Hello, all. We hope that many of you are returning after a wonderful chance to reconnect IN PERSON with colleagues at the national convention. Ideally, you will bring back hope, energy, inspiration, connections and reconnections, and ideas to create transformative change across higher education. We would like to offer a special thanks to everyone who made the event happen and to the city of St. Louis for your hospitality.
As you prepare for the rest of the spring term and look ahead to summer and the coming fall, we are excited to share a set of great articles with you. In this issue you will find four pieces on leadership including Vernon Wall’s reflection and words of gratitude about his presidency through the turbulence of 2020. At a time when kindness and care are essential, we also have an article on developing a compassion toolkit with ideas about how that might work on your campus.
Finally, we are excited to share three personal perspectives in hopes that more of you will share stories about your experiences in an effort to make our profession personal in visible, vulnerable, powerful, and transformative ways. Our authors have done just that. Dr. Dax Boatwright shares his family’s legacy from slavery into higher education. Wen Xi writes about her experience as a child of immigrants and how that informs her work. And Dr. Rachel Wagner shares her strategies for communal care—and she shares a couple of recipes, too!
The work you do is important. The work you do is difficult. The work we do is in the midst of a critical review and assessment—internally and externally. Ideally the pieces in this issue of Developments will provide you resources as well as a sense of connection to others doing this challenging work.
Take care of yourselves as you take care of others. Enjoy the work of your colleagues shared here. Finally, please consider what wisdom, reflections, innovations, moments of joy and struggle, and opportunities you might want to share with ACPA. We look forward to your future submissions.
Michelle & Reyes