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Nancy Fichtman Dana, professor in the School of Teaching and Learning, was recently selected as one of five University of Florida faculty members to receive the 2019 Faculty Doctoral Mentoring Award.
Chosen by the UF Graduate School based on nominations from current and former graduate students, fellow faculty members, and/or additional department and college staff, the award seeks to encourage and reward faculty members who exhibit “excellence, innovation and effectiveness in mentoring doctoral and Master of Fine Arts students.”
Dana has served as a mentor to doctoral students since the start of her career and shared that she loves the act of mentorship because it is highly reciprocal.
“Mentoring doctoral students provides a partner in both thinking and learning about important problems facing the field of education,” she said. “It feels like you’re giving back to the profession but then at the same time, you’re getting so much out of the relationship,” she said.
Dana shared she often reflects on the words of author and educator Parker Palmer to encapsulate the meaning of mentorship: “Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance, and one of teaching’s greatest rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get back on the dance floor. It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.”
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Congratulations to Dr. Elizabeth Currin on the successful defense of Storied Stance: An Oral History of Long-Term Teacher Researchers in the Age of Accountability @UF_COE . An outstanding read I highly recommend for anyone interested in #inquiry! pic.twitter.com/phbtKxtsTA
— Nancy Fichtman Dana (@NancyFDana) October 25, 2018
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“…the foundational component is relationships,” Dana said.
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Elizabeth Currin, former doctoral student and advisee under Dana, wrote a letter of support for Dana’s nomination for the award. “In my 26 years of formal education, I have had my fair share of mentors, but Nancy truly is outstanding,” she said.
Currin states in her letter she met Dana in 2014 when she made the difficult decision to end her career as an English teacher and pursue her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction. Though excited for the opportunity, she felt relatively aimless regarding where her academic journey would lead.
“True to the spirit of inquiry that has informed Nancy’s prolific scholarship, she wisely counseled me to keep my future as an open question,” Currin said. “We in no way brushed that question aside. Rather, we carefully, actively, patiently, and collaboratively kept the question alive as I completed my requisite coursework.”
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Currin continued, “Because inquiry is far more than the subject of Nancy’s scholarship, she deeply understands how education is a process of deconstructing and reconstructing our identities, which are constantly and curiously in flux. Not only does she empathize with advisees who grapple with the big, existential questions of who they are and what they want to do, Nancy also respects her students enough to make them aware of her own occasional struggles, modeling a powerful vulnerability and conveying her enduring optimism and perseverance.”
Throughout the course of her career, Dana has graduated 31 doctoral students serving as a mentor to both Ph.D. students who are preparing to become researchers in institutions of higher education, and Ed.D. students who are cultivating their leadership skills to impact change in their current educational contexts.
“One of the things I’m proud of is over the course of my career I have had four students win outstanding dissertation award recognitions from various professional organizations,” she said.
Dana shared she strives to establish a relationship with her mentees long before the start of their dissertations and introduce them to experiences that will help them develop as researchers and prepare for the professoriate.
“All teaching and mentoring – the foundational component is relationships,” she said.
James Rigney, a current doctoral student and advisee of Dana, nominated Dana for the award because she is a steadfast advocate for her advisees, and particularly as a first-generation college student, her mentorship has made a significant impact.
“She is a hard-working advisor, and she not only helps me with writing and providing opportunities to publish and present, but she is dedicated to introducing me and her other advisees into the social world of academia,” he said. “For those of us for whom this world is brand new, this mentoring is invaluable.”
Dana shared she feels honored not only to receive the doctoral mentoring award, but to also have the opportunity to work with and meet individuals who are making a real difference through their work.
“It’s an honor to receive the award,” she said, “but more importantly, I am honored to work with so many people that have creative vision and deep passion for research that makes a difference.”
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