Category: Featured

Featured, Podcast, Tea from the Tower

Introducing The Ebony Tower Podcast

Each year, U.S. universities award more than 55,000 doctoral degrees. Among degree holders, less than 15% are Black, Latinx, or Native American. Often serving as trailblazers in their communities and disciplines, scholars of color face unique challenges as they scale the Ivory Tower. Enter the Ebony Tower podcast—a resource, conversation and community for and by brilliant yet underrecognized and underrepresented scholars of color. Get to … Continue reading Introducing The Ebony Tower Podcast

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Featured, Graduate School Stories

Home is Where My Heart Resides…

Home is Where My Heart Resides… The U.S. Navy Veteran, turned Howard Hughes Medical Institute funded scientist, explains why he’s coming home to obtain his medical education. By Russell Joseph Ledet  There’s an indescribable feeling that comes from basking in the summer sun in Lake Charles, Louisiana—Sugar-soaked snow cones, boiled crawfish, and that Cajun accent that exudes southern hospitality. Listening to my brothers and sisters … Continue reading Home is Where My Heart Resides…

Daphne Penn2 Comments
Featured, Scholar Spotlight

Scholar Spotlight: Dr. Matthew P. Shaw

The Ebony Tower had the pleasure to interview Dr. Matthew P. Shaw, an American Bar Foundation Law and Social Sciences Post-Doctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education at Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University beginning in 2017. Before earning his doctorate in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education at Harvard University, Matthew graduated from Columbia Law School, and practiced … Continue reading Scholar Spotlight: Dr. Matthew P. Shaw

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Featured, Navigating Graduate School, Tea from the Tower

The Academic Job Market aka That Other Job You Signed Up For

By Aria S. Halliday (@Queen_Diva6) For many traditional* academics, the “job market” is the scary place you go to find the worth of your PhD. The “market” in the past twenty years has seen lots of changes and led to PhD programs scaring students into believing there’s only one right way to get a job. In my previous post, Learning How to Break Up, I … Continue reading The Academic Job Market aka That Other Job You Signed Up For

Daphne Penn1 Comment
Featured, Graduate School Stories, Tales from the Tower

From My Hair to My Passport: On Being Latinx, Black, White, and Caribbean Simultaneously

It was moving through the borders of the Caribbean, between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, within the US, and through the many conversations I had with other Caribbean and Black scholars that I realized that I was many things simultaneously Continue reading From My Hair to My Passport: On Being Latinx, Black, White, and Caribbean Simultaneously

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Featured, Graduate School Stories, Tales from the Tower

Let’s All Kill Joy Together

Congrats! You have decided to attend graduate school! If you are anything like me, few things excite you as much as the first day of classes. You are eager to sink your teeth into the material you read the night before, and are looking forward to a discussion with your peers about your initial thoughts on the materials, as well as looking to push your … Continue reading Let’s All Kill Joy Together

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Featured, Navigating Graduate School, Tea from the Tower

Writing While Away

By Aria S. Halliday (@Queen_Diva6)  For some graduate students of color, getting to A.B.D. (All But Dissertation—all requirements for the degree except dissertation have been completed) status is a recognition of one’s ability to do PhD level work. After courses, papers, exams (oral and written), and presentations, A.B.D. status is the hallmark of one’s doctoral journey because there are an estimated 50+% of graduate students … Continue reading Writing While Away

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