A single mentor diverted a brilliant woman toward a doctoral career

Evidence

For my family, college education was a novelty, and the concept of an advanced graduate degree was not even on the radar. So a BA and a husband might have been the culmination of my academic career, had it not been for the mentorship of Jean Driscoll, a political scientist and professor at North Park College, who convinced me that I had both the promise and the responsibility to pursue a doctoral degree and an academic career. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2463

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the outsized causal role of one early mentor in launching academic careers, especially for first-generation students where advanced degrees were not on the family radar.