Associate Professor Lisa Bass Selected as Campus Community Centers Faculty Fellow for African American Cultural Center

Serving as a mentor has always been important to NC State College of Education Associate Professor Lisa Bass.

She spent six years mentoring others through the University Council for Educational Administation’s Jackson’s Scholars Network and, in 2022, received the Ebony Harlem Award for  Graduate Student Mentorship.  Now, she hopes to expand on her role as a mentor as an NC State Campus Community Centers Faculty Fellow for the African American Cultural Center.

“Mentoring is key to what I believe in as a faculty member, so I see a lot of opportunities to work with students as well as to advance the mission and vision of the African American Cultural Center. To me, this was the perfect match,” she said. 

Bass has always believed that mentorship is central to the graduate student experience, helping to connect students to academia, giving them insight into their chosen fields and informing them of different opportunities that are available to them. This is especially important, Bass said, for first-generation undergraduate and graduate students. 

In mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students through her role as a faculty fellow, Bass hopes to begin by hosting “fireside chats” or town hall meetings to better understand what students are going through and how they are feeling.

“We’re in a mental health crisis and I’ve been in settings where students have said that they’re just really searching for purpose. I want to pull them together and address that, address what they are feeling, and see what information I can provide,” she said. 

Bass also wants to help students through the African American Cultural Center by connecting their research interests to faculty on campus who might have similar interests. Since students do not get many opportunities to interact with faculty outside of their colleges or programs, she hopes to create a database to link students and faculty around research in an interdisciplinary way.