About this Program

The Community College Administrator Diversity Mentoring Program is a collaboration between the UC Berkeley Career Center and Santa Rosa Junior College (Sonoma County Junior College District). The mentors are select Management Team representatives from Santa Rosa Junior College, matched with graduate student and postdoctoral mentees from UC Berkeley.

Program Purpose

This program is being implemented in order to provide graduate and post-doctoral students with opportunities to receive mentoring and gain practical perspectives on professional administrator roles in a community college environment. A primary goal of this program will be to foster and develop new managers and administrators who are representative of the communities that they serve in order to support to an increasingly diverse student population.

The primary objectives of this program are as follows:

  • Introduce mentees to the mission of the community college system, the largest higher education system in the nation, which serves a more diverse student population than four-year institutions.
  • Increase advanced degree students’ awareness of career options within the community college system, and facilitate organizational entry opportunities for potential candidates for administrator positions.
  • Identify graduate and post-doctoral students, especially from underrepresented groups, who are interested in higher education administration careers in a community college environment.
  • Provide participants with support from mentors and from the program, and to offer experiential and tailored mentee learning regarding the roles and work practices of community college administrators.

For the summer 2021 session, 10 graduate students from UC Berkeley and 10 SRJC mentors participated in the program.