Well, first of all, I am Dr. Ijeoma Kola. And I am the Founder and Executive Director of Cohort Sistas. And sistas not sisters. Cohort Sistas was birthed out of my own experiences navigating doctoral studies. And although I said experiences, I should probably say struggles because it was a struggle. Like many people, I was the first in my family to pursue doctoral studies and honestly had no idea what I was getting into. I should definitely do a separate episode about my specific journey because whew do I have stories! But I made it, I made it through and two things that really got me through my program were external support and encouragement.
[00:02:18] Now I was really fortunate to have an incredibly supportive family unit and life partner who held me down. But through my work and platform as a blogger outside of school, I also had random people on the internet who I didn't know, but whenever I would post on Instagram, talking about how hard it was for me or how I wanted to quit, random strangers would tell me that I could do it. And that encouragement meant something. Additionally towards the very end, I found an accountability partner who I wrote with once a week. So it was one of my closest friends and she's going to be on the podcast very soon, but we would meet at a coffee shop or a cafe or a restaurant once a week in the last few months of our programs and we just wrote our dissertations together. Like from February to April, we wrote our dissertations from scratch essentially. And we both finished. And so I had both this larger community of support for encouragement, but I also had an individual support system to guide me through kind of the nitty gritty process. And both of those were incredibly critical to my success.
[00:03:24] There are a bunch of really wonderful resources and programs that support BIPOC interested in doctoral studies. And I've benefited from some of those programs myself. But I believe that the idea of community, whether that's in person or virtual and whether that's a large community or just a handful of people... community was a really important element in my doctoral success. And after talking to a bunch of other women as well, lack of community was a commonly cited barrier to doctoral success for others. So I launched Cohort Sistas in the summer of 2020, exactly a year after I finished my PhD and the organization is built around three pillars: resources, mentorship, and of course, community.
[00:04:11] We provide resources to demystify the process of applying to and navigating doctoral education. And so there's something we often like to talk about, which is like this hidden knowledge in how to be a successful graduate student. Like how are people finding the right mentors? Like how are people getting put on papers? How are people even finding funding? And so we try to demystify all of those things and we do that through things such as this podcast. We also have professional development seminars and training materials that we share with our community.
[00:04:44] Now we really believe that mentorship is critical to Black women's success in higher education. And mentorship is really hard to come by. Mentorship is also very different from advising, which we also need to talk about that in a separate episode, but we have a mentorship program called Sista Circles, which pairs three to four Black women with a mentor based on disciplinary backgrounds and research interests. So one of the reasons why we actually do a small group mentorship pairing and not just a one-to-one is because we also really believe in the power and the value of peer mentorship. So we run this program twice a year and we are currently about halfway through the Spring 2021 cohort. And so we're going to open up enrollment for the Fall cohort in July.
[00:05:26] And then last, but certainly not least, we have community, which is really the bedrock of Cohort Sistas. There are so many of us who are, you know, the only Black women in our programs, in our classes, at a conference, in the lab. We're often the first in our families to embark on these journeys. And so we provide a safe and welcoming space in our online community to meet one another and to trade advice and encouragement with other Black women around the world who are exactly where you are or where you want to be in terms of doctoral education. We also have a virtual weekly writing group to support people who are working on their dissertations or a master's thesis or who are trying to publish a paper. And we have monthly virtual social events to bring our community together. The goal is once the world opens back up and it's safe to do so, we would love to do in-person meetups at universities and in cities that have substantial Cohort Sistas membership. And then of course the Cohort Sistas community creates informal ways to connect with people. So our site allows members to find one another based on location or based on academic discipline. So you can find a writing buddy to write in person when that's safe to do so, or you can find someone across the world to collaborate with on a research project.
[00:06:44] And so what is our goal? So as of 2018, only 3.1% of doctoral degrees in the US were given to Black women. Less than 2000 Black women in the US every year, get doctoral degrees. So this number has really inspired a campaign that we're currently running called the 3.1% campaign. And our goal is to get that number from 3.1%. We want that number to go up. We want to be able to support more Black women into doctoral programs, but also through doctoral programs. Black women also finish doctoral programs with more debt on average than other people. And so we want to guide people through programs in a way that does not leave them in debt because you know what good is that if we have all of this knowledge, but we are drowning in debt and don't have the ability to put forth all of our wonderful research and ideas into the world. And so that's our goal really to increase the number and the retention of Black women in doctoral degrees, from the application process all the way through successful completion of their programs. So that's what we do.
[00:07:42] In terms of our impact, we have a quickly growing community of over a thousand members across disciplines representing over 40 countries. And so far we've helped Black women successfully apply to doctoral programs, get admission into those programs, navigate difficult conversations with their advisors, and overall just feel more supported and empowered in their doctoral journeys. We've also connected people across the world. We have mentorship circles that have people in South Africa paired with people from North Carolina. So we're definitely really about bridging this global divide that the internet has now made possible to do. And we're just really hoping to connect people across borders because we really, really, really believe in the power of community and support. And that support and that community can come from wherever.
[00:08:31] So here's how you can support us. So we are a nonprofit organization, which means that we rely heavily on public, corporate, and foundation support. So if you want to know more about how you can support what we do or how you can partner with us, or maybe offer your services if you're a speaker or lead a workshop, please visit our website www.cohortsistas.com, sistas as in S I S T A S. And you can learn more about how you can get involved.
[00:08:59] For me personally, my mind has been blown with how far Cohort Sistas has come in less than a year, how much we've been able to accomplish, the impact that we've been able to have so far. And we continue to have so many different ideas for how we can continue to help support people and empower people and connect people. We have ideas coming from the leadership team, but we also have ideas coming from our community as well. But we need support in order to bring all of these things to fruition and all of these things to life. So definitely feel free to reach out and hit us up if you're able to support or you want to volunteer, you want to find out other ways that you can be involved.
[00:09:33] So that's the story of Cohort Sistas. That's who we are. That's what we do. And the change that we're trying to make. So I just thought it was important to lay that groundwork and make sure that people really understood what it is that we do, especially if you're not familiar with the site and you're just kind of coming across the podcast. So we're going to be back with our guest interviews next week, we have lined up a couple of really, really wonderful Black women who are just killing the game in research, in their professional lives, in their personal lives. So we're really excited to share with you their stories. So make sure that you continue tuning in and don't forget to leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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