~ December 8, 2025 ~ 

The words “mentoring relationship” often conjure the image of two individuals, one mentor and one mentee, but good mentorship structures can be multifaceted. During the fall 2025 Mentoring within the Academy Keynote, Sweeney Windchief (Assiniboine) spoke about the Indigenous Mentoring Program (IMP) he co-created and what mentors can learn from its modules.

Windchief, professor of adult and higher education at Montana State University and co-PI of the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership, gave the talk, “Re-Interpreting Our Roles: Mentorship and Cultural Integrity in the Academy,” during the Nov. 18 event, which was attended in-person and online by students and faculty from 26 institutions including Cornell.

“A lot of faculty were concerned that they would have to be all-everything to their students, and we need to create a community so that they’re not the all-everything,” he said. “It’s really, really helpful when you can lean on the community for some of this.”

Read full article by Katya Hrichak on the Graduate School website