The ACPA Marylu K. McEwen Dissertation of the Year Award program received many strong submissions this year. Collectively, this work is helping to push the field of student affairs forward in significant ways. Below, we highlight the work of our recipient (Dr. Katherine Lebioda) and two finalists (Drs. Lisa Combs & Neal McKinney) by sharing abstracts of their dissertation work. We encourage readers to check out their full dissertations (hyperlinks below) and keep an eye out for their future publications. Congratulations to our recipient and finalists on their impressive work!
Dr. Katherine Lebioda (Award Recipient)
In this participatory action research study, I designed a digital storytelling program to facilitate conversations with racially minoritized students about their experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus—an elite, predominantly white, state flagship. I implemented this program with three groups of students (18 students total) over the course of nine meetings and a debriefing interview with each participant. At the crux of this study is a concept which I term psychosocial blossoming. Psychosocial blossoming is a radical process toward wholeness, humanization, and liberation that emphasizes individual agency and empowerment while honoring relationships with others and environments. Through portraiture as a methodology, I examined the context of this project, how it unfolded, and the experiences of both the students and researcher-facilitator with regard to their experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion. To present findings, I created digital stories—3-5 minute audiovisual products featuring first-person narration and author-created visuals such as photographs and art—to serve as portraits. Thus, digital stories served as both the method for students’ meaning-making (within the project) and the portraits of our interactions as a collective (about the project).
I wanted to bring students together to advocate for change around diversity, equity, and inclusion, yet my students largely struggled to imagine their college as a site of possibility. Students did not care to invest in an institution they felt was uninvested in them. Nearly all described ways they viewed their relationship with the institution as transactional, extractive, and surface-level. Moreover, several critiqued diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as predicated on the assumption that students want to be included in the larger campus culture. In contrast, the students described their experiences in the digital storytelling project as affirming, enlightening, and deeply moving. Their amazement and appreciation of the structured story-sharing activity became the foundation for our community action: creating spaces of trust, vulnerability, and connection across groups of interracial strangers. Through this research, organizations (i.e., colleges, schools, or the individuals within them) can utilize the concept of psychosocial blossoming to radically change the way they engage in diversity, equity, and justice work and build more inclusive communities.
Dr. Lisa Combs (Finalist)
Liminality as Student Development Theory: A Third Wave Situational Analysis
The purpose of this study was to examine thematic meanings of liminality as a reimagined construct for college students with in-between identity experiences. This poststructural qualitative grounded theory situational analysis study then aimed to develop a student development theory focused on liminality with a third wave poststructural perspective. For the purpose of this study, I defined liminal identity experiences as anyone who has an experience related to existing beyond rigid categories. Examples of students who may be more inclined to have liminal experiences include multiracial students, gender non-binary students, interfaith students, students who straddle socioeconomic status, students with invisible/temporal disabilities, and bisexual students. The research questions that guided the study were: (a) What are thematic meanings that college students have around liminality?; And (b) How do college students who experience liminality build community with other peers? To answer these questions, I employed situational analysis as my methodological approach and collected data through two individual interviews and participant maps with 13 participants. In the analysis process, I utilized situational, positional, relational, and social arena analysis maps alongside my theoretical framework to identify the thematic meanings. Specifically, I used the relational map to address my second question focused on community building. I offer an overview of all five findings and the data analysis maps I utilized in the process. The five themes I identified in the data were: the complexities of liminality as a construct, a predisposition to expansive worldviews, uncanny/accidental liminal communities, double gatekeeping, and a lack of institutional support. Through these five findings, I gained a better understanding of college students’ liminal identity experiences that can inform praxis and policy when supporting students in the in-between. As part of fulfilling the purpose of this dissertation, I presented two theoretical models of liminality including a web and ecological model to retheorize power in higher education contexts. In conclusion, I offered implications and recommendations, as well as a letter to those with liminal identity experiences.
Dr. Neal McKinney (Finalist)
Education abroad personnel (EAP) have relied on a 30+ years old rationale that Black and Latinx students participate in U.S. college study abroad programs at a lower rate than their white peers due to cultural differences attributed to differences in their backgrounds. Therefore, this qualitative study sought to understand: (1) how EAP narrate the phenomenon of the lower participation rate of Black and Latinx college students in education abroad programs, (1a) what, if any, patterns of race and racism are present in their narrative, and (2) how Black and Latinx students make meaning of these narratives. Using narrative inquiry and critical race storytelling research methodology, this bricolage research design analyzed the lived experiences of 11 EAP and five Black and Latinx students through the lens of race and racism to (re)present their narratives as a composite stock story and a composite counter-story. The findings indicate that: 1) Education abroad personnel attribute Black and Latinx students’ lower participation to visibility, family, and financial constraints, reflecting a racialized deficit mindset by framing students’ backgrounds as the primary reason for lower participation, and 2) While Black and Latinx students acknowledge these barriers, they also highlight that education abroad programs fail to effectively communicate their relevance and value. In sum, EAP overlook their own influence on Black and Latinx students’ lower participation.
Authors
Kaity Prieto (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her research centers queer and trans students, with a focus on bisexual+ identities and experiences. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University. Dr. Prieto is the Scholar-in-Residence for ACPA’s Coalition for Sexuality and Gender Identities (CSGI) and the Marylu McEwen Dissertation of the Year Award Co-Chair.
Christopher Travers (he/him) is a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor in the Higher Education, Student Affairs, International Education Policy (HESI) program at the University of Maryland, College Park. His work deals with life-making among Black folx in higher education through the exploration of liberatory masculinities, faith and spiritual connection, and love as a social justice intervention. He earned his Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University. Dr. Travers is Co-Chair of the Marylu McEwen Dissertation of the Year Award.