Spotlight | Community

My Sister's Keeper

Connections, mentoring, success

My Sister's Keeper is a program that seeks to support black women students, with social, professional, and mentoring relationships. To meet this goal, the organization has created "sister circles," small groups of five or six students, staff, and faculty united by common interests.

The circles are encouraged to meet regularly and share experiences together.

"We wanted something unique," says Helen Elaine Lee, director of the MIT Program in Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) and founder of the initiative. "We hope to provide emotional and psychological support, foster kinship and community, strengthen academic performance, and cultivate engagement in social, political, and cultural matters beyond the classroom."

Building community

Lee, a professor of fiction writing in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, founded My Sister's Keeper last fall, soon after becoming director of WGS. "My Sister's Keeper grew out of my effort to embody greater outreach and diversity," Lee says. "Black women at MIT all need ways to make community."


Read more at MIT News

My Sister's Keeper website