Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, a professor at the Simmons School of Management in Boston, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award on Oct. 28 at the nation’s largest gathering of underrepresented minority Ph.D. students and faculty.

Dr. Blake-Beard was honored at the 24^th annual Institute for Teaching and Mentoring in Atlanta, which convened nearly 1,000 Ph.D. students, recent graduates and faculty members. She also led a plenary session at the Institute that explored in depth the key elements of mentoring in higher education.

“Dr. Blake-Beard is an internationally recognized expert on mentoring relationships and how they can work best,” said Dr. Ansley Abraham, the director of the Southern Regional Education Board’s Doctoral Scholars Program. “She also provides crucial support for graduate students, so they can finish their doctorates and become excellent faculty members and mentors themselves.”

Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland-College Park, Dr. Blake-Beard is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor of Women and Leadership and a senior faculty affiliate at the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons. She is also a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India. Previously, she served on the faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

“Mentoring is not just something you pick up,” Dr. Abraham added. “You have to learn how to do it.” Dr. Blake-Beard is an authority on “the role of mentorship in higher education” and to how make it work most effectively, he said.

The SREB-State Doctoral Scholars Program leads the Institute each year in conjunction with members of the Compact for Faculty Diversity. SREB’s program and partner programs provide support for underrepresented minority Ph.D. students to help address the continuing shortage of college faculty members of color across the South and U.S.

SREB is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Atlanta that works with 16 member states to improve pre-K12 and higher education.