Graduate Mentoring Takes Center Stage at Wakeham Fellowship Showcase
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves. - Steven Spielberg
GradPathways Institute launched the inaugural Wakeham Summer Fellowships in 2026. It gave selected PhD students key mentoring support while starting their dissertation research—a crucial period after passing the qualifying exams. Crossing the threshold into candidacy is a rite of passage that can be a sink or swim moment.
The $10,000 summer fellowship was awarded to a student and their mentor to ensure consistent, structured scholarly progress and professional development support over the summer. This close guidance creates a ripple effect that will continue to inform their research and academic contributions for years to come.
Six winners from a highly competitive pool that spanned the arts, humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields were selected on the basis of their scholarship and the detailed mentoring plans proposed by mentor and mentee.
Mohamed Afkir (Linguistics) and Dr. Georgia Zellou (Linguistics): “Comparing ASR Bias Across Understudied Languages and Speakers”
Yee Thao (Education) and Dr. Ga Young Chung (Asian American Studies): “Hmong Agriculturist Cultivation as Literacy Reclamation”
Sounita Mukherjee (Anthropology) and Dr. James Howard Smith (Anthropology): “Ecologies of Waste: Remediation, Recycling, and Residual Lifeworlds in Dhapa, Kolkata (India)”
Mariana Da Silva Gabriel (Music) and Dr. Rachana Vajjhala (Music): “Rehearing Resistance: Political Listening and Musical Memory under Portugal’s Estado Novo”
Zoeb Jamal (Integrative Genetics and Genomics) and Dr. Megan Dennis (Medicine: Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine): “Uncovering the Role of Human-Specific Duplicated Genes in Adaptive Immunity and Retinal Development”
Ava-Rose Beech (Ecology) and Dr. Leslie Roche (Plant Sciences): “Fire, Grazing, and Native Seeding Effects on Soil Food Web Dynamics in California Rangelands”
Wakeham Fellowship Showcase
On Thursday, November 12, from 4:30-6:30pm in the Walker Hall, Gibeling Room, the 2026 Wakeham Fellows along with their mentors will present their research at the Wakeham Fellowship Showcase. The Showcase will highlight not just the students’ innovative research but also the impact of structured mentoring on successful research outcomes and a student’s professional development. The event is open to everyone. It will also serve as an info-session for the 2027 Wakeham Fellowship competition, which will open in January 2027.
GradPathways is committed to fostering innovative mentorship opportunities for graduate students. This key value is central to our mission. Both the Wakeham Fellowship and its corresponding Showcase illustrate this commitment while also furthering the culture of graduate education mentorship across UC Davis.
One of our fellows, Sounita Mukherjee, summed it up like this:
“The Wakeham Fellowship has provided much more than logistical support for summer fieldwork. It has helped establish the methodological, intellectual, institutional, ethical, and professional foundations for the next phase of my dissertation, publication development, public-facing work, and my growth as an independent anthropological researcher.”
Approaches to mentoring are diverse, but it’s a common denominator in success stories. GradPathways is here to help graduate students and postdoctoral scholars write their own success story.
But no matter what your role is at UC Davis, join us this Thursday, November 12 to be inspired by the impacts of mentoring.