UConn at ASHE Highlights – Higher Education and Student Affairs Program

UConn faculty, students, and post-docs from the Department of Educational Leadership, the HESA program, and Office of Diversity & Inclusion will be involved as presenters and volunteers during this year’s annual ASHE (Association for the Study of Higher Education) virtual conference on November 18-21 and pre-conference for the Council for Ethnic Participation (CEP) on November 13. Ten of our faculty, recent graduates, and graduate students from UConn will present 12 papers and interactive symposia and serve as discussant or chair on five paper sessions and interactive symposia. You can see a full overview of UConn participation in the ASHE Conference here. Our faculty and students will be presenting on a wide variety of research and scholarship that enhances the study of higher education within the theme of Advancing Full Participation. We asked some of our faculty and students three quick questions about the work that they will be presenting during the conference.

“Making Space for Community, Support and Healing in Racial Equity Higher Education Work”

Dr. Milagros Castillo-Montoya, Assistant Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs.

Why did you undertake this work?

As a community of racially minoritized faculty, it is important to create space for community, support and healing. I experienced this in a profound way during a trip to the Netherlands with amazing higher education scholars who exemplified what this means and feels like. I want to share about how powerful that experience can be.

What are the important takeaways?

With a strong sense of community, racially minoritized faculty can thrive. As such, having space for this community to develop is critical to our well-being in the academy.

What do you hope practitioners can learn from this work?

I hope practitioners will learn that creating space for racially minoritized folx to connect and create community has to be more of an institutional priority.

“How Does Whiteness “Show Up” in Student Affairs Work? A Literature Analysis and Framework for Practice”

Ashley N. Robinson, PhD Candidate, Leadership and Education Policy

Why did you undertake this work?

Research shows that efforts for racial equity in higher education consistently fail because racism and white supremacy pervade higher education, a social institution built on exclusionary and racist foundations. I wanted to explore how exactly racism and white supremacy are being made real, institutionally, on a day-to-day basis? What is happening with actual texts—written policies, forms, visuals, media representations—as they land in people’s real, everyday work, that continually creates situations in which educators who really want to enact antiracist responses to racist harms end up doing things that uphold institutional racism instead?

What are the important takeaways?

I offer a framework to interrogate the tensions of responding to racist harms toward the aim of uncovering how the discourse of whiteness might show up in textually mediated ways in response work. The framework consists of nine concepts that are characteristic of the discourse of whiteness in student affairs work, offers a literature-informed description of each concept, and analytical questions that foreground the materiality of the concept related to responding to racist harms.

What do you hope practitioners can learn from this work?

In practice, I recommend using this framework to analyze texts like incident reports, incident reporting forms, protocols, procedures, policies, training materials, investigation reports, meeting notes, budget documents, and public statements. The purpose of such textual analysis is two-fold: firstly, to name and uncover the specific ways that attempts to respond to racist harms may, in fact, uphold white supremacy and institutional racism, and secondly, to empower student affairs educators at all levels to transform their approaches to responding to racist harms.

“Decolonizing Academic Spaces: Advancing Full Participation Globally to Promote Racial Equity in Postsecondary Education”

Dr. Saran Stewart, Associate Professor & Program Director of Higher Education and Student Affairs

Dr. Frank Tuitt, Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs & Chief Diversity Officer

Why did you undertake this work?

Central to our work is developing critical consciousness and to do that, we argue you must confront and disrupt the colonizers’ gaze and epistemologies.

What are the important takeaways?

Decolonising the mind through ways of knowing and knowledge construction;
Decolonising pedagogy;
Decolonising structures, policies and practices; and
Reimagining the academy from a decolonised lens.

What do you hope practitioners can learn from this work?

We hope that the presentation will provide concrete examples to create decolonised spaces both in and out of the classroom where minoritised students can engage in learning that suggest their lives and lived experiences really matter.

“Masculinities as Barriers to Full Participation: A Longitudinal Study on Fraternity Masculine Norms and Hazing Motivations”

Dr. Adam McCready, Assistant Professor In-Residence, Higher Education & Student Affairs

Why did you undertake this work?

Surprisingly little is known about how men are socialized to perform gender during their undergraduate experiences. Looking specifically at fraternities, fraternity leaders often claim that these organizations “make better men”, but these groups are associated with troubling outcomes like hazing.

What are the important takeaways?

While fraternity men reported statistically significantly lower conformity to misogyny after three years of fraternity membership, their conformity to eight other masculine norms and their hazing attitudes did not change significantly over this time period. Increased adherence to misogyny and risk-taking over three years predicted increased endorsement of hazing.

What do you hope practitioners can learn from this work?

Because fraternities may recruit men who share similar attitudes toward hazing and adhere to similar gender performances, practitioners may want to focus their interventions on membership recruitment efforts. In addition, interventions designed to address misogyny and risk-taking among fraternity men may also mitigate hazing attitudes.