Mentorship helps define the student experience at Brooklyn College.
A signature component of the college’s mentoring ecosystem is The Tow Mentorship Initiative, through which students collaborate with faculty on groundbreaking research. This unique and powerful program enables faculty and students to conduct and present independent research across a wide variety of disciplines.
One such mentor-mentee pair, Professor Tony Wilson and biology major Dilfuza Kurbanova ’25, focused their research on antibodies, key components of the immune system. A first-generation student who arrived at Brooklyn College from Turkey just a year before joining The Tow Mentorship Initiative, Kurbanova worked with Wilson to use recombinant DNA technologies, originally designed to produce human antibodies, to synthesize them in seahorses.
Beyond the lab, the program supports students in navigating applications for graduate school, internships, grants, and fellowships. As Kurbanova explains, “Before starting the Tow program, I didn’t have much knowledge about academic research and graduate school, but the program explains our options after graduating and encourages us to think about our future goals,” which for her include attending medical school.
Reflecting on his experience as a mentor, Wilson noted, “Regardless of where the students go after graduation, having the opportunity to participate in a program like this is life changing.”
The Tow Mentorship Initiative is just one of the many holistic mentorship experiences from which students can benefit at Brooklyn College. With the help of peer-to-peer mentors, alumni mentors, advisers, and others, we offer unparalleled access to support systems students value for life.
