Minority Fellowship Program Testimonials: Anthony Ryan Hatch

The Minority Fellowship Program was a critical part of the structural support that I used in graduate school at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) to navigate the dissertation process and begin my career. Being a part of the broader MFP community opened new intellectual and professional worlds to me that otherwise would have been closed by exposing me to the highest quality sociological research and mentors at just the right time.

I learned about the MFP from close family. I have the unique fortune of being the only fellow who has a sibling who also was an MFP Fellow (my older sister, Stephani L. Hatch, who was part of Cohort 26). While we both earned our PhDs in sociology from UMD (in 2002 and 2009), our paths to and from UMD were quite different. I remember when Stephani shared with our family the news of her acceptance into this amazing and prestigious fellowship.

Stephani’s experience in the MFP was grounded in her relationship with her mentor, Len Pearlin, who, we came to learn, had been a long-time supporter of the MFP. Dr. Pearlin supervised Stephani’s dissertation, a quantitative study of pathways to illicit drug use among inner city women in Atlanta. I arrived at UMD in fall 2001, where Stephani and I overlapped by one year (2001-2002); the last time we had attended the same school at the same time was at Fairington Elementary School in Lithonia, Georgia in 1984. Like many of our peers at Maryland, Stephani and I had interests in studying health inequalities in social context, and wonderful faculty (like Melissa Milkie) were aligned with that focus, but Len really anchored this program at UMD via a new NIMH-funded study called the Aging, Stress, and Health (ASH), and for good reason. Len, and his wife Gerry, were unbelievably warm, generous, and supportive to the small group of graduate students and researchers that worked in this corner of the department. Len was pivotal to Stephani’s success at the time, making it possible for her to pursue a NIMH postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at Columbia University, which eventually led to her position as Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology at King’s College London.

Len allowed me to use ASH study data for my 2003 master’s thesis project, “Discrimination in the Life Course of Older African Americans,” a quantitative analysis of the role of early life experiences in later life recollections of racial discrimination. I applied to the MFP with Len’s support. I was accepted into the program in summer 2004.

The MFP represented a life-changing validation for me at a time when I felt like a walking promissory note. It made the faculty in my institution (and others) take my early efforts at research seriously. Being accepted into the MFP boosted my confidence and inspired a sense in me that my research was solid and interesting to other people in the discipline. It sent a clear signal to me that my work was promising; I had promise! Also, early experiences presenting in the MFP sessions at ASA meetings were foundational in terms of my speaking and research craft and letting me see, for the first time, what scholars meant when they talked about their academic or intellectual “communities.”

When I started the fellowship, I was squarely on track to continue a line of quantitative research with Len on the ASH study, with a new substantive focus on Black men’s physical and mental health over the life course. However, my sociological interests began to shift as I encountered “metabolic syndrome” in the research literature on racial health disparities and I began to pose new questions about how racial formation was unfolding around this new object of study. I remember sharing a poorly conceived and fragmented draft with Len, a half-hearted effort to shift toward these new questions and away from the quantitative analyses of life course dynamics that were the bread and butter of the ASH study.

To his great credit, Len listened to me carefully and kindly informed me that he would not be able to supervise this more theoretical dissertation, although had he been “younger and more adventurous,” he might have given it a go. He suggested that I reach out to George Ritzer, with whom I had studied contemporary social theory, globalization, and theories of consumption. To his credit, George also listened to me carefully and patiently worked with me for six months or so on the earliest versions of my dissertation proposal. While he was an excellent and incisive reader, our fit was not ideal because George did not have expertise in race, medical sociology, or health inequalities. He tried his best to help me, but I was floundering. I was one year into my MFP fellowship and was not making substantive progress toward the articulation of a viable proposal. Then, in the 2004-05 academic year, we all learned that Patricia Hill Collins might be moving from the University of Cincinnati to Maryland. Say what?!

When Dr. Collins arrived in fall 2005, slated to teach a graduate seminar called “Critical Theories of Race and Racism,” my graduate school friends and I who worked in social theory and race, class, and gender studies experienced a major shift within our departmental and intellectual lives. Even though I had taken my PhD comprehensive exams, I emailed Dr. Collins to see if she would be willing to let me enroll in this seminar. Thankfully, she did. I worked hard to demonstrate my gratitude through my performance in the class. At some point that fall (probably after reading another misguided draft), Dr. Ritzer suggested that I talk with Dr. Collins about the prospect of supervising my dissertation.

But (and this is a big “but”), the MFP changed the institutional calculus in my favor at this critical moment by putting me in an advantageous structural position vis-à-vis departmental resources and my need for a new faculty advisor. Dr. Collins agreed to supervise my dissertation. She said something to the effect of “Oh, you’re an MFP. Well, that changes things.” I did not know that in her negotiations, Dr. Collins had indicated that she would not supervise any students in her first year. I did not know that she had not yet supervised any PhD dissertations in her career and was not interested in taking that on in her first year. I also did not know that she had negotiated with the department for so many years of internal graduate student assistantships, such that any student having external support (such as from the MFP), would allow her to extend that internal departmental support for her own work. I had no idea that Dr. Collins had, herself, been a member of MFP (Cohort 7). I was the only PhD student she took on in that first year, I think in good part because of my fellowship and all it signaled.

I had never worked harder or learned more in such a short period of time than I did as a Fellow, working with Dr. Collins between 2006 and 2009. She gave me an extraordinary opportunity to work as the editorial assistant for a major edited volume on race and ethnic studies, schooled me in how to deliver critical social theory in public spaces, and spent countless hours reading my drafts and teaching me how to write. Dr. Collins was exceptionally professional and kind, exercising concern and care for my family, especially my maternal grandmother (who became an ancestor in 2021) and my first child (who was born in 2006). Through the MFP, Dr. Collins made a serious, long-term investment in my learning and my professional development and training, an investment I look to repay every single day.

Today, I try to operate in my role as a professor, author, and teacher guided by the counsel and models for excellence and service that Drs. Collins and Pearlin (and others) provided me while I held this precious fellowship. One way I have tried to give back is by serving on the MFP Advisory Board from 2018 to 2020. As someone who teaches in an undergraduate serving institution (and not in a sociology department), I don’t have a direct line of sight to feed students into the MFP or to mentor MFP fellows myself. Having an opportunity to serve on the MFP Advisory Board was an exceptionally meaningful experience for me. I enjoyed spending time with new colleagues and sharpening my sensibilities about how to provide support for graduate students and early career social scientists.

Each year, when I renew my ASA membership, I always give an extra financial donation to support the MFP and make plans to attend the reception, if I’m attending the Annual Meeting. This yearly prompt for financial sponsorship is crucial for the social support and self-determination the fellowship generates for its Fellows and grants the MFP the high visibility it deserves as a crowning achievement of American sociology.