John Brady Memorial Lecture Series

The John Brady Memorial Lecture invites our academic community to reflect on how mentorship, community, and academic culture influence graduate students’ ability to navigate uncertainty, remain connected, and progress with purpose.

This lecture reflects on how academic environments shape graduate students’ ability to navigate training with clarity, support, and a sense of direction, understanding career pathways not only as post-graduation outcomes, but as the experience of graduate education itself. Drawing from her own journey as a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her subsequent work in mentoring and academic leadership at University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez, Claribel Acevedo-Vélez examines how mentorship, community, and academic culture influence whether students remain connected, supported, and able to progress through periods of transition and uncertainty.

The talk invites reflection on a central question: do our academic environments enable students to thrive when things become difficult or unclear? This reflection emphasizes shared responsibility for creating academic cultures where excellence, community, and human care are mutually reinforcing.