During a talk on diversity in higher education yesterday, Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds advised graduate students to establish a wide range of mentors who can support them in their academic endeavors.

A three-member panel, comprising three African Americans at different stages in their academic careers, offered a range of advice on how to overcome the difficulties of being an academic. They also extolled the virtues of the occupation.

Hammonds encouraged students to actively search for advisers—regardless of their race, ethnicity, or sex—who can help them pursue their academic interests.

“I would not be here without mentors,” she said. “You have to have them.”

She said an academic commitment to a field of study could sometimes serve as a powerful bond between two people and could bring together otherwise dissimilar individuals.

Besides Hammonds, who is also a professor of History of Science and of African American Studies, two other panelists participated—Brandon M. Terry ’05, a fourth year doctoral student in political science and African American studies at Yale; and Christopher Wheat, an assistant professor of technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The panelists also emphasized the “autonomy” of academic work.

“No one’s asking me why I am doing [the work that I am doing,” Wheat said.

On the other hand, Terry pointed to one of the downsides of the freedom provided to graduate students.

It can be “very different” than studying as an undergraduate, he said, adding that life as a graduate student “can be a sort of abyss of freedom.”

Hammonds explained how her peers helped motivate her while she was working. Her group of peers would expect each other to write five pages of their dissertations each day, she said.

Sometimes she would be done by noon, other times it took all day, but her support group helped her stay dedicated, she added.

Shirley Sun, a research assistant at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, said the talk helped her realize the importance of being assertive when looking for a support group.

Coming from Los Angeles as a Chinese-American, Sun said she had been “reluctant” to go to others for advice, asking herself, “How could they understand me?”

But, she added, the panel—which took place at the Office of Career Services and was co-sponsored by several organizations on campus, including the Harvard College Women’s Center—encouraged her to be more open in her search for a diverse range of mentors.

—Staff writer Eric P. Newcomer can be reached at newcomer@fas.harvard.edu.