RESEARCH STATEMENT

Research Goal & Interests

My research supports the cultivation of college students’ cultural competence as part of higher education’s commitment to inclusive excellence (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2013) amidst increasing student diversity (Levine & Dean, 2012) and growing challenges around racial campus climate (Azziz, 2015; Rotenberg, 2015). As a scholar-practitioner with ten years of experience working in higher education, I am committed to collaborating with campus departments along with individual faculty, staff, and students to implement research related to social justice education. My scholarly work is comprised of two interconnected strands of research. In the first strand, I explore college students’ prior knowledge about social justice concepts and how their prior knowledge influences their educational development. This strand focuses on how college student’s conceptual ideas, ideological explanations, and emotional reactions are connected to broader socialization processes with respect to concepts central to social justice education. The second strand of my research examines social justice education curricula, pedagogies, and learning assessment within educational environments in order to identify and replicate effective educational interventions. This second strand considers elements of Cohen, Raudenbush and Ball’s (2003) instruction triangle with specific attention to curriculum design process, teaching modalities (i.e., live, online, hybrid), and student demographics. Both strands of research are grounded by my belief that research be both purposeful and practical with respect to the current reality of higher education.

Current Projects

My dissertation, Variations among White, First-Year College Students’ Understanding of Privilege, employed discourse analysis on interview and reflection paper data to examine the broader variations present among 8 White students in order to identify how the conceptual, ideological, and emotional work collectively to inform their prior knowledge. My findings highlight how White college students are socialized to understand privilege in ways that reinforce social inequality using color-blind ideological explanations and emotional responses. I plan to revise my dissertation into numerous academic papers and eventually a book centered on thematic variations in how White students’ understand privilege. Additionally, I plan to continue working with this qualitative data set to examine how White students’ discursive expressions are associated with conceptual, ideological, and emotional variations, as well as deeply explore each variation as integrated to broader social narratives and experiences. This project will contribute to proposed ideas for curriculum design and pedagogical approaches that can be assessed.

Future Projects

I plan to build upon my past scholarship on social justice education curriculum design and pedagogical approaches to engage both strands of my research. First, I plan to continue exploring variations in college students’ understanding of social justice concepts. Using a similar approach to my dissertation research, I plan to holistically uncover the prior knowledge different student groups (e.g., Whites, Students of Color) have about various concepts (e.g., privilege, oppression, inequality, justice) that are central to social justice education. Second, I plan to collaborate with the local campus community and other institutions to research the implementation and impact of pilot curricula and pedagogical approaches on student learning. My goal is to facilitate a research collaborative across multiple college campuses interested in systematically researching social justice education efforts.

Collaboration & Funding Opportunities

My research vision is localized and highly collaborative. I plan to partner with campus departments, staff and faculty to collaboratively develop and implement social; justice education experiences that can be methodologically researched through qualitative methods. My research does not require extensive resources and can be implemented through existing mechanisms (e.g., undergraduate research programs, independent study courses) to support data collection and analysis. However, I would seek resources for larger research projects through campus partnerships, national grants for the scholarship of teaching and learning, and funding from the Ford Foundation’s foci on racial justice and social justice storytelling.

References

• Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2013, June 27). Board statement on diversity, equity, and inclusive excellence. Retrieved from www.aacu.org/about/statements/2013/diversity.

• Azziz, R. (2015, December 4). What can campus leaders do to make protests unnecessary? The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/What-Can-Campus-Leaders- Do-to/234463.

• Cohen, D. K., Raudenbush, S. W., & Ball, D. L. (2003). Resources, instruction, and research. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25, 119-142.

• Levine, A. & Dean, D. (2012). Generation on a tightrope: A portrait of today’s college student. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

• Rotenberg, M. B. (2015, December 3). 4 ways to ease strife on campuses. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/4-Ways-to-Ease-Strife-on/234439.