GSA Mentoring Award

2026 Call for Nominations for the GSA Mentoring Award

We have all benefitted from mentoring during our undergraduate and graduate studies and throughout our careers. In order to recognize the often overlooked time and energy spent guiding undergraduate students, graduate students, and colleagues as they progress through their studies or in their careers, the GSA is initiating an annual Mentoring Award. Mentoring often happens without formal institutional recognition. We would like to acknowledge publicly this vital and influential work.

Please consider nominating a mentor, colleague, or yourself for the inaugural Mentoring Award, which carries an award of $500 and will be presented at the 2026 GSA Conference Banquet.

Please submit a nomination letter of no more than 1000 words here by August 20, 2026. The nomination letter should state your relationship to the nominee (self-nominations are accepted) and outline the nominee’s mentoring activities. Award criteria are listed below. It is understood that mentoring may take different shapes in different disciplines and institutional settings. Therefore it is not expected that nominees will fulfill all criteria. Submissions will be judged by the Mentoring Taskforce/Committee.

MENTORING AWARD CRITERIA

• Promoting intellectual growth through programming, innovation, teaching, and transparency.
• Fostering the development of undergraduate and/or graduate students’ skills. 
• Effective direction of dissertations, including timely evaluation, guidance, and feedback.
• Being accessible to students and/or colleagues for discussion of intellectual or professional questions and concerns, communicating with them effectively and respectfully, and encouraging such interactions.
• Educating students in the culture of the discipline and helping them to network with other professionals.
• Providing career counseling and placement assistance, including possibilities outside the academy.
• Promoting a climate of respect and collegiality that enhances the graduate experience or work environment and increases chances of success. 
• Providing guidance to colleagues or peers, also in related fields, about research, service, and/or teaching.
• Participating in service activities (such as the peer review of article or book manuscripts, peer reviews of teaching, or external reviews of tenure and promotion cases) that promote the career advancement of graduate students and faculty.

Submit nominations here: https://forms.gle/w42tvbgkmnowk2Xv6

Contact: Elizabeth Loentz, GSA Mentoring Taskforce, Chair

Co-Winner: Ela Gezen, University of Massachusetts

Laudatio:

Professor Gezen is a pioneering, powerful, and empowering voice for Turkish-German cultural history and the reconceptualization of European cultures. Mentoring students and early-career colleagues in the field of German Studies is at the heart of Professor Gezen’s impressive range of academic activities and informs how she defines her role as a scholar and intellectual. She tirelessly campaigns for the inclusion of students and early-career scholars in university life, in academic publishing, and in outreach activities. She has advocated for scholars from minoritized communities and is a strong and highly audible voice for them in an academic landscape where opportunities are becoming rarer. In this environment, Professor Gezen stands out as a strong, vocal, and deeply engaged scholar and leader and a dedicated mentor. Over the course of her impressive career, she has opened countless doors to at least two generations of young scholars in North America and Europe. Her impact, both at her university but also in the field more widely, has been transformative on many levels. Professor Gezen is a role model for how to combine promoting an innovative research agenda with lending support and mentorship to others—and for all these reasons, we are thrilled to award her an inaugural GSA Mentoring Award 2026. Congratulations, Professor Gezen!

Co-Winner: Cynthia Porter, Ohio State University

Laudatio:

Professor Porter describes her approach to mentorship as one that “extends beyond formal advising relationships, resting on a core belief: that mentorship is the ongoing practice of investing in people, creating opportunities, sharing institutional knowledge, fostering scholarly communities, and helping others imagine possible futures for themselves within and beyond the academy.” In addition to individually advising and mentoring numerous graduate students at her own and other institutions, Professor Porter has designed and taught a professional development course for graduate students at her university, organized and participated in panel discussions on the “hidden curriculum” of graduate studies, and co-facilitated an annual Graduate Research Colloquium at the NEMLA conference. She has also been a leader in peer mentoring through the establishment of accountability and co-writing groups, such as the “Race, Place, and Media Working Group” (co-founded with Jessica Ruffin of MIT), that bring scholars together “across career stages, institutions, and national borders.” Eleven nominations written by colleagues, collaborators, and students from her own and other institutions attest to the strong impact of her mentoring, which is characterized by “collaboration, accountability, generosity, encouragement, and a genuine commitment to helping colleagues thrive.” Commenting on her efforts to help students and emerging scholars build professional networks, one colleague writes: “Cynthia is dedicated to creating spaces where graduate students, contingent faculty, early-career scholars, and historically marginalized voices can find support, visibility, and meaningful opportunities to engage with the discipline of German Studies.” We are delighted to award an inaugural GSA Mentoring Award to Cynthia Porter. Congratulations, Professor Porter!

2026 GSA Mentoring Prize Committee:

• Catriona MacLeod, University of Chicago
• Christine Rinne, University of Southern Alabama
• Liz Schoppelrei, Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (lias) at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
• Daniel Siemens, Newcastle University