First-year university students often encounter challenges related to academic success, with their ability to persist influenced by various factors, including their perception of themselves as leaders and their leadership competencies. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the landscape of higher education has evolved, necessitating a more…

In this study, a Black scholar in the midst of understanding his neurodivergence and his identity as someone who has been dis/abled reacts to the prodding of white peers by creating a course on decentering whiteness. The scholar then interviews ten of the participants in said class to understand how they came to select such a course and what they…

This qualitative constructivist grounded theory study used an integrated intersectional lens and Chicana feminist epistemology to examine how nine queer Latina leaders in higher education experienced their racialized and heterogendered positioning within higher education structures, how this shaped the everyday experiences of their work, and how…

This dissertation presents the first known Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) investigation of how marginalized students are included in syllabi. This study fills a gap in the literature due to the changing demographic of college students, the absence of faculty who share these marginalized identities, the syllabus being the first…

Much public discourse surrounds the intractable problem for some community college students in attaining a bachelor's degree through vertical transfer. Scholars have found 80% of entering community college students plan to transfer, yet this intent to transfer is somehow diverted for most (Jenkins & Fink, 2016). Although a new report showed an…

Critical Participatory Action Research is a form of research where community members and researchers collaborate to plan and carry out a research project on an issue they identify together (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Mirra, Garcia & Morrell, 2016). While most CPAR projects engage adolescents, an emerging body of research focuses on CPAR with…

Despite significant growth and advancement for women and girls participating in sports, we have not seen the same trend for women in leadership roles in athletics -- even with the introduction of the Senior Woman Administrator (SWA) designation. The SWA designation was implemented in 1989 to ensure that at least one woman would be involved with…

Over the past two decades, efforts to amplify student voice have proliferated as a project or process to increase institutional engagement with young people. Institutionally supported student voice is generally distinguished from, yet not independent of, student activism and youth activism. The designs, outcomes, and impacts of student voice…

This study invokes the theory of self and identity to investigate how multiply marginalized students, namely Black boys subjected to exclusionary discipline, made sense of exclusionary discipline, as well as the ways in which it impacted their identity fashioning processes. An instrumental case study design was employed to understand the…

While considering Makoni and Pennycook's (2006) critique of the colonial nature of the notion of singular languages in this dissertation, a documentation and investigation of English and Spanish use on billboards in Carolina, Guaynabo, and San Juan, three cities in Puerto Rico, is presented. The billboards in these towns make use of Spanish, the…

The suffering racism creates is endless. For too long, the burden of speaking out and taking action against racism has fallen on Communities of Color. Higher education needs people inside the system to actively resist its racism by implementing antiracist policies and practices. White people, and white women in particular, comprise a majority of…

This autoethnographic study uses personal memoirs to explore the author's allyship and advocacy efforts throughout the past 24 years in the language teaching profession. Through the process of self-reflexivity and introspection, "turning points" are investigated to understand more about what influences the actions and behaviors of…

This critical action research study demonstrated the importance of creating liberatory learning environments for Black and Brown student scholars through culturally relevant pedagogy. Decolonization paradigms were employed to understand the impact of colonization and how it currently influences educational structures for Black and Brown students…

International service learning programs have continued to rise in popularity across U.S. institutions of higher education as a way of offering students comprehensive formats to engage with communities in other countries, learn how social issues of inequality impact people around the world, and strengthen student learning on global issues. However,…

This qualitative study explores the experiences and perspectives of disabled student activists involved in the creation of disability cultural centers (DCCs) on college and university campuses in the United States. The main purpose is to advance recognition of disability as a marginalized student identity on college campuses in need of safe spaces…