A Critical Grounded Theory of the Development of Student Leaders with Historically Marginalized Identities

“Everything I Did Was Black. That’s What I Was There For.”: A Critical Grounded Theory of the Development of Student Leaders with Historically Marginalized Identities

Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors Womble, Allen A.

Citation Womble, Allen A. (2021). “Everything I Did Was Black. That’s What I Was There For.”: A Critical Grounded Theory of the Development of Student Leaders with Historically Marginalized Identities (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA).

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/660217 “EVERYTHING I DID WAS BLACK. THAT’S WHAT I WAS THERE FOR.”:

A CRITICAL GROUNDED THEORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF

STUDENT LEADERS WITH HISTORICALLY MARGINALIZED IDENTITIES

Allen A. Womble

______

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY STUDIES AND PRACTICE

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2021 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by: Allen Alfred Womble titled: “EVERYTHING I DID WAS BLACK. THAT’S WHAT I WAS THERE FOR.”: and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College.

I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.

2 Acknowledgements

“‘Thank you’ is the greatest gift you can give someone, because ‘Thank You’ is what you say to God.” Maya Angelou

First, I must thank my tribe. To my mother, father, twin sister, grandmother, grandfather, and the rest of my family, thanks for your continued support, encouragement, belief, and prayers. This dissertation bears my name, but it rests upon the foundation you built and nurtured in me and serves as an extension of our dreams. Thank you.

To the student leaders who participated in this study – sharing your truth with others is one of the most sacred acts in which we engage. I am forever thankful that you chose to share your stories with me. I seek to honor the beauty intrinsic in all of these stories. And I pray your stories help lead to a practice of student affairs and higher education that better meets the needs of students coming after you and honors your experiences. Thank you.

To my chosen family – my Chicago Crew, my Tucson peeps, the Supremes, and to all of my friends and co-conspirators scattered across the US and beyond, your laughs, your joy, your answers to my random 2 am writing questions, and your unwavering support continues to buoy me past frustrations, fear, and doubt into my wildest dreams. Thank you.

To my Chair and Advisor, Dr. Regina Deil–Amen, you gave me a certificate with a superlative at the end of my first doctoral class with you naming me the most extraordinarily likeable nerd. This certificate is one of only two awards displayed in my office currently. Perhaps it sealed our bond forever! I thank you for your help, encouragement, challenges, and acts of care and support that propelled me through this experience. With every conversation we shared, this work got better, and I grew as a scholar. Thank you.

To my dissertation committee members, Dr. Z Nicolazzo and Dr. DeMarcus A. Jenkins, you said yes to serving on my committee without having met me prior or having me in class. And you provided keen insights, challenges, and support through this process that helped sharpen my critical lens. You went above and beyond in your support of me. Thank you.

And to Dr Gary Rhoades, Diana Peel, Lora Francois and the rest of the staff and faculty in the College of Education and the Graduate College, your support and flexibility had an immeasurably immense impact on me obtaining this goal. I would not be at this point without your work. Thank you.

3 Table of Contents

List of Figures ...... 6 List of Tables ...... 7 Abstract ...... 8 Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 10 Retrofitting of Higher Education ...... 13 Purpose of Study ...... 17 Dissertation Overview ...... 18 Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 19 Critical Race Theory ...... 20 Critical Critiques of HIP ...... 26 Development ...... 28 Equitable Access ...... 31 Peer Mentorship & Sense of Belonging ...... 36 Conceptual Framework ...... 38 High Impact Practices center the academy; thus, they center whiteness and aren’t always accessible. .. 39 High Impact Practices centers faculty...... 40 Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 44 Grounded Theory ...... 44 Constructivist Grounded Theory ...... 46 Grounded Theory & Critical Inquiry ...... 48 Grounded Theory & Critical Race Theory ...... 52 Positionality ...... 53 Reflexivity ...... 57 Design and Methods ...... 59 Data Collection ...... 60 Sampling ...... 60 Research Setting...... 62 Intensive Interviews...... 63 Observations ...... 64 Data Analysis Procedures ...... 65 Open Coding ...... 65 Focused Coding ...... 65 Theory building – memo writing & theoretical sampling ...... 67 Strategies for Validity ...... 69 Chapter 4: Findings ...... 72 Participants ...... 73 Primary Findings ...... 74 Calling In ...... 76 Crisis of Disconnection...... 77 4 Informal Random Call In...... 85 Call In From Peer in the Same Place...... 86 Call In From Advisor or Trusted Peer ...... 88 Call In from Authority Figures...... 89 Stretch Work ...... 90 Well-Resourced Work...... 91 Real-World Implications ...... 93 Advocate for Others...... 95 Working on a Team...... 98 Holistic Support ...... 101 Permeance of the Relationships ...... 101 Significant Investment of Time...... 105 Candor...... 107 Open and Honest Feedback ...... 107 Welcoming Environment ...... 110 Barriers and Bridges ...... 115 Identity...... 116 Finances...... 123 Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 129 Discussion of Findings ...... 134 Call In...... 135 Stretch Work ...... 138 Holistic Support ...... 141 Barriers and Bridges ...... 143 Higher Education Alignment ...... 148 K-12 Care Theory Alignment...... 150 Implications for Practice ...... 157 False Dichotomy of On and Off Campus...... 157 Agentic Nature of Student Leadership ...... 159 Recognize Student Leadership as a High Impact Practice ...... 161 Recognize Non-Academic Professionals...... 163 Provide More Paid HIPs ...... 164 Future Research ...... 167 Conclusion ...... 169 APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL ...... 173 APPENDIX B: EMAIL INVITATION ...... 174 APPENDIX C: LETTER OF CONSENT ...... 176 References ...... 180

5 List of Figures Figure 1: Demographics of Study Participants ...... 62 Figure 2: BGC Demographic Breakdowns ...... 63 Figure 3 - Code Groups and Members ...... 67 Figure 4: Emergent Care-Based Process ...... 76

List of Tables Table 1 - List of Participants ...... 74

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand how students with historically marginalized identities are developed through their experiences serving on the executive board of departmentally advised student organizations. With marginality and power, forms of resistance, and high impact engagement literature together serving as a framework, this also explored how student leaders’ historically marginalized identities impacted their development in these student organization roles. Utilizing the methods of Constructivist Grounded Theory, this study answers the following two research questions – “how are student leaders with historically marginalized identities developed while serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations;” and “in what ways do student leaders with historically marginalized identities exercise power in their involvement choices and involvement experiences.” Data from this study was collected through intensive interviews in accordance with Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology and included 20 student leaders who had served at least a full term in an executive board position and held at least one historically marginalized identity. Additionally, I observed student leaders in action at three virtual student events and a portion of one partially recorded executive board meeting. Data was analyzed inductively then for the impacts of identity.

Through the constant comparative method of Grounded Theory, I condensed 887 initial codes into 41 codes across 6 themes. From the data emerged the Care-Based Process of Student Leader

Development.

The Care-Based Process of Student Leader Development focus on what student leaders saw as the main acts of care that caused their development among various outcomes including sense of belonging, career readiness and training, persistence, academic interest development, and personal growth. The process starts with what I have termed a “Call In” that invites the

8 student into community and increasingly into deeper levels of engagement with the organization.

After the Call In, student leaders are met with what I have termed “Stretch Work” that both challenges them to grow to meet the work required of them, forces them to engage others with different backgrounds and perspectives than their own by working on teams with others, and affords them an opportunity for agentic leadership that allows them to advocate for and actively create the community they wish to see. Finally, as the student leaders navigate their stretch work they are met with holistic support from students and their advisors that permeate through their lives, creates an open and welcoming environment where they can experiment and receive candid feedback from their peers and advisors. Throughout the entire Care-Based Process, identity can manifest as both a barrier and bridge for the students. Initially, some of their marginalized identities as a result of interacting with the campus environment can serve as a barrier, but when they are met with care either from people or from the institution in the form of support, those same barriers can turn into bridges helping guide students in who and what they connect with on campus. Identity also often serves as the driver of student leaders’ covert resistance to the dominant forms of culture on campus, giving them organizing targets of which they use the authority of their positions to resist and program against.

Chapter 1: Introduction

I recently met with a colleague at a large, public university in the South to discuss our common research interests. After I shared some emerging highlights from this study, she got excited and shared with me the following story. A Black Undergraduate woman was meeting with her to discuss career interests. The student was interested in fashion and had excitedly join the team charged with executing the campus’s Black Fashion Show – a campus tradition for the university’s Black community. The Fashion Show had experienced exponential growth over the years buoyed by its popularity. As a part of her duties, she had to work with and manage various vendors among other things. When she went to meet with her academic advisor, she shared this involvement experience with her advisor. Her advisor told her that her experiences on the

Fashion Show was great, but that she should also get involved in the fashion student organization sponsored by college. The student shared her experience with my colleague who is also a Black woman. She felt like she had a more impactful experience in helping to plan the Black Fashion show than she would have had in the college-sponsored fashion student organization. It’s important to note that the college-sponsored organization tends to be a white-centric space. I share this story with you now because in my experience as a practitioner of student affairs and high impact engagement, I often challenge colleagues to critically consider what makes certain student experiences more valid than others. This student clearly had an impactful experience helping to plan the Black Fashion Show but was still told by her well-meaning advisor that she should purse what was considered by her advisor to be a more valid experience recognized by the academic college of which she studies.

This experience mirrors some of my undergraduate experiences where I led the Black student organization in our mass communications school but would still hear ever so often from

10 faculty and staff about joining the other, “professional” student organizations in the college. If I were to don my critical lens to view this situation, I’d ask – what made the Black Fashion Show experience less valid? One might answer that it was less valid because it was created through a group not sponsored by related academic department. But to that I’d ask, why did the academic department sponsor one experience over the other? Oftentimes, these Black spaces are created on campus by students who historically were not let into the white spaces or had trouble navigating the white spaces. A perfect example of this is the rise of Black Student Unions across the country that started as a direct result of Black students at San Francisco State University to organize to create a more inclusive campus and create a counterspace for Black people on campus that was actually dedicated to action (Whiting, 2012). Students continued to create counterspaces for Black students on many other college campuses and within various disciplines on the same campuses. Yet these experiences resulting from the counterspaces still seem to not be recognized or held in as high of an esteem by the academic colleges. Is this because they are done by Black students for the Black community? When we don’t interrogate the foundation on which we deem certain experiences valid and others less valid, we are doomed to extend the inequalities found on the campuses of most higher education institutions.

Higher education institutions were built as places of exclusion for rich, white, men often by slave labor and the labor of poorly paid minorities on land that in some way, shape or form, was stolen from Black and Brown people – most often Indigenous people (Cole, 2020; Stein

2020; Brown, 2003; Brown, 2012; Karabel, 2005). In his chronicle of this history of the Black

Freedom Movement told through the actions of college presidents. Cole (2020) asserts that institutions have finally started to acknowledge how they benefited and even profited off the institution of slavery, 175 years in the making. Cole (2020) further asserts that the actions of

11 college presidents have intersected the struggle for Black freedom in many ways. He details the ways campuses pushed often Black and Brown communities out of their neighborhoods to make room for expansion or the make the neighborhoods surrounding their campuses more

“desirable.” Cole (2020) focuses on the exclusionary and racist practices colleges engaged in around the 1960s that continues through the present day, but other scholars chronicle even earlier exclusionary and racial based practices of growing universities for student populations deemed desirable to the institutions at those times. Stein (2020) also details how state institutions used the Morrill Act to seize land from Indigenous people in the mid 1800s. Karabel (2005) details how elite universities in the US have been architects of discrimination in the country, working to keep non-white and non-wealthy students out of their institutions since 1990. He pays particular attention and detail to the ways these institutions worked through policy creation and testing to exclude Jewish and Asian students. Soares (2007) details how Yale, a representative of elite US universities, actively worked to only allow children of the elite to study at its institution from its inception, using tools like the SAT to block access from other students in the mid 1900s and dispelling the myth that Yale and other elite institutions only about merit and academic prowess.

These findings revealed the active role Yale and other elite intuitions took to engage in social reproduction for the elite.

With white hegemony so deeply rooted in the founding of the higher education system, we would be mistaken to assume it does not serve as a driving force behind many policies and practices of institutions today. Higher education has undergone a retrofitting to make their institutions’ hallowed halls more open and accessible to others, first poorer white men and women, then minorities. I detail this retrofitting in the rest of this introduction. But here I note that this retrofitting has led to more people of color in faculty and administrative roles and to

12 more students of color in higher education institutions. But the institution of higher education as a whole is still overwhelming white. And white hegemony still lingers at the center of our policies, practices, theory, and praxis. I will detail some of these ways in forthcoming chapters, but until we move to decenter whiteness in our theory and praxis, we will continue to further white hegemony and continue to be complicit if not active partners in the social reproduction of the US society.

Retrofitting of Higher Education

With the growth of colleges and universities in the United States, the role of higher education in society has evolved. And with that evolution of the role of higher education came changes in what the American society expected from higher education. During the colonial times of the US, higher education was mainly used to train for ministry. After the revolutionary war, higher education institutions’ focuses expanded to include medicine and law. The Morrill Act, one of the landmark pieces of legislation that would fundamentally change the landscape of higher education, was passed in 1862. Through the Morrill Act, the federal government granted the sale of land in each state and directed the proceeds to be utilized to build public universities.

This caused a rise of land grant universities in the Midwest and ultimately across the entire country. In addition to drastically increasing access to institutions of higher education, the

Morrill Act also shifted the focus of higher education institutions from educating the sons of wealthy families to also providing what some called a “useful education,” with classes and technical programs focused on science and agriculture. The federal government would continue to contribute to higher education fundamentally changing its landscape and function. The G.I.

Bill passed in 1944 would open the doors of the universities to veterans of World War II and their children, ushering in a golden age of higher education. The federal government also enacted

13 the Higher Education Act of 1965, which provided a lot of funding to students by way of grants and work study continuing the trend of expanding access to higher education institutions (Thelin,

2004).

With expanded access to higher education came shifts in the role higher education was expected to play in society. Initially higher education was seen as a finishing school for the men of the wealthiest, most elite families in society, though universities did not cost that much to attend. As the doors of higher education institutions were flung open, society began to view these institutions as viable means for social mobility. Poorer white men seized upon the opportunity to give their male children the opportunity to be considered more equal among their richer contemporaries. Soon access to higher education institutions would be expanded to women and people of color and its role as an equalizer no matter the station in life to which one is born began to cement in the mind of society. The expectations of higher education institutions shifted from helping students become learned individuals to preparing students for their intended careers, and the focus of the curriculum of higher education institutions shifted to match those expectations to the chagrin of some educators (Thelin, 2004).

Grubb & Lazerson (2005) called this shift from a moral focus of education to a vocational or professional focus (or the vocalization of higher education as they call it) the

Education Gospel. The Education Gospel advocated for communities to prepare for the economy’s move from industrial based positions to positions requiring more knowledge or specific skill by investing in higher education. Grubb & Lazerson (2005) argue that though the

Education Gospel led to a boom in higher education institutions, it ultimately exacerbated inequalities because land grant and other institutions that were supposed to provide access all sought to emulate the most selective, private institutions.

Any non-romanticized discussion of land grant institutions and the forming / expanding of public institutions as a whole, must come with the acknowledgement of the entanglements of higher education institutions with slavery and the dispossession of Indigenous tribes, as aforementioned. Stein (2020) discusses how the land grants given in the Morrill Act were only possible because of the vigorous campaign by the federal government to steal native land and in the nineteenth century. Stein (2020) states that to create land grant institutions, the US government had to:

First assert and secure its title over Indigenous lands. Next, it transferred some of those

lands to individual states to be sold on the market; the profits from those sales were then

used to buy stocks, again on the market, so that interest from those stocks (again, on the

market) could fund the public universities in perpetuity (p. 222).

Thus, from the very conception of land grant institutions, they were entangled in this capitalistic, intentional dispossession of indigenous people. And since the expansion of higher education ended up benefitting the white middle class by helping them gain access to additional resources for social mobility, the expansion of higher education also cemented the white, middle class’s investment in the colonialist accumulation practices the federal government had to partake in to actually get the land sold through the Morrill Act. Scholars argue this investment makes it harder to challenge the imperial, and oftentimes, exploitative founding of higher education institutions

(Brown, 2003; Brown, 2012; Stein 2020).

Higher education is under siege, according to some scholars. Altbach., Berdahl, &

Gumport (2011) argue that the state of ferment surrounding higher education is due in part to this new focus of what they term the Four As – Access, Attrition, Affordability, and Accountability.

In the 2000s as state budgets began to dip, higher education institutions began receiving

15 increased pressure to prove that its functions ultimately led to tangible, positive outcomes for students. As what some scholars have called an “assault” on higher education continued, universities were challenged on the high number of students enrolling in schools only to never matriculate. Student Affairs attempted to prove the learning that occurred within its units to more closely align with the academic missions of the universities in hopes of staving off budget cuts facing some universities. Student Affairs attempted to highlight its positive impact on retention, matriculation, and career readiness of students. High Impact Practices are the latest method

Student Affairs utilizes to claim its centrality to the core academic mission of higher education institutions. But too often, the most dominant voices shaping literature and research around high impact engagement and high impact practices are predominantly researchers at institutes and older, and most often whiter faculty who are not having to actually implement high impact engagement programs on the ground.

Recent years have bought a rise in research by practitioners such as Adam Peck’s work on student employment (Peck & Callahan, 2019) and his work on career-readiness skill building in student leadership programming (Peck, 2018) and myriad dissertations are found exploring every aspect of high impact practices on college campuses. But too often the myriad of dissertations are easily overlooked, and practitioner research, similar to the research of institutes and many faculty overlook the individual experiences and voices of students and the managerial professionals doing this work in search of finding empirical data through large data sets to

“prove” what is happening on the ground. This disconnection between the research and theory development of high impact engagement and the actual lived experiences of those these practices serve and those enacting these practices on the ground continue to exacerbate the inequalities of access and support for students with historically marginalized identities. And the rush of Student

Affairs units to cling to their academic brothers in hopes that the innate centrality to the core mission of the institution these academic units possess might linger on student affairs thus providing shielding from draconian budget cuts only serves to further infect student affairs practice with the latent white hegemony often centered in the academy. This study seeks to disrupt this embrace and call for student development design that actually works for students most marginalized on campus, because it is built centering their experiences. Below, I close this chapter with a further detailing of the purpose of this study and a cataloging of the content to come.

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study is to center the voices and experiences of student leaders with historically marginalized identities on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations to determine the process of how students are developed through their engagement on these boards. Because this study centers students with historically marginalized identities, the process of development that emerges will account for the role / impact of identity in student leaders’ development through their engagement experiences, including the ways student leaders with historically marginalized identities experience marginalization and power as a result of their identities. Though many scholars have called for utilizing the voices and experiences of students with historically marginalized identities to create theories of engagement instead of data about the students, no real study has emerged doing so. Also, no studies have sought to use the experiences of students with historically marginalized identities in emerging high impact practices to counter the main narratives in high impact engagement literature. This study will fill that void and shed light on the process of engagement for students with historically marginalized identities in high impact engagement experiences. The two central research questions this study

17 answers are:– “how are student leaders with historically marginalized identities developed while serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations;” and “in what ways do student leaders with historically marginalized identities exercise power in their involvement choices and involvement experiences.”

Dissertation Overview

This dissertation is comprised of five chapters. In chapter two, I review relevant existing literature that showcases high impact engagement and high impact practices and their foundational underpinnings. I review existing literature on Critical Race Theory and its applications to education and education research. I then cover critical critiques of student development theory and high impact engagement literature and cover emerging trends of high impact engagement literature. Finally, I present a conceptual framework showcasing a critical critique of high impact engagement literature that frames my research in this study. In chapter three, I outline the ways I pair Constructivist Grounded Theory with the Critical Race Theory tenants of Marginality and Power and the Forms of Resistance. Finally, in chapters four and five

I present study findings and the emergent Care-Based Process of Student Leader Development and discuss its situation in existing literature and its implications for theory and practice.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Grounded theorists have had much argument on the role of literature reviews in the process of creating theory with some arguing that it should come only after the theory had inductively emerged from the data and others arguing for its use as a sensitizing concept that only provides beginning points for thought making space to also follow the threads that emerge form participants. Constructivist Grounded Theory allows for the use of existing literature as sensitizing concepts. (Charmaz, 2014) Thus, in this chapter, I will review the literature that forms my thought around the topic of the development of student leaders with marginalized identities on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations. First, I briefly introduce the concept of High Impact Practices. Then, I review the organs of Critical Race Theory and its applications to education and higher education. I then review critical critiques of high impact engagement literature, review literature on the development of students during college which serves as the foundational underpinnings of high impact engagement literature and review the challenges of equitable access to HIPs and emergent high impact practices. I end with my thoughts on a conceptual framework that blends the high impact engagement literature and its critiques with the Critical Race Theory tenant of Marginalization and Power with Forms of

Resistance.

In 2008, George Kuh released his seminal work on high impact engagement, finding eleven high impact practices (HIP). These practices are: first-year seminars and experiences, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative assignments and projects, undergraduate research, diversity and global learning, ePortfolios, service learning and community-based learning, internships, and capstone courses and projects.

Kuh (2008) also found key features of high impact activities. Those key features are: the tasks

19 demand considerable time and effort on purposeful tasks, they include substantive interaction with faculty and peers, students experience diversity through these experiences, the students receive frequent feedback, and students are able to apply classroom knowledge to real world challenges. Kuh (2008) found that participation in HIPs were shown to cause higher retention rates in students, and students who participated in at least two HIPs were more successful in their initial steps after college.

This seminal work from Kuh has served as a foundation to a large area of continued research in higher education and has led to the erecting of entire departments dedicated to putting this work and literature into practice. But the literature of high impact engagement fell into similar traps that has ensnared other areas of student development theory, namely the exclusion of students with historically marginalized identities from the creation of the theoretical concepts.

Succumbing to this common pitfall of student development theory has left high impact engagement literature particularly vulnerable to critical critiques. To better understand these critical critiques, I will first review Critical Race Theory and its applications to education and higher education. I will then review major areas of critical critiques of high impact engagement literature, review this idea of development that also serves as the foundation of high impact engagement literature, and review new directions in high impact engagement literature before I give a conceptual framework for this study.

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory was born out of legal studies by Derrick Bell, the first black

Harvard law professor. Bell argued that racism permeates every facet of society and is interwoven into our institutions. Though many themes and tenants of Critical Race Theory exists, in their seminal work on Critical Race Theory, Delgado and Stefanic (2001) introduced

20 what they termed the four “hallmark” themes of critical race theory – interest convergence / material determinism, revisionist interpretations of history, a critique of liberalism, structural determinism -- and the concept of storytelling, counter storytelling and the use of narrative that has proved vital to CRT. CRT work in education has distilled the various CRT themes into the following five tenants – counter storytelling, the permanence of racism, whiteness as property, interest convergence, and the critique of liberalism (Ladson-Billings, 1998, Decuir & Dixon,

2004).

Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) first introduced critical race theory as an analytical framework for the institutions of education. Primarily, Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) explored the intersection of race (whiteness) and property and how this concept enters into education.

Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) argued that the property functions of whiteness are right of disposition (rewarding students for conforming to perceived white norms), right to use and enjoyment (the structure of the curriculum and the ability to fully use the school facilities), reputation and status property (the thought that to identify a school or school program as non- white automatically diminishes its reputation), and the absolute right to exclude (re-segregation of schools by tracking). Ladson-Billings (1998) further extends the framework of critical race theory to education by exploring the other four tenets of critical race theory – racism is normal and embedded in every fabric of society, the use of counter-storytelling to analyze myths and dispute narratives rooted in power by including the voices of those on the margins, the critique of liberalism, and intersection, a term first coined by Crenshaw (1989) who studied the compounding effects of race and gender for black women navigating the law (Delgado &

Stefancic, 2001).

Critical Race theorists argue that the prevailing and predominate narratives in society centers whiteness and white stories because these common narratives are dictated by the majority and thus oftentimes excludes the voices of people on the margins. This difference in perspectives of the majority and people on the margins was first alluded to in Derrick Bell’s (1992) short story “The Space Traders” found in “Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of

Racism.” In “The Space Traders,” African American citizens and white citizens witnessed the exact same set of circumstances but had completely difference reactions to the set of events and saw the events in completely different ways. The fable sees the narrative of the majority become the main narrative, and becomes the narrative that public policy and laws begin to be built upon.

Critical Race Theory acknowledges and affirms the legitimacy of the lived experiences of people on the margins (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Delgado (1989) emphasizes the need for naming one’s reality. Counter-Storytelling provides a way to combat these common narratives rooted in whiteness by offering stories of people on the margins either to dispute existing narratives or to center the stores of people of color in general without responding or refuting other points

(Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

Solórzano & Yosso (2002) details three forms of counter-narratives / counter-stories can take. Personal narratives / personal stories are often autobiographical and shares an individual’s stories with forms of racism and sexism. Other people’s stories and narratives are mainly biographical and offers an analysis of people of color racialized and gendered experiences with

U.S. institutions. Finally, the third form of counter-narratives is the composite counter-story or composite counter-narrative that draws on various data points to create a composite story that is used to counter mainstream narratives. Utilizing Strauss & Corbin’s theoretical sensitivity (1990) and Delgado’s cultural intuition (1998), Solórzano & Yosso (2002) create counter stories from

22 the data collected during the research process, existing literature, researchers’ professional experiences, and researchers’ personal experiences. Solórzano & Yosso (2002) argue that counter-storytelling serves four functions – they help build community with people on the margins by putting a familiar face to educational theory and practice, challenge the perceived wisdom at society’s center, the open new windows into the realities of people on the margins, they teach others that we can construct another world that is richer by combining elements from the story and the current reality.

The permanence of racism has been one of the most integral tenants in the CRT framework. Bell (1992) argues that racism is a permanent fixture of American society. CRT scholars argue that racism controls every facet of our society including political, economic, and social facets. CRT Scholars argue that racism is not just individualized action but rather systemic and pervasive. Racial realists argue the racism has been weaponized by white people to create hierarchical structures in society and that it has even been used whenever they needed to enact control over a minority group to take material possessions. Thus, it is incumbent on CRT scholars to unmask racism in all of its various permutations. (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Decuir &

Dixon, 2004; Delgado & Stefanic, 2001)

Interest Convergence refers to the notion that people of color only ever advance when their interests converge with that of white people typically white men with little to no disruption of the quality of life to whites. CRT scholars point to the fact what white people were the greatest beneficiaries of civil rights legislation as evidence of this theme. CRT scholars in education point to policies in affirmative action and selective admissions criteria as examples of interest convergence still taking place in the education system, including the higher education

23 system (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Decuir & Dixon, 2004; Delgado & Stefanic, 2001; Ledesma &

Calderón, 2015).

The critique of liberalism has also been a founding tenet of Critical Race Theory. From the standpoint, Delgado & Stefanic (2001) argue that liberalism has fostered a sense of colorblindness and neutral principles of constitutional law, which oftentimes result in harm on people of color. Delgado & Stefanic (2001) point to action (on inaction) on things such as hate speech often aimed at racial and sexual minorities people and the lower court’s ability to narrow landmark decisions like Brown V. Board of Education as examples where race neutral laws don’t seem to help people of color. In fact, Delgado & Stefanic (2001) argue that only “aggressive, color conscious efforts to change the way things are will do much to ameliorate misery” (p.22) because colorblind policies only allow redress of the egregious and not of the normal, everyday, racial acts that keep people of color subjugated.

Though not originally included in Ladson-Billings (1995) adaption of Critical Race

Theory into education, intersectionality has become one of the leading tenants of Critical Race

Theory in education research. (Mitchell, Simmons & Greyerbiehl, 2014; Museus & Griffin,

2011; Torres, Jones & Renn, 2009). Crenshaw (1989) first coined the term intersectionality when discussing the increased marginality black women felt in the legal system. With this term and critique, Crenshaw joined other scholars highlighting the compounding marginalization often faced by women of color and others with more than one marginalized identity (Collins, 1986,

Zavella, 1991, Frye, 1992).

Critical Scholars note the though many view marginalization through a lens of oppression, it can also be a space of power. hooks (1990) argues that choosing a life on the margins as opposed to integration into white hegemony offers opportunities for power and

24 resistance. hooks (1990) further adds that it is only on the margins that you have the power to say no to the colonizer and no to the “downpresser.” Collins (1992) argues that the distinctive angle life on the margins provides Black women can be used as a strength. Anzaldua (1987) found a similar theme in her semi-autobiographical work detailing the mestiza and her fluidity and flexibility born through having to navigate many different worlds with many intersecting marginalized identities. But Anzaldua (1987) finds that the new mestiza offers unique opportunities to anticipate cultural expectations and resists them at will because having to exist among different worlds. Solórzano & Villalpando (1998) take these concepts merged with

Giroux's (1983) notions of oppositional behaviors to evaluate the forms of resistance students with historically marginalized identities choose to employ. Solórzano & Villalpando (1998) argue that those forms of resistance or oppositional behavior can be overt, where students chose to exist outside of the expectations teachers and administration officials have of them, or covert, where students take quieter paths of resistance often within established power to push back on oppression.

Harper (2012) tackled colorblindness in his analysis of how 255 peer-reviewed articles on race purportedly using Critical Race Theory in some form on analysis or understanding discussed race. Harper (2012) found that rarely was racism explicitly named as a potential factor for racial differences uncovered in research. Also, when writing about racial differences, scholars often used “semantic substitutes” for racism. And if researchers used the words “racist” or

“racism,” they used them sparingly. Harper’s (2012) final finding was that most of the scholarship using CRT was uncritical in the end. Of the 255 articles, only five studies actually used CRT as a framework. Those five articles tended to use the term “racism” and “racist”

25 throughout the articles. Other studies tended to focus om more individualized racism then systemic racism (Harper, 2012).

Decuir & Dixon (2004) argued that Critical Race Theory as a methodology had yet to fully utilized in education. In fact, of the five main analytical themes in Critical Race Theory,

Decuir and Dixon (2004) argued that counter storytelling and the permanence of racism are the main tenants educational research utilized at the time. Ladson-Billings (2005) echoed this sentiment when she acknowledged her worry that scholars of education tend to focus on counter storytelling at the detriment to the other tenants of critical race theory the counter stories should be highlighting. Perhaps in the 15 years that have passed since Ladson-Billings Decuir, and

Dixon issued their critics, educational scholars have listened. In their review of the literature on

Critical Race Theory, Ledesma & Calderón (2015) argue that critical race theory stands on firm footing in education based on the last decade of work. Ledesma & Calderón (2015) finds that literature on critical race theory has expanded to focus on three primary topics – colorblindness, selective admissions processes, and campus racial climate.

Critical Critiques of HIP

With an understanding of the progression of Critical Race Theory and its applications to education and higher education institutions, we must review how some critiques of HIPs and student development theory in general have been based off tenants of Critical Race Theory. Lee

(2015) brings the tenants of marginality and power into higher education setting by arguing that in this setting, marginality and power is the ability of individuals to access and master institutional privilege, including formal forms of power such as administrative structure and informal sources such as understanding cultural norms and an overall sense of belonging.

Scholars argue that white, middle class men are the typical basis for most university culture which pushes a certain marginality on people who don’t possess those identities.

In their publication, Patton, McEwen, Rendon & Howard-Hamilton (2007) explored how the tenets of critical race theory could apply to theory in Student Affairs at higher education institutions. Patton et al (2007) argue that theory has been fundamental in how student affairs practitioners approach their jobs and how they develop students. But with the exception of racial identity development models and race as one social identity, student development theorists have largely ignored race and racism in their theory formations by either not discussing it formally or by not even having study participants who were people of color. Patton et al (2007) also argue that institutional leadership at many universities is still overly white, which reinforces whiteness as power, and faculty at colleges are also overwhelmingly white and they exercise a large amount of control over their class curriculum and are easily able to imbue their classroom curriculum with their own epistemological and ontological assumptions which are often rooted in western thought. Dill & Zambrana (2009) echo these thoughts and argue that to truly be intersectional, the lived experiences of marginalized people should be the starting point for theory creation. Nash (2008) further argues that people with marginalized identities have an epistemic advantage that scholars should employ when creating visions of a just society.

Lange & Stewart (2019) further advocate for examining the literature of high impact practices from a critical theory lens. They argue that High Impact Practices were created with data about students and not from students. They further argue that most of this data comes from predominately white institutions and all expect one of the eleven high impact practices are determined and structured by faculty members typically with little to no input from students.

Stewart & Nicolazzo (2018) also details their concept of the whiteness of higher education, and in particular, the whiteness of HIPs. They argue that in creating HIPs differential access and varying institution types were not acknowledged in the literature, yet HIPs have been presented as a “one-size-fit-all” approach that further entrenches the whiteness of what is considered to be the traditional student body. This results in little being done to eliminate inequities among student populations and only reproduces the marginalization and oppression of students on the margins of society. Stewart & Nicolazzo (2018) call for a trickle up approach that foregrounds the most vulnerable student populations arguing that centering those students will create frameworks that are applicable to all other students.

Development

With the above review of the critical critiques of high impact engagement, it is important to know the foundation of high impact engagement literature. Scores of higher education scholars have attempted to measure and model the myriad forms of impact college attendance has on students. These studies mainly fall into two categories – student development theory and college impact. Student development theory is often influenced by psychological theories and investigates the ways students’ identities, morals, values, and cognition develops over their time at college. College Impact literature, on the other hand, focuses more on external, environmental, and sociological conditions and origins of change (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005).

Kuh (1995) argues that studies utilizing the college impact approach seek to understand the outcomes of the interactions of students and their institutions’ environments.

Thus, learning and personal development are a function of reciprocal influences among

such institutional characteristics as size and control, such student characteristics as sex

and ethnicity, and enacted perceptual and behavioral environments produced through

contacts with peers, faculty, staff, and others including the types of activities in which

students engage (126-127).

Pascarella & Terenzini (2005) and others well document the outcomes students experience as a result of attending college among these nine categories: verbal, quantitative, and subject matter competency; cognitive skills and intellectual growth; psychosocial change; attitudes and values; moral development; educational attainment and persistence; career and economic impacts; and quality of life after college. And Kuh (1995) found that students attributed growth in 7 of these 9 categories to their out-of-the-classroom experiences including their student leadership experiences in what he termed leadership responsibilities.

Astin (1984) found that students learn more the more they are involved in both academic and co-curricular activities. Astin (1984) furthers his theory by saying the quality and quantity of involvement will both impact the amount of development and learning the student will undergo.

And the more energy the student places into her or his involvement, the more they will get out of the involvement experience. Student leaders invest even more time and energy into their experience. They spend endless hours poring over budgets, stressing over recruiting members, and engaging in debates at meetings over decisions ranging from details of events to the vision their organizations are taking.

In their assessment of the research on the effects of college on students, Pascarella &

Terenzini (2005) found substantial evidence that suggests that involvement and engagement in extracurricular and social activities during college, including Fraternity and Sorority Life, has an overall positive impact on the self-assessments of students concerning their development of career-related skills. Pascarella & Terenzini (2005) also found that both involvement in diversity experiences and service activities during college appear to enhance students’ perceptions of how

29 well college fostered their career skills and prepared them for their current jobs. In their updated volume, Mayhew et al (2016) found evidence that further supports the positive impact of engagement in student activities on campus including the positive association with retention and graduation and the development of leadership skills and even the development of racial identity when students are engaged in ethnicity-based student organizations.

Though most HIPs identified by Kuh in his original study are used the expand classroom curriculum by attaching outside-of -the -classroom experiences, such as service-learning components to course work, student affairs units began to implement high-impact engagement programs on campus and expanded practices outlined in the research such as living-learning communities and summer reading programs. Kuh (2008) acknowledges similar benefits from completely out-of-the-classroom experiences, but does not truly study them because of the often- small number of students who have access to those opportunities (p. 19)l;

In their review of High Impact Practices after ten years, Kuh, et al (2017) argue that the original thinking around HIPs will expand because of growing pressure from university heads to chronicle the true experiences students are having while in their halls. Partnerships are springing up between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs units to enact and create new best practices to chronicle learning and to scale up the reach and pipeline of high impact practices on campus.

Kuh et al (2017) argue this will lead to a rise of a new class of HIPs that are “characterized by the same mix of experiential immersion, compensatory benefits, and contextualized learning”

(p.15). Kuh et al argues the best candidates in this group include peer leadership and mentorship, campus employment, campus publications, and intensive skill-building activities such as athletics, choirs, and bands. This development is monumental because it both underscores the important of this research project and it widens the family of high impact practices to include

30 activities outside of the academic arena that can be shaped more by students’ individual and personal interests.

Researchers have spent the past twelve years analyzing the effectiveness of HIPs. Though these studies have been wide-ranging, two main areas of critique have emerged – the equitable accessibility of HIPs including financial accessibility, and the scalability / standardization of

HIPs across institution types and various programs.

Equitable Access

One of the key findings in the Kuh (2008) report introducing high impact practices was the fact that students from underserved populations within higher education tend to benefit the most from participating in HIPs. Utilizing a NSSE data set of more than 25,300 students from 38 institutions across California, Oregon, and Wisconsin, Finley and McNair (2013) found that though transfer students engaged in significantly more high impact practices, first-generation students engaged in significantly fewer high impact practices than students who were not first generation. White students also engaged in more high impact practices than black students, though the difference was not always statistically significant. White students did engage in significantly more high impact practices than Asian American and Hispanic students. This data is important because Finley and McNair (2013) also found that students who participated in any single high impact practice reported a much more positive perception of their learning than students who did not participate in that same HIP. And students who participated in multiple

HIPs had a “measurable, significant, and positive relationship between students’ cumulative perception in multiple high-impact practices, on the one hand, and their perceived engagement in deep learning and their perceived gains in learning, on the other” (P.9). The same benefits of engagement in multiple HIPs are seen in students from underserved populations. First generation

31 students who participate in one to two HIPs reported levels of engagement in deep approaches to learning and perceived gains that were 11 percent higher than first generation students who did not participate in HIPs. The perceived gains and deep approaches to learning levels raised to 24 percent higher when first-generation students participate in three or four HIPs and to 35 percent when first generation students participated in five to six HIPs compared to first generation students who did not participate in HIPs. Transfer students showed similar trends. Transfer students who participated in one or two HIPs reported levels of engagement and deep approaches to learning 12 percent higher, those who participated in three of four HIPs reported levels that was 26 percent higher, and those who participated in five or six HIPs reported levels that was 40 percent higher than transfer students who did not participate in HIPs. Students from underserved racial minority groups reported similar trends. African American students who participated in one or two HIPs reported levels that ere 11 percent higher, in three or four HIPs they reported levels that were 21 percent higher, and in five or six HIPs they reported levels that were 27 percent higher than students who did not engage in HIPs. Asian American students saw higher reported rates as well with students participating in HIPs at 10 percent, 23 percent, and 47 percent respectively. And Hispanic students also saw an increase in the reported rate of deep approaches to learning and perceived gains with 10 percent, 17 percent, and 26 percent rate increases over students who were not engaged in HIPs respectively (Finley and McNair, 2013).

In their review of access and equity of High Impact Practices, Kinzie et al (2020) found that overall, minority students had access to the eight keys of high impact practices in most HIPs.

They did find that students from minoritized backgrounds had less access to quality HIP experiences in Study Abroad and Internships. And though their study results indicate what they termed significant proportions of racial minorities had access to the elements of quality high

32 impact experiences, they did find the differences in access for racial minorities merited more review.

In her dissertation that examined the impact of financial circumstances on participation in three HIPs – research with a faculty, internships, and senior theses / capstone projects – at 14 large, research intensive universities, Gorny (2017) found evidence that contradicts some claims made in Finley & McNair (2013). Gorny (2017) found that relative to White students, Black students and Hispanic students had statistically equal odds of participating in the three HIPs on which the study focused. Asian and International students had higher odds of participating in research with faculty relative to White students, and International students had higher odds of participating in capstone experiences relative to white students. (Gorny. 2017). Now, Gorny

(2017) did find that first generation students were less likely to participate in research with faculty and in internships than their non- first-generation students which supports the findings in

Finley & McNair (2013).

A surprising finding of the Gorny (2017) study is that students who identified as men were at a relative disadvantage than students who identified as women – men had less odds of participating in research with faculty and in internships. This finding is both surprising but also makes sense given the recent research in higher education. The Finley & McNair (2013) study did not assess sex, so there is no study to compare this finding to. Though man is the privileged gender in society, more research has started to emerge showing that men are not matriculating from universities at the same rate as women. This finding underscores that trend. As far as the difference in the Gorny (2017) findings on the impact of race versus the Finley & McNair (2013) findings on the impact of race, Gorny (2017) points out the study’s focus on large, research intensive universities which often have selective requirements for attendance and garners

33 students interested in certain academic experiences as a potential reason that race did not play more of an impact on the students’ participating in HIPs.

Gorny (2017) studied the impact of students’ financial circumstances on participating in three separate HIPs -- faculty research, internships, and capstones. Gorny (2017) found that financial circumstance, specifically students’ perception of their household income and social class, did not contribute to participation in HIPs no matter how the variable was structured. The only exception was that students in households of less than $65,000 were less likely to participate in research with faculty.

Even if Gorny (2017) did not find financial circumstances to have a statistically significant impact on students’ engagement with HIPs at a macro level, other research have found that personal finances impact students’ ability to be engaged on campus. In the longitudinal, mixed method survey on how the financial burden of college attendance impact student involvement and experiences throughout the first year of college, Homak, Farrell, &

Jackson (2010) found that first-year students struggled to navigate financial aid systems and often worked to fill in the gaps in finances to cover the full cost of attending college. The study followed 65 students across 4 institutions in the Midwest through their first year in college.

Thirty-seven percent of the students received Pell Grants, 67 percent of the students received federal loans, and 30 percent received private loans. During the first two weeks of school, two- thirds of the students were still searching for jobs, and it took those students up to half of their freshman year to find a job. In a survey featured in the study, 61 percent of the students said that working limited their involvement on campus, and 74 percent of the students surveyed reported that their parents expected them to have a job for pay. At the end of their first year, 51 percent of the participants said they found it difficult to very difficult to pay for college expenses, and 74

34 percent of the participants reported that their parents did not deposit money into their checking or savings account during their first year. Homak et al (2010) found that all of the participants were interested in being involved on campus initially. But due to either the costs of the different organizations like student government or fraternity and sorority organizations or due to their work schedules, the students found themselves unable to maintain involvement in these student organizations. Also, 100 percent of the students were involved in at least one social group at the beginning of the year, but by the second semester, nearly 75 percent of the participants reported that they had to end their participation in the groups because of their work schedules. Students in the study shared that not being able to participate in these clubs left them feeling isolated from the campus, but they felt they had not other choice because they needed the job to help themselves financially, and they felt they needed their college degree to be successful in the pursuits later in life (Homak et al, 2010).

Young & Keup (2018) did a quantitative analysis on data from 4,016 peer leaders to examine the impact on different forms of compensation on the skills development, institutional interaction, academic commitment, employability outcomes, and academic performance of peer leaders. The forms of compensation included course credit, financial (including room and board) or none (volunteer). Young & Keup (2018) found that course credit as a form of compensation for peer leadership had the most consistent positive impact across all five outcomes though the impact was small. Financial compensation had s small positive predictive power on institutional interaction outcomes as the most stringent level of statistical significance, and peer leadership with financial compensation was not significantly related to academic commitment or employability outcomes. Peer leadership with financial compensation was marginally significant in a negative way with academic success and a marginally significant positive relationship with

35 skill development. Volunteer peer leadership experiences had neither a positive or negative relationship with skill development, institutional interaction, academic commitment, and employability outcomes, and had a marginally significant negative relationship with academic success (Young & Keup, 2018). The study also found that a greater number of peer leaders reported financial compensation as their main source of compensation over any of the other sources of compensation. Students use these positions to help reduce their financial barriers. But peer leaders receiving financial compensation reported slightly lower increases in academic success with students who did not receive the financial compensation. And the results showed that financial compensation was negatively associated with reported skill development and academic commitment. Young & Keup (2018) argues that these findings suggest that students see these paid peer leadership positions as jobs and not as leadership opportunities.

Schalewski (2020) found that student engagement and High Impact Practices overall were pathways not to mobility, but to social reproduction. Furthermore, students from higher

SES backgrounds were more likely to access internships which led to an increase in starting salaries, participate in more high impact practices, and were more likely to interact with faculty and experience positive effects from those interactions on degree attainment. Students from lower SES did not experience these gains. Schalweski (2020) argues that institutions need to do more to ensure students basic needs are met, so that students from lower SES are able to access more HIP opportunities.

Peer Mentorship & Sense of Belonging

A final area of research regarding high impact engagement emerging in recent years is peer mentorship both as a new high impact practice and as a practice that fosters a sense of belonging on campus. Peer mentorship refers to both formalized mentorship programs and

36 informal relationships that develop. Peer Mentorship offers first-year students the chance to connect with older peers who help them navigate their new campus. But research has also found great gains for the student leaders who mentor their peers.

By analyzing data from the 2014 National Survey of Student Engagement, Ribera, Miller,

& Dumford (2017) found that African American, Latinx, and Asian students all had lower perceptions of belonging than White students and that first-generation students were also less likely to have favorable perceptions of peer belonging and acceptance. Ribera et al (2017) did find that when these students participate in HIPs and campus student leadership, their perceptions of belonging and institutional acceptance did grow, corroborating the findings of other aforementioned studies. Walters & Kanak (2016) detail the addition of peer mentors as facilitators for their honors college retreat. In that role, student leaders planned the focus of the retreat and hosted activities and discussions for incoming students. Through this experience, the student leaders gained competencies in group facilitation, mentoring, and event planning – skills that also match those gained by students engaged in co-curricular leadership positions on college campuses.

Harper (2013) introduces the term peer pedagogies to showcase the work black students oftentimes undertake to help socialize their black peers who are new to the institution. The older black students often used these opportunities to recruit the new black students to black student organizations that served as a refuge for students of color on predominately white campuses.

These black student organizations, summer bridge programs, and gender-specific black student organizations serve as spaces where students process racial interactions they’ve had on campus.

Sometimes older black students even assign readings to the younger peers. Many of these

37 younger black students say they would not have survived their PWIs without these unofficial networks of black students.

Conceptual Framework

High Impact literature was primarily written by white scholars utilizing data about students without actually utilizing students’ voices to help understand how students are impacted by High Impact Practices (Lange & Stewart, 2019). Because of this flaw in the design and expansion of the body of high impact engagement literature, students with historically marginalized identities participate in HIPs in lesser amounts than their peers with privileged identities and they experience barriers to accessing HIPs because of factors including lower senses of belonging, finances, and compensation for the engagement activities (Homak et al,

2010; Finley & McNair, 2013; Walters & Kanak, 2016; Ribera et al, 2017; Gorny, 2017; Young

& Keup, 2018). To navigate some of the marginalization students with historically marginalized identities sometimes experience, they have been forced to develop peer networks to help students with shared identities better navigate campus power structures (Harper, 2013). And though students report benefits from participating in HIPs when they can access them, Schalewski

(2020) still found that participation in HIPs serve to reproduce society because students with higher socio-economic statuses having better access to HIPs and to faculty members. Though scholars have sought to ascertain the impact of High Impact Practices on students of color and students with historically marginalized identities, the literature will always be found lacking until the voices and lived experiences of students with historically marginalized identities are centered in shaping what elements of high impact experiences matter most and what constitutes high impact experiences (Nash, 2008; Dill & Zambrana, 2009; Stewart & Nicolazzo, 2018). This study seeks to fill that void and is well-suited to answer the two research questions central to this

38 study: how are student leaders with historically marginalized identities developed while serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations; and in what ways do student leaders with historically marginalized identities exercise power in their involvement choices and involvement experiences.

To begin, I conducted a preliminary study with five students engaged in the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations. I found that the elements of their student experience that led to their development in those positions closely matched the keys to high impact practices detailed in Kuh (2008). But the narratives of the study participants counter the two main narratives most often found in the high impact practice literature – HIP centers the academy, and HIPs center faculty.

High Impact Practices center the academy; thus, they center whiteness and aren’t always accessible.

As aforementioned, Patton et al (2007) asserts that whiteness as property rights show up in student affairs because a large amount of power still resides on the academic side of institutions which is still, by and large, predominately white. Certainly, ten out of the eleven named high impact practices are specifically linked to classroom knowledge, and the eleventh high impact practice, internships, is often linked to credited academic courses. Because of this linkage, one must argue that high impact practices are centered in whiteness. They are structured and managed by faculty members and are often times rooted in whatever values, epistemologies, and ontologies those faculty members choose to view their work through. Also, by focusing on these eleven practices, the literature excludes other, potentially more accessible potential high impact practices.

The experiences of the students in my pre-study directly contradict this linkage of high impact practices to academia. The eleven recognized High Impact Practices by Kuh and associates are all tangential to the classroom, and oftentimes require students to spend additional time outside of classroom working on projects. The three students from lower SES backgrounds all spoke about their need to make money to both fund their educational pursuits and lifestyles as well as sometimes also needing to send money home to help support their families. Thus, the students only participated in high impact engagement experiences that either paid them or allowed them to either explore their identity or serve the racial community of which they identified. But the current list of eleven HIPs does not feature paid experiences. And the current list of experiences excludes the culturally relevant experiences the students engaged in without payment.

High Impact Practices centers faculty.

The literature on High Impact Practices also centers faculty members while oftentimes overlooking the large body of managerial professionals usually saddled with the implementation of high impact engagement programs. This centering of faculty members further entrenches HIP in whiteness because, as aforementioned, the faculty side of the higher education house is still overwhelmingly white and thus is imbued with western and white epistemological and ontological frames (Patton et al 2007, Lange & Stewart, 2019). It also leaves little room for outside methods to be used to increase access to HIPs are engage a broader array of students in

HIPs without unduly burdening the few faculty of color employed. The focus of HIP literature on faculty also ignores a large population of professionals also doing this work – managerial professionals. Patton et al 2007 argues that most times these managerial staff members hail from more diverse backgrounds than their academic counterparts. And certainly, a large portion of

40 developing students that takes place on medium to large college campuses typically are curated by these managerial professionals outside of the academic classroom setting.

The data gained from students in the pre-study certainly dispute the fact that faculty members are the center of development on campus. The five students all tout their advisors as their chief mentors on campus. Some students even shared that they haven’t had substantial interaction with faculty members outside of the classroom because of the differing power dynamic they perceived. Because of the amount of time they spent with their student organization advisor, the students formed strong bonds with the professionals. These interactions serve many functions for the students. They help students see a broader possibility of what is possible by challenging the student leaders’ current perspectives. They force students to reflect on the unfolding of the overall experience and individual moments of the student’s experience. And they often cause students to reflect on how the student navigate systems as they seek to implement change.

Student leaders also noted that their advisors helped them with their academic progression, connecting them resources around the university and providing general support for the students if they were found to be struggling and teaching them how to better manage their time.

The above review of the literature and the findings of the preliminary study highlight the problems caused by the limiting view current literature on HIPs provides on the development of students with historically marginalized identities. The literature review of critical critiques of

HIPs and the findings of the pre-study also provides a great starting place for this study. First, I must continue to explore the development process occurring in departmentally advised student organizations simply because students with historically marginalized identities are choosing these spaces as their avenues for engagement, almost seemingly as a counterspace. It is important to further explore the spaces these students are choosing. Also, by centering the stories and

41 experiences of students with historically marginalized identities to determine how students are developed through their experiences on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations, we will gain a broader understanding of how students are developed through HIPs and use that new understanding the expand the existing body of literature on HIPs.

I focus on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations because my experience as practitioner led me to identify these students as having one of the most highly in-depth engagement experiences possible. Students in these positions often times have access to a large amount of resources in their stewardship to provide needed programming, activities, and services to the greater campus community. In stewarding these resources, the students have to work with their peers, lead other contingents of students, and work with stakeholders to create and defend their thoughts and ideas. These organizations are also paired with professional staff of the university who meet individually with each executive board member, as well as meet with the collective executive board and the entire organization. These staff members are able to provide valuable, personalized feedback to these student executive board members about their performance and overall effectiveness in impacting change / fulfilling their initiatives in their student organizations. Departmentally advised organizations include but are not limited to student activities boards, student government, student media entities, student employment (as long as it is structured in this way with meaningful work), fraternity and sorority life councils, and residence hall associations. These experiences have also already been acknowledged by the body of HIP literature, just not fully studied and not elevated to the full standing of a recognized

HIP (Kuh, 2008).

I focus on marginality because it is an opportune way to situate the study around student leaders from various non-privileged identities at the university including race, ethnicity, gender,

42 sexual orientation, first generation college status, etc. Though Lee (2015) described marginality and power as the ability to access and master institutional power, which is more easily accessed by individuals possessing privileged identities, Lee (2015) also argues that power and marginality exists more as a spectrum than as a binary. Scholars have found that students often create forms of resistance and counter spaces on the margins. If student leaders from marginalized background are choosing these executive board experiences over more traditional HIPs, are they doing so as a form of resistance to the academy? Have these organizations that are more controlled by students than the classrooms traditional HIPs are often tethered to become counter spaces for these marginalized students? This research study lets me explore those topics. In the next chapter, I will outline the methodology and methods I will use to further explore this topic.

43 Chapter 3: Methodology

The research questions I pose are well-suited for a Constructivist Grounded Theory study. The research questions are -- how are student leaders with historically marginalized identities developed while serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations; and in what ways do student leaders with historically marginalized identities exercise power in their involvement choices and involvement experiences. Researchers haves been interested in how college impacts students for quite some time. And most personal narratives students share around being involved in leadership positions on campus are positive with students oftentimes claiming that their leadership roles prepared them for their future careers. Researchers have tried to find empirical to support the narratives of student leaders.

Though some studies have been successful in discovering said empirical evidence to support positive results from students’ involvement in extracurricular activities, there remains a gap in the literature that details the process by which students grow and develop personally, cognitively, and in regard to their career readiness as a result of their student leadership experience, particularly on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations. Andy only including students of color as research participants, we will foreground issues of race and build a model for development that speaks to these issues and that does not fall into the trap of colorblindness of which scholars critique the vast majority of student engagement theory.

Grounded Theory

The Grounded Theory methodology was developed in sociology by Barney Glaser and

Anselm Strauss (1967) to combat their assertion that theories often utilized in research did not suit or was inappropriate for participants under study in actual field work. With the Grounded

Theory methodology, Glaser and Strauss believed that instead of pulling theory off a shelf,

44 qualitative research utilizing the Grounded Theory methodology would generate a theory grounded in data from the field, particularly data derived from the actions, interactions, and social processes of people. The end result of the Grounded Theory methodology is a theory or at least a substantive theory complete with a diagram and hypothesis based off data collected from individuals (Creswell & Poth, 2018).

Though Glaser remained consistent in his Grounded Theory philosophy, Strauss (1987) followed by Strauss & Corbin (1990, 1998) begin to move slightly away from the original tenants of Grounded Theory (Cooney, 2010). Cooney (2010) states that the main difference between Glaser and Strauss is their approach to the data – Strauss & Corbin (1990, 1998) provided a more formulaic data analysis process, which was panned by some for being too rigid.

Strauss and Corbin (1998) would later modify some of its data analysis procedures reinforcing the notion that their suggested techniques were meant solely to serve as guidelines, not requirements. (Cooney, 2010).

Another crucial difference between the two approaches is the concept of verification or validation that Strauss & Corbin introduces (Charmaz, 2000). Glaser (1992) panned the Strauss and Corbin additions to Grounded Theory stating that even though many of the methods remained the same they created a new form of qualitative analysis that did not constitute

Grounded Theory. But most scholars saw the emergence of two main forms of Grounded Theory that researchers could choose between based on their epistemological and analytical preferences.

Ralph, Birks, & Chapman (2015) further explain that Grounded Theory is experiencing what they refer to as methodological dynamism, a process characterized by researchers who interact with the contexts of their research age creating moments of Grounded Theory that still subscribe to overall same set of methods but whose ontological and epistemological perspectives

45 shift to match the trends of that era or generation of Grounded Theory. Contemporaneous philosophies become aligned and applied to the basic set of Grounded Theory methods to form new interpretation of the Grounded Theory methodology, Ralph et al (2015) describes Glaser and Strauss (1967) and Strauss & Corbin’s earlier work (1990) rests in the first generation of

Grounded Theory. But Strauss and Corbin (1994) begin to shift to a more Constructivist approach that their later works continue to build about and that Charmaz (2000) further fleshes out creating the second generation of Grounded Theory (Ralph et al, 2015).

Constructivist Grounded Theory

Constructivist Grounded theory maintains the original methods of classic Grounded

Theory (CGT) such as coding, memoing, and theoretical sampling, but it employs a new epistemological foundation and integrates some of methodological developments that have occurred in the more than 50 years that have passed since Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’s seminal 1967 text. Classic Grounded Theory (CGT) researchers subscribe to the positivist notion that the world can be studied, described, analyzed and predicted. And through this process some truth would emerge. But Constructivist Grounded theorists argue that the researcher creates the data and analysis being researched with the participants and that any discovered reality really arises from the interactive process and its contexts (Charmaz, 2000).

In shifting the epistemological foundation of grounded theory to constructivism, Charmaz answers arguments for an approach rooted in the pragmatism that drove CGT cofounder

Anselmn Strauss’s work. Objectivist grounded theory assumed a single, passive reality that can be viewed and discovered by a value-free neutral observer. Objectivists believed that the data was self-evident and spoke for itself. Objectivists through generalization also separated any theoretical abstractions from any contexts of data collection and analysis (Charmaz, 2008).

Constructivist grounded theory rejects these positivist notions and instead believe that the researcher constructs categories of the data and aim for an interpretive understanding of the phenomenon being studied that accounts for the varied contexts in which said phenomenon occur

(Charmaz, 2008). Constructivists Grounded Theory places the researcher, the process, and researched in the appropriate historical, social, cultural, situational, and interactive contexts. It also acknowledges the researchers’ subjectivity and social positions and call for reflexivity through the process (Charmaz, 2000).

Another major difference between CGT and Constructivist Grounded theory is the debate of the role prior theory and prior knowledge plays in the research process and creation of theory.

As recently as 2013, Glaser continued to reassert his belief that utilizing preconceptions in data analysis and theory creation is not valid in Grounded Theory (Glaser, 2013). But Grounded

Theory methodology cofounder Strauss had already moved away from this particular stance of

Glaser. Strauss & Corbin (1994) explained their use of other theoretical perspectives the answer theory limitations to ensure their interpretations remain grounded. Strauss & Corbin (1994) also recognized the influential role researcher’s prior knowledge and experiences hold in their research and the potential importance these aspects play in the data. Charmaz (2008) notes that many scholars have detailed what they deem a debate between Strauss and Glaser. Glaser has never wavered from his position that there should be no information used to precondition data.

But, as aforementioned, Charmaz argues that any data co-created with research participants should be situated in the proper contexts in which they occur.

Finally, Constructivists Grounded Theorists led by Kathy Charmaz argues that CGT objectivist ideals have led Glaser and other classic grounded theorists researchers to ignore their own personal biases. Charmaz argues that a byproduct of the objectivist approach that Glaser

47 uses voids his work, and the work of objectivists who follow his approach, of any context of the systems in which the processes and realities they study take place. Charmaz (2008) argues that

Glaser and Strauss never accounted for how they may have affected the research process, produced data, represented the research participants, nor positioned their analyses. Instead, their research focused on generality and objectivity, instead of relativity and reflexivity. Constructive

Grounded Theory acknowledges the researchers’ subjectivity and social positions and call for reflexivity through the process.

I have showcased the evolution of the Grounded Theory methodology. I detailed the split between Grounded Theory founders Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss leading to two branches of methods within Grounded Theory. I also chronicle the rise of Constructivist Grounded Theory which shifts from a positivist to a constructivist epistemology. It’s important now to evaluate

Grounded Theory’s relationship with Critical Inquiry to fully understand its usefulness as a methodology in this study.

Grounded Theory & Critical Inquiry

Ending his chapter on Critical Grounded Theory in the 2019 Sage Handbook of Current

Developments in Grounded Theory, Hadley (2019) issued this full-throated support of the continued development of the emerging methodology for Critical Grounded Theory:

This is of even greater urgency today, as the 21st century has become increasingly

scarred by the rise of authoritarianism and crude populism. Social stratification

along economic, ethnic, and educational lines are widening. Within the realm of

Higher Education, the research activities of academics are effectively being

censored under the guise of ‘ethics'. Educational discourse in the classroom

touching upon unpopular topics are being purged and sanitized as a result of

managerial guidelines aimed at ensuring student satisfaction. This has allowed the

proliferation of blurred narratives, half-truths, and outright lies to wreak havoc on

the hitherto informed liberal societies. ‘Post-truth’ has become a dark watchword

for describing the toxic nature of public discourse around the world. In times such

as these, theories that expose oppressive social processes, and which question the

injustices taking place within our societies, are desperately needed. Descriptive

theories on ‘life as it is’ run the risk of supporting a status quo that currently

rewards those who both prey on and profit off of the weakest members of society.

The time has come for Critical Grounded Theory (p.584).

Here Hadley echoes the arguments Charmaz makes in the need for a grounded theory that moves past describing the processes that are in life for a deeper inspection of the systems and contexts that cause those processes to occur and shape how those processes are formed and occur as the research participants experience them.

Hadley (2019) argues that Critical Grounded Theory is supported by Critical Social

Theory which, as a school of thought, has its founding in a group of 1930s social scholars who would become known as the Frankfurt School. Kincheloe & McLaren (2005) defines Critical

Social Theory as a school of thought primarily concerned with issues of power and justice in the ways that the economy, race, gender, education, religion, class, and other social instructions and cultural dynamics all interact to create social systems. Hadley (2019) argues the Critical Social

Theory’s impact on Grounded Theory can be seen in the ways that scholars have merged grounded theory with concepts ranging from feminism, to the creation of social change. Hadley

(2019) furthers argue that both Critical Social Theory and Grounded Theory find their homes in

American Pragmatism – the idea that theorists work both towards practical useful outcomes for people and to create theories embodied in speech and action.

Belfrage & Hauff (2016) notes that critical scholars, especially in organizational studies have been apprehensive to utilize Grounded Theory for fear that the initial Glaser & Strauss

(1967) edition really did not allow for positioning of research problems and studies, which is crucial to critical inquiry. But citing advances starting with Strauss & Corbin (1990) and including Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory, Belfrage & Hauff (2016) argues that the grounded theory methodology is suitable for critical inquiry. In fact, they offer that very few theorists who even utilize Glaser’s methods have continued to opt for no preconditioning of their work. Belfrage & Hauff (2016) notes that in Critical Grounded Theory, the researcher chooses a problem that’s “explicitly driven by moral and/or social concerns in an ambition to produce critical knowledge to enable social emancipation. The researcher sees herself not as a disinterested observer but as an active member of a society ridden with social antagonisms and relations of exploitation, domination and exclusion, the explanation of which is a precondition for changing them” (p.9). Hadley (2019) further extends this though by arguing that the theoretical concepts that fuel Critical Grounded Theory offer possibilities for inquiry and should be evaluated in terms of how well they fit the scene. Hense & McFerran (2016) also argues that the methodology of Critical Grounded Theory is simply an extension of the methodology found in Constructivist Grounded Theory, thus arguing that the main difference between Critical

Grounded Theory and Constructivist Grounded Theory is an epistemological difference (Hadley,

2019).

Charmaz (2017) argues that Constructivist Grounded Theory remains a great vehicle for critical inquiry because of it its roots in pragmatism that seeks to conduct research that results in

50 positive social change for those researched through a greater understanding of the processes occurring in life and the various social contexts in which those processes occur. Charmaz (2017) further argues that though the original version of Grounded Theory focused solely on accurately depicting the truth the researcher felt was occurring, Constructivist Grounded Theory focus on conveying the true meaning behind what is being depicted through a careful focus on the meaning of words and placing those statements and narratives in larger, societal contexts.

Charmaz (2017b) states Constructivists Grounded Theory “is aimed toward abstract understanding rather than explanation and prediction” (p.6). Because methods in Constructivist

Grounded Theory are shaped by their pragmatic roots, the methods focus on the meaning behind both what is said and unsaid, thus unveiling what researchers and participants take for granted, which gives context on the larger societal structures at play.

Charmaz (2014) states that another major contribution made to critical inquiry from

Constructivist Grounded Theory is its highly interactive method. Researchers read data very closely to conduct an initial coding of the data while being encouraged to ask critical questions from the very beginning of the research process through the analysis and writing. Charmaz

(2014) argues that this gives opportunity for more hidden critiques to emerge and increases the theoretical depth and reach of the analysis made. Theoretical Sampling, the notion of going back to sample for concepts and categories that are emerging further affords researchers the opportunities to explore critical questions emerging in their data and places researchers even deeper into the experiences of those being researched. This comparative, abductive process fosters a more robust theory because it imbues the methodology with a critical lens instead of just the findings (Charmaz, 2020).

The final major contribution to critical inquiry Constructivist Grounded Theory offers is the use of doubt that leads to methodological self-awareness. Doubt utilized correctly encourages researchers to examine and reexamine every emergent concept and code category. This increased scrutiny leads researchers to uncovering the deeper meaning behind what research participants are saying. But the intense scrutiny must not only be levied at data, it must also be levied at the researcher and is what helps develop methodological self-awareness. (Charmaz, 2017b)

Born out of Sandra Harding’s (1991) concept of strong reflexivity and Adele Clark’s

(2005) concept of positionality, Charmaz (2017) explains that methodological self-awareness calls for “detecting and dissecting our worldviews, language, and meanings and revealing how they enter our research in ways we had previously not realized” (p. 36). Charmaz (2017) argues that white, Anglo-North American values have dominated and been infused into our methods, methodological assumptions, and strategies, and it is only through a radical methodological self– awareness in all stages of the research process that we can identify the oftentimes subtle influence of those values.

The literature above summarizes the relationship between Grounded Theory and critical inquiry with specific emphasis on Constructivist Grounded Theory and its founding in Critical

Social Theory. But researchers have also begun to combine Constructivist Grounded Theory and

Critical Race Theory explicitly in their work. Below I examine two such studies and the implications it has for this study seeking to do the same.

Grounded Theory & Critical Race Theory

Malagon, Huber, & Valdez (2009) chronicled their journey or merging Critical Race Theory with the Constructivist version of Grounded Theory. Malagon et al (2009) decided to use

Constructivist Grounded Theory with Critical Race Theory as a framework after finding most

52 research on their topic came from a deficient mindset and their frustrations with searching for a qualitative methodology that would be critically sensitive to situate students of color lived experiences into larger social-political frames both through the research process and in the product of their research.

Malagon et al (2009) used CRT to shape every aspect of their research from the questions they asked to the methods they employed. They found that the flexible nature of Constructivist

Grounded Theory gave them the ability to do so more than other methods. Crucial to their blending of CRT with Constructivist Grounded Theory was the constant comparative method and theoretical sampling, components they felt helped them gain a deeper, more critical view of the experiences of students of color. Finally, Malagon et al (2009) reinforce the abductive nature of Grounded Theory affords them the opportunity to discuss more broadly how large societal structures shape the data, and thus, fusing with a CRT framework, allows the researchers to challenge white supremacy, which has often shaped how society and this body of research particularly explains how the conditions, experiences, and outcomes of students of color.

Duran (2019) also found pairing Constructivist Grounded Theory with the Critical Race

Theory concept of Intersectionality useful in developing a model for Queer Students of Color

Identity Exploration. Duran (2019) argues that the ability to use sensitizing concepts in

Constructivist Grounded Theory afforded him an ease in using Intersectionality as a theoretical framework to analyze the students’ experiences and process of development.

Positionality

A central component of Constructivist Grounded Theory is examining and naming the positionality of the researcher. Eight years ago, I met a man who unintentionally changed my life. We met in my high school guidance counselor’s office. I was a high-achieving high school

53 senior. He was the associate dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana

State University. In his role of associate dean, David Kurpius was charged with leading all aspects of the undergraduate experience in the Manship School. And one aspect under his prevue was the recruitment of a talented new crop of students – a job he excelled at.

After our meeting in my counselor’s office, Kurpius invited my sister and I to LSU’s campus for a personalized tour. The tour began with a conversation in Kurpius’ office with my mother and grandmother. My sister and I then met with counselors from the school to discuss our academic treks and classes. We had a mid-morning meeting with the assistant director of financial aid where we reviewed the aid packages we would both qualify for. We had lunch with current students and professors who most closely matched with our interests and backgrounds.

And we concluded the day with a tour around campus that also matched our interests and were conducted by current students in the Manship School who had areas of concentration and involvement that matched what we both hoped to do.

When I committed to LSU and to the Manship School, all of the people instrumental in my recruitment became my new network. They helped me navigate the new terrain, which, as a first-generation college student, was invaluable. When I had questions about financial aid refunds, I called the assistant director I spoke to during my visit. Though I now know that the questions I had for her was probably way below her pay grade, she eagerly answered every one and made me feel comfortable in calling to ask more. Kurpius connected me to the school newspaper because of my passion for journalism and hired me in his office to keep me connected. The students I met connected me to involvement opportunities and became friends.

The faculty I dined with for lunch would later teach some of my classes and mentor me.

The above narrative is student affairs done right. David Kurpius has no degree or training in student affairs but knew how to connect people. Because of that, he created a seamless transition into the university for me. As an incoming freshman, I merely thought that by some stroke of great fortune and by having a great guidance counselor advocate for me, things fell into place. But as I got more involved on campus and was introduced to the field of student affairs and its practitioners, I realized my recruitment wasn’t mere chance. I also realized that I was indeed one of the lucky few. Many people have terrible transitions into colleges or find trouble connecting to the university even after had decent transition. And research shows these factors to be leading causes of low retention and low matriculation rates.

Higher education is the most available and best accessible medium for social mobility today. I decided on a career in higher education because if I could help students get in to, get connected and engaged to, and matriculate through college, I would in essence provide them with the tools necessary to transform their lives. Dedicating my life to this form of service seemed like a great way to help others and pay homage to the great collegiate experience afforded me. My first role in student affairs was as a graduate assistant in activities and student leadership. I then moved into a Student Engagement Coordinator role where I was responsible for student activities within the student union, student engagement union operations, and the student union’s contribution to the campus’s 100 percent high impact engagement initiative – the student union student employee development program. From that role, I moved into an Associate

Director role where I was charged with overseeing student activities and co-creating and managing the university-wide, high impact engagement initiatives. And now, I serve as a director of high impact engagement where my job is to oversee the creation, cataloging, supporting and implementation of the university’s high impact engagement program.

I still believe that higher education with all of its flaws is still the most accessible medium for social mobility in society. And I further believe that high impact engagement practices are some of the best tools universities have to help students matriculate. I participated in a summer bridge program the summer semester preceding my freshman year. I participated in the freshman reading program where the book selected my year was interweaved into my freshman honors seminar course and all freshmen honors students would meet throughout the first semester for seminars built from the book. I was in a residential college – a living learning community my freshman year. I was deeply involved in campus activities, leading the late night planning organization and ultimately becoming the president of the student activities board. I was employed on campus in various roles throughout all of my four years of undergrad. And I had a capstone seminar course in my senior year. I make this point in such depth here because I think it is important to show the depth of high impact experiences I partook in as a student. At the time, I did not know these were high impact practices –the high impact engagement lexicon was just starting to emerge when I was an undergraduate student. But I saw the undeniable collective impact these experiences had on my life and the lives of my friends. In fact, these experiences shifted the entire trajectory of my life. But I also realize that too often higher education fails students.

Through my studies and my experiences as a student affairs practitioner, I have learned that though my collective experiences are not unique, they are still not the norm. Just as though many students looked like me on campus, the definition of a student continues to shift and morph. As a student affairs practitioner, I have learned that though these experiences bolstered my development and education, there is not a “one-size-fits –all” approach to engaging students.

But I find that too often, high impact engagement literature overlooks nuance for some

56 semblance of a universal truth backed by mountains of qualitative data and analysis. The problem with this search for truth is that it often leads to the erasure of the experiences of students on the margins and often overlooks the experiences of the primarily managerial professionals who are often times saddled with the implementation of high impact practices on campuses with very little practical guidance. The dissonance that ensues with the juxtaposition of personally having experienced these initiatives work with knowing the difficulty in chronicling how students are engaged and developed on campus and creating experiences that deeply engage all students fuels my passion for figuring out the engagement challenge of universities.

Reflexivity

Maxwell (2013) states that is vital that researchers reflect on and recognize reactivity – the fact that researchers will have an impact on the research setting and / or the individual research participants. Though it is impossible to completely remove the researcher’s influence, researchers must be able to recognize and account for the influence. As the researcher, I am particularly close to the topic researched and the potential participants in the study. As a former student leader of a departmentally advised student organization though in a different university setting, I have personal experience and history with the topic for which I am trying to generate a theory. I also served as an advisor of a departmentally advised student organizations for much of my career and supervised other advisors of departmentally advised student groups. I have been in a new role for in a different office for longer than a year. I would hope that some of the student leaders of these student organizations would agree to be participants of this study. But I would have to create enough separation so that students would be comfortable sharing their true experiences with me even if they know me from my work on campus. I shared all of this upfront with research participants and share it with the general audience reading this study to avoid any

57 questions of ethical practice or ethical research. I also purposefully sampled students who do not work with me directly. Also, the study includes student leaders from other departmentally advised student organizations that are not in the department of which I used to work. Those student leaders’ data would corroborate the data from students who may have served in the department of which I worked and would thus show no undue influence in the results. Also, though I have been very connected to the subject I am studying, as aforementioned, my work as a practitioner has brought bare the need for a more critical examination of the existing high impact engagement literature and more practical tenants of high impact engagement to implement. Because I am approaching this project with a critical and curious eye, I am much more open to seeing what will emerge in the data and what ramifications those emergences will have for the existing narratives and practices of high impact engagement. Also, validity strategies such as member checks and triangulation help to ensure the data I am co-creating with the research participants is actually what they are experiencing, and not something tainted by my own beliefs or thoughts. As stated earlier, overall, I believe in the work of high impact engagement, but I do not think current literature actually captures what is happening on the ground in students’ lived experiences. So, I am not wedded to any existing high impact engagement narratives.

I must also share that I too experienced marginalization and power as a result of my intersecting identities both then, and even now while in academia. I did not spend a lot of time as a student reflecting on the role of my various identities in my student leadership journey. But certainly, as I’ve developed a more critical lens and praxis, I have worked to recognize the influence of these identities in my life and work. Specifically, I work to discern how I might experience and receive privilege in situations, and how I can utilize whatever privileges I have

58 coupled with the forms of resistance I engage in to dismantle the white, heterosexual, cisgendered hegemony that exists at the heart of every facet of our society to make room for a more vibrant existence where those currently and historically on the margins can thrive. I don’t pretend that my set of intersecting identities will exactly match those of the participants in this study. Nor do I pretend that because I have a set of intersecting identities, I will automatically be adept at interpreting and representing the stories of these study participants. I do believe that my own journey and identities well position me to respect the uniqueness of each individual’s story and journey and take care in representing them in the findings.

Above I reviewed the relevant tenants of the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology including the importance of its epistemological framing that allows for situating the lived experiences of study participants in the contexts in which they occur and its general usefulness in critical inquiry and being paired specifically with Critical Race Theory. I also shared my positionality, what I know and believe (and how I gained this knowledge and these beliefs) and reflected on my reflexivity (what I do with the knowledge references in my positionality and how I might impact the study as a researcher). Now, I outline the research design and methods used in the study.

Design and Methods

Research scholars often emphasize the importance of research design to answer the questions and purpose you have outlined in your study. The Grounded Theory methodology affords me tools that allows me to inductively analysis student leaders’ experiences, creating a theory or model grounded in their lived experiences and centering their voices, bucking the trend of creating theory and practices based on quantitative analysis and observations of students’ experiences. And Constructivist Grounded Theory in particular, allows for sensitizing concepts

59 and calls for situating data and study participants in their relevant social and situational contexts including power structures. This offers a unique ability to craft theory of student leader development in these student leader roles that accounts for the roles and impact of student leaders’ identities. Below, I outline the data collection and data analysis processes I utilized in the study.

Data Collection

Sampling. Miles, Huberman, Saldana (2014) note that sampling in qualitative studies must be relevant to your conceptual framework and research questions, and that it is often theory driven, strategic, and purposive to determine the unique contexts of the cases we study. Charmaz

(2014) adds that sampling in Grounded Theory exists to find participants with lived experiences that would allow them to speak about the studied phenomenon. Little research exists that specifically describe the process that students in student organizations are developed. And certainly, no studies have documented how student leaders in heightened roles on executive boards are developed. Furthermore, most research on high impact engagement experiences and student development theory are either colorblind or view the role of race and identity from a deficit mindset. To fill this gap in the research, I searched for participants fitting the following criteria:

• 18 Years or older

• Have served at least one full term in a student leadership role on the executive board

of a departmentally-advised student organization or in an equivalent student leadership

role.

• Possesses either one or a combination of marginalized / underrepresented identities.

The above sample criteria creates a sample of students who can speak to, through their lived experiences, both how they were developed through their student executive board experiences and what roles their intersecting identities played in navigating campus and their student leader journeys. Because students had to have completed one full term, oftentimes study participants were either upperclassmen or recent graduates. Students traditionally do not get involved in these roles as first year students. And these involvement roles usually last for the academic year. Thus, to truly meet the sample criteria, you have to have been at least in your second or third year. I was open to the inclusion of recent alumni because it allowed me to also include students who served in the highest student leadership roles on campus, which are most often roles filled by senior students. I believed their insight would be salient because they typically would have had multiple years in their engagement experience. Student development literature holds true the thought that the more time students put into experiences leads to the greatest impact on their development.

In total, I interviewed 20 students serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations at a large, public institution in one of the largest cities in the US. These students had already completed at least one full year at the institution, but most of them will be upperclassmen because they would be required to have completed one full leadership cycle, which usually lasts for at least one year, to qualify for the study. The students also all had at least one historically marginalized identity, though most students had multiple historically marginalized identities. Most students in the study had also been involved in their student leadership experiences for more than one year, even serving multiple years on executive boards and serving in leadership roles in multiple student organizations, allowing for a rich comparison of activities at the university. I provide a chart of the breakdown of study participants by gender,

61 race, sexual orientation, first generation student status, and Pell grant eligibility in Figure 1 below to showcase the diversity of the study sample and the concentration of historically marginalized identities on which this study is centered. Each participant completed an intake form that provided general demographic information such as a chosen pseudonym, race, gender and sexual orientation identities, and roles served in which departmentally advised student organizations.

Figure 1: Demographics of Study Participants

Research Setting. All students in the study attend the same large, research one institution in a major city in the Midwest. I have called this university Big City University (BCU). The institution has an enrollment of about 30,000 students split between the east campus that hosts most of the undergraduate programs and the west campus that hosts all of the professional schools including the medical school. This institution has been designated both a Hispanic

Serving Institution (HSI) and an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving

Institution (AANAPISI). The institution also holds no racial majority on campus though Latinx students hold the plurality at 34 percent of students. The complete campus population breakdown

of BCU can be found in Figure 2. Also at BCU, 60 percent of students are Pell grant eligible, and

70 percent of students receive financial aid. Eighty percent of students at BCU live off campus,

and only 3 percent of students hail from out of state. Finally, 38 percent of students are first

generation students, and 36 percent of freshman report having a first language that is something

other than English. Thus, BCU provides the perfect setting to get a diverse group of student

leaders with historically marginalized identities and examine their development through a critical

lens. I believe it also represents the constitution of universities of the future – diverse, urban

entities with more “non-traditional” students who commute to campus and bring their whole

selves and their whole lives with them as they move on and off campus. Delving deeply into this

setting affords us the opportunity to determine the nuances of development for students with

historically marginalized identities in these experiences.

Intensive Interviews. The main form of data collection will be an intensive interview.

Figure 2: BGC Demographic Breakdowns Charmaz (2014) states that intensive interviews are the foundations of data collection in

63 qualitative inquiry, and especially grounded theory, because it allows the research to gain an in- depth look at the experiences of interview subjects. Each student leader was asked to sit for a semi-structured interview. The interviews lasted between 40 and 100 minutes long. I had a list of questions, but one aspect of intensive interviews is the ability to let participants take the conversation where they want to go as well (Charmaz, 2014). Thus, though I had categories of questions to ask, I often followed up on threads that arose in interviews, which often led to new discoveries that I asked other participants about. One such example is the coding that formed the grounding for the Call In element of the emergent Care-Based Process. I also explicitly asked questions about students’ identities and how those identities might have manifested in the student leaders’ experiences if the student leaders did not offer those points up of their own volition.

Observations. I also observed three virtual student-led events and secured a recorded portion of an executive board meeting of one of the departmentally- advised student groups featured in the study to gain a better insight of some of the critical elements of the student leaders’ leadership experiences. Maxwell (2013) states that observations are a way to see theory in use and may allow you to gain information that you were not able to get in an interview as a result of participants being reluctant to share a certain set of their actions with the researcher.

Maxwell (2013) also shares that observations gives researchers an opportunity for great detail and description of the contexts and situations participants action occur. My observations allowed me to get a first glimpse of the work of student leaders and the way they support and challenge each other and advisors as they seek to accomplish their aims. These would later become major themes in the study.

Data Analysis Procedures

Though grounded theorists argue that the methodology was always meant to be a collection of useful qualitative tools to serve as a guide in theory generation, there are some methods of analysis that are common to all grounded theory studies no matter the epistemological groundings they hold. Chief among these beliefs, tools and practices is the notion that grounded theory employs an iterative process that requires researchers toggle between data collection and theory generation until theoretical saturation is reached (Charmaz,

2014). I abide by the guidelines of the methodology as I complete the following steps to generate a theory of student development through executive board leadership.

Open Coding. Coding is the attachment of a word or short phrase that catches the essence of what’s occurring in the analysis the researcher is examining. Like many of the qualitative methodologies, Grounded Theory’s main source of data analysis is coding the data. I began analyzing the data by open coding the data from my observations of events and meetings and my interviews with the student leaders. I embarked in an open coding process, coding for actions and interactions I saw occurring. I chose open coding because of its inductive nature, allowing me to name freely what was occurring without any sort of influencing theory or data. I also coded each interview additionally for the role of identities, marginalization, and agency student leaders experienced. I ended my open coding phase with 887 individual codes.

Focused Coding. Charmaz (2014) defines focused coding as using the most significant codes that emerged during the open coding phase to sift through and analyze large amounts of data. It may also involve coding your previous codes to fracture and splice data together. Glaser

(1978) adds that focused coding advances the theoretical direction of your work and that the codes are often more conceptual in nature than the codes derived from open coding. After my

65 initial phase of open coding resulted in 887 codes, I analyze those codes and rework codes into larger, more conceptual codes and ideas. In this stage, I both analyzed those codes for the shared actions taking place across the student leaders’ experiences, and for common ways identity and their marginalizing and empowering impacts had on and through the student leaders’ experiences. Through the constant comparative method of comparing each interview and their resultant codes with the others in the study, I ultimately condensed the initial 887 codes to

41codes and 6 major code groups. Two of the major code groups represented the way identity impacted students’ leadership journeys. As I compared the codes of identity through all interviews, I realized that identity acted in three main ways no matter the identity – it served as a barrier to community, as a bridge to community, and as a focal point of students’ agency and advocacy. The agency and advocacy themes fall under the code group “stretch work” that I detail in the next chapter. The barriers and bridges themes each form their own code groups.

Throughout this process, I documented that analysis and condensing of codes into larger

66 conceptual ideas through memoing. The code groups are represented below in Figure 3.

Figure 3 - Code Groups and Members

Theory building – memo writing & theoretical sampling. After open and focused coding, researchers must continue to go out and find data from their study participants that match emergent themes from the initial data while the researcher attempts to define the theory. This is called theoretical sampling. Creswell & Poth (2018) refer to this as the constant comparative method. Open coding is used to find the core variable. The core variable is the variable that explains the behavior of the study participants. Once researchers discover the core variable, they

67 can now engage in selective coding – coding for only the core variables and subcore variables.

At all times, the codes are compared to data emerging from the field and reworked (Thomas, n.d.). The core variable that arose in this study was care. All the subcore variables – call in, holistic support, stretch work and their sub variables all helped to explain how the student leaders experienced care through their student leadership journeys. And the barriers and bridges subcore variables both account for the role their identity played in the experiences, but also the ways those identities were either met or not met / treated with care.

Memoing is also an important part of data analysis for Grounded Theory. Memoing is the write-up of ideas and its relationship to the building theory throughout the coding process

(Creswell & Poth, 2018). Memoing is also essential to the earlier steps in the research because it helps the research develop ideas about naming concepts that will later add richness to the theory once it emerges (Thomas, n.d.). I wrote memos at every step of the process and utilize those memos to understand and ultimately begin to write the relationship between my core category and its conditions, contexts, and consequences. I ended with 18 memos that explained the emergence of major variables and they analyses process I took.

Finally, to best utilize the constant comparative method, I coded interviews in groups of five before moving on to conducting additional interviews. This allowed for me to engage in theoretical sampling. My core variable of care explicitly came in interview nine. I evaluated the previous interviews before it to see how care was represented and explained in those interviews.

And as I proceeded with the other 10 interviews, I looked for and explicitly asked about the various subcore variables of care. I also tried to interview people with either less marginalized identities, or different marginalized identities to see how the variables would appear in their interviews.

Above, I have outlined how the methods I used to gain the data of this study. I conducted interviews with 20 student leaders who served on the executive board of a departmentally advised student organization for at least a full term and who possessed at least one historically marginalized identity. I also observed 3 virtual student events and coded a recorded portion of a meeting of an executive board of a departmentally advised student organization. I inductively coded all of this data, then I coded for the role of identity in the data. I used the constant comparative method to condense the 887 codes I gained from inductive coding into 41 codes across 6 themes. I will now outline the steps I took in the research design and analysis process to ensure validity of the data and analysis I provide.

Strategies for Validity

Validity is always a concern for qualitative researchers. Internal validity refers to whether the conclusions drawn from the case studied is generalizable internally to the case as a whole. And external validity refers to how well the conclusions drawn from the case studied apply to general cases outside of the environment of your study, though a hallmark of some qualitative studies rest in the fact this it’s a deep dive into one specific environment (Maxwell, 2013; Miles,

Huberman & Saldana, 2014). To enhance the internal validity of my study, I employed validity methods discussed in Maxwell (2013) and in Creswell & Poth (2018). First, I collected multiple sources of information that afforded me the ability to corroborate the evidence I discover among multiple sources, this is called triangulation. Interviews with the student leaders served as the main source of data in the study. But observing the student leaders in their meetings and events, the data I glean from the interviews with the student leaders will be corroborated by these other sources of data, adding validity to the findings of the study. Also, as the theory developed and during the subsequent interviews, I have with student leaders, I presented the preliminary

69 findings and the preliminary tenets of the theory with the students to determine if the theory I crafted matches the experiences of the student leaders. Creswell & Poth (2018) refer to this strategy as member checking.

Finally, I used a peer debriefer who was both adept at qualitative research and familiar with the topic being studied. I talked through the emergent findings and the peer debriefer independently coded a quarter of the de-identified interview transcripts selected randomly using the code book I developed. We largely agreed on coding, meeting the 85 percent threshold needed for intercoder reliability (Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2014; Morse, 2015). Morse

(2015) argues that peer debriefers are necessary for confirming validity and that qualitative inquiry can be assessed on validity only through analysis factors above that rests on the individual researcher and cannot be conferred from one researcher to another. But I use the peer debriefer here both to underscore that the coding decisions I made would be made by another researcher and to confirm the lack of any personal bias I had as a researcher because this peer debriefer had a different background than mine as a practitioner and different historically marginalized identities. Thus, I can assure no unstated biases were present in my analysis.

I also share rich, thick descriptions in my findings. Creswell & Poth (2018) name this as another form of external and internal validity, giving the audience a chance to evaluate large swaths of the data themselves. But this also works well with main tenants of both Critical Race

Theory and Constructivist Grounded Theory which emphasizes using the words and experiences of study participants to tell their own stories (Charmaz, 2014; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

Though I am not employing Critical Race Theory methodology and am thus not using composite or counter stories, I do provide long excerpts to allow readers to view as much of study participants’ own words, phrases, and language as possible and to give readers the chance to see

70 how my analysis of these experiences fare with experiences in settings outside of this setting.

Also, Grounded Theorists argue that getting to generalization happens as a part of the grounded theory process, especially when researchers have gotten to the theory generation stage. Thus, the theory generated is automatically able to be applied no matter if it’s out of the research setting, because the data has been crunched enough to prove general (Clarke, 2005; Charmaz, 2014).

71 Chapter 4 – Findings

The focus of this study was the processes occurring within departmentally advised student organizations that lead to the development of student leaders serving on executive boards with historically marginalized identities. My specific research questions were:

1. How are student leaders with historically marginalized identities developed while

serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations?

2. In what ways do student leaders with historically marginalized identities exercise

power in their involvement choices and involvement experiences?

To answer these questions, I employed the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology and its requisite methods including theoretical sampling and the constant comparative method

(Charmaz, 2004) and paired it with the Critical Race Theory concepts of Marginalization, Power and Forms of Resistance (Solorzano & Villalpando, 1998) as sensitizing concepts – a unique ability of Constructivist Grounded Theory. I conducted observations of a student meeting and three student events and conducted on average one-hour long intensive interviews with 20 research participants. To analyze the data, I completed a round of open coding that yielded 887 codes then moved to focused coding and theoretical coding once my core category of care emerged in the 9th interview. I also coded for the ways various forms of identity emerged in the lived experiences of students’ lives. After utilizing the constant comparative method to compare the 887 codes among the various interview transcripts and observation videos, I reduced the codes to 41 codes among 6 main themes of Barriers, Bridges, Call In, Stretch Work, Holistic

Support, and Development. This analysis and six themes resulted in the emergent Care Based

Process for student leader development presented below.

72 Participants Pseudonym Primary Gender Race / Orientation? Religious First Pell Work Involvement Ethnicity? beliefs. Generation? Grant Part Eligible? Time? Alex Activities Woman Asian Bisexual Muslim Yes Yes Yes Board, Activities Office Management Amy Orientation, Woman Black Bisexual n/a No Yes Yes Cultural Programming Anna Activities Woman Latinx or Prefer not to Raised Yes Yes Yes Board Hispanic say Catholic but not very religious today. Anthony Activities Man Latinx or Heterosexual Catholic Yes Yes Yes Office Hispanic (straight) Management, Orientation Arthur Activities Man Asian Bisexual Spiritual No No Yes Board Blue Sky Activities Woman Latinx or Bisexual Catholic No No Yes Board Hispanic, International Student Brendan Activities Man Black Homosexual Spiritual Yes Yes Yes Board (gay) Gabrielle Greek Life Woman Latinx or Bisexual Agnostic No Yes Yes Orta Hispanic Harleen Greek Life, Woman Asian Homosexual No Yes No Quinzel Cultural (gay) Programming Isha Activities Woman Asian Heterosexual Muslim No Yes Yes Board (straight) Jay Doe Activities Man Latinx or Heterosexual Catholic No No No Office Hispanic (straight) Management Jesus Greek Life, Man Latinx or Heterosexual Yes No Yes Cultural Hispanic (straight) Programming Nicole Student Woman Black Heterosexual Southern No No No Government (straight) Baptist- Christian (Evangelical) Peach Cultural Woman Black or Bisexual Spiritual No No Yes Programming, African Orientation American Persephone Activities Non- Middle Bisexual Buddhist, Yes No Yes Jones Office binary / Eastern & Spiritual Management, third North Residence gender African Life Rachel Greek Life Woman Middle Heterosexual Spiritual No Yes Yes Eastern & (straight) North African Roman Greek Life Man Black or Heterosexual No Yes Yes Yes Pierce African (straight) Affiliations American or Beliefs

RS Campus Non- White Other Christ- No No No Ministry binary / follower, still third exploring gender Steffon Del Greek Life, Man Black & Heterosexual Spiritual Yes Yes Yes Valle Cultural Latinx (straight) Programming Veronica Activities Woman Black or Heterosexual Yes Yes Yes Office African (straight) Management, American Orientation Table 1 - List of Participants Primary Findings

Utilizing the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology with the sensitizing concepts of marginality, power, and forms of resistance within Critical Race Theory (Solorzano &

Villalpando, 1998)), the analysis of 20 intensive interviews and four observations yielded a student development model with care at the center of the process for the development of student leaders with historically marginalized identities on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations. Study participants defined the essential element of care in this model as individuals paying particular attention to the intentional curating of an environment where everyone involved holds space for one another while being unified in purpose of both what the group seeks to accomplish or be and how the group interacts with one another. Students find themselves in various forms of connection to university life and in varying degrees of contentment with those forms of connection. This process starts with a “call in” to students that is perceived by the students to be specific to them and is utilized to invite them into community.

Once students answer the call in to community (because all of the students surveyed served in the highest positions of student leadership possible at the university, they all answered their various calls into community), they both experience and participate in a process of care that includes work that stretches them and allows them to further goals they care about by either allowing them ways to advocate for change and for their community or do large-scale, real-world

74 work for the betterment of their campus community and are bolstered by and provide for their peers, holistic support, both peer to peer and from full-time professionals and part time paid graduate students. This process results in students developing among myriad of professional, personal, and social outcomes as well as fostering a deeper connection between these students and their university, the peers they serve in these roles with, and even the advising staff assigned to support them. For these students, their various identities manifests both as barriers and bridges to connection depending on how each student negotiates their identities and the experiences the students have on campus with their various identities – this barrier and bridge concept is represented by the red dotted line. Some students only joined activities based on their identities, others joined activities to explore their identities more, and some had to overcome the vestiges of the various intersecting historically marginalized identities to enter into community and, eventually, student leadership at the university, as seen in the example of the Black man and student from a lower SES who had to intentional smile more to not be seen as rude to his peers on campus.

Figure 4: Emergent Care-Based Process

Calling In

The first step in this model is what I refer to as the “Call In” to community that must occur before students can meaningfully connect to and engage in campus. Prior to the call in, students were in various forms of connection to campus. Some were employed on campus. Many lived in the residence halls and were able to make a handful of friends who lived near them. But others experienced varying forms of a crisis of disconnection, which led to the first sub theme of this step of the process. Even some students who frequented spaces built for connection like a

Commuter Center or different identity-based spaces still had trouble connecting with those spaces and the greater campus community without the explicit call in. Call Ins happened in myriad of ways but generally follows four trends – 1. The Call In can be informal and random followed by persistent contact, 2. The call in can be done by a friend in the same stage as you

76 looking to connect to campus, 3. The Call In can be done by an advisor or trusted peer in a way that calls students in deeper after they have already joined the community or 4. In some, more unlikely occasions, the call in comes from big personalities or authority figures on campus who help showcase the importance of the students’ work to them. Before we evaluate how students are called in to engagement opportunities, we must first examine the state they are in on campus before the call in, a state I have termed a Crisis of Disconnection.

Crisis of Disconnection. Students are in various stages of connection to the campus community and their peers before being called deeper into both community and their engagement experience. But at some point early into their tenure at the university, most study participants had a moment of realization when they realized they were not connected to community as much as they wanted to be – I call this moment of realization a crisis of disconnection. These students’ crisis of disconnection formed from many sources including: regular campus spaces not being designed for connection, not seeing themselves represented on campus, general shifts in their first group of friends / high school friends, or not feeling safe in a supposed safe space / not connecting in a space built for connection, leaving them looking for alternative routes to connection. Though these many challenges caused students to experience a crisis of disconnection, once students are called into a community on campus, they overcome their crises and their barriers and were able to intentionally build communities that where they felt supported and cared for.

Many students felt the entire onus for connecting to campus in a meaningful way rested on them because they shared that academic spaces weren’t really curated for student connection in two ways – the structure and culture didn’t provide a space for connection in first-year courses and students sometimes struggled to find peers that looked like them in their first courses. This

77 seemed to be particularly a problem for commuter students who had little resources outside of the classroom to help facilitate their connection to campus. This poses significant challenges to engagement at Big City University where over 85 percent of the students commute to campus.

Blue Sky, a bisexual, international student from South America shares:

I mean, classes here, this is also really different to how classes are in South America.

People don't talk. It's 50 minutes and you get there, and you do your stuff. They were

really individual. They're doing their thing and you're doing your thing and then you just

go and then it's the next class and you don't talk to anyone and then you go. It wasn't

really a space for me to make friends.”

Amy, a Black, bisexual leader in orientation and cultural programming echoes the struggle Blue

Sky felt connecting in classes, but for her it was because she felt the students looked so different from her.

[BCU] is such a different university. In my first semester I ran into a lot of non-

traditional students. So, the first class I walked into was like a freshman class, I was like

“Okay people look around my age plus or minus three years.” In my second class that

day everybody was … everyone had age on them. I was 18. People were old. That class

was a freshman / sophomore class, but I think I probably saw like two or three 18 /19

year old’s in there and everyone else was like 25 plus no lie. So I went to the professor

and I was like “Hey like, I’m a freshman is this is this a good class for me and he was like

I think you should be fine.”

Amy later shared that she discovered that her major attracted a lot of non-traditional students, especially because it was seen as somewhat a professional program. She would grow to enjoy connecting with students older than herself. But her perceived differences between her

78 classmates and herself certainly made it tougher for her to initially feel like she was able to connect with other students in her classes. Amy also struggled to see herself among her peers because Black students form just 8 percent of the student body at BCU. Amy is the only Black student in the study who lived at home and did not participate in any of the summer bridge programming or affinity programming provided for Black students on campus as a result of having to commute to and from campus, even though she desired a connection to the campus.

She shared that it would take some time before she met Black students in classes and her connection to community on campus would not come until she formed connections with her

Black peers in classes and she saw the programming the university did for Black History Month.

Many students also found a crisis in disconnection after being forced to move away from their friend group they either came into school with from high school or made during their first semesters on campus. Steffon, a Black first-generation student leader in Greek Life and cultural programs shared:

Me, changing shift in the way that I perceived others, and perceive myself as well, helped

me find a community. Because if I wanted to be stubborn, I could have chilled outside of

the atrium. Those were the people I knew, those are the people I came in with. And that's

actually why they were all still there, they knew each other, and those were the people

they came here with. I think my goal was to do something different, that was my goal in

attending college in general, anyways. In any experience, it's up to the student to ask

themselves what kind of scholar they want to be, at this university. And I knew that I

wanted a college experience.

Steffon also shared that these students dropped out of the university after their first year because they felt they weren’t smart enough to be successful and because they could not connect to campus. He was determined to have a different story.

An interesting subtheme of both not connecting in spaces built for connection, and of feeling unsafe in supposed safe spaces emerged from the analysis of the intersection of students’ leadership journeys and the historically marginalized identities they hold. With many students, their negotiation of their identities led them to not consider typical safe spaces for their identities on campus or prevented them from leaning into the calls from those areas to build deeper connections. One example of this is Alex, a Vice President of the Campus Activities Board and a

Muslim, bisexual woman who avoided the Muslim Student Association (MSA) because she feared not fitting in with them, as she hadn’t fit in with her high school’s MSA.

I'm not somebody that likes to be heavily involved in like the Muslim student association

or whatnot because I don't like being grouped into that … there's a whole stigma and

drama. We had like an MSA back in high school, but it was predominantly just a way for

some kids to mingle and then it would always turn into like scandals like ‘Oh this person

is talking to this person, they're going to get married next year.’ And I didn't want to be

part of that. I was fine being friends the people that I was friends with as long as they

didn't like push that on me and bring that drama with them. And like they were good

about that, and it was a lot better in college than it was in high school. But we were also

in college, so people were actually getting married at MSA because that's how it works.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that got married in the MSA. Also, I don't wear my hijab, the

same way other girls do and I don't dress the way that i'm supposed to, so I felt like being

part of that space would just lead to more judgment from them.

Asian students comprise the third largest student population at BGC accounting for 20 percent of the student population. This student power and resulting student organizing led BCU to launch the first Arab American Cultural Center on a college campus in the United States. The Arab

American Cultural Center is charged with serving the Arab and Muslin communities on campus.

The BCU Muslim Student Association reports being the largest MSA in the country with 5,000

Muslim students on campus comprising 15 percent of the student body. Thus, a large amount of institutional resources are allocated to Muslim and Asian students on campus. And clearly the

MSA forms a large nexus of community for students on campus that extends far past the campus bounds since many Muslim students live in similar areas of the city, according to Alex. Though many of her friends, and even friends from high school, joined the MSA, Alex was forced to find community through different avenues due to how she felt her differences would be received by her peers and the pressures from her peers to conform for standard practices that she did not want. Thus, choosing to not join the MSA could have meant being separated from important cultural support for Alex, especially since the university did not provide or support other mechanisms for Muslim students to connect (The Arab American Cultural Center had not opened when Alex arrived on campus).

This forced separation from culture resultant from a lack of supported opportunities to connect with ones culture is echoed by Nicole, a black, woman leader in student government who had to choose between student government and the black student union because their meetings were held at the same time.

I maybe think the only other way I thought about why I didn't prioritize going to BSU

was that I didn't want to be equated to the type of person ... That sounds horrible. I didn't

want to be equated to the stuck-up person that I felt I'm sometimes perceived as, my mom

81 is perceived as, and I hadn't figured out a way to navigate outside of that. So Student

Government almost ... I don't want to say it felt safer, but I knew I wouldn't have to

confront that.

Nicole would later share that it took her about a year and a half to find another black student within student government who could tell her where to get her hair braided. She felt that she would have perhaps made that connection, as well as a better connection to the Black community had she chosen to participate in the Black Student Union over Student Government.

Not feeling safe in a supposed safe space isn’t just a manifestation of students fears of how they would be perceived. Sometimes it is a result of negative experiences in supposed safe spaces. Peach, a Black, bisexual woman and leader of cultural programming and Greek Life shared an experience she had in the African American Cultural Center that led to that space no longer feeling safe for her.

There was one experience I had on campus that really reoriented the way I just view

things. I was in the African American cultural center. One of the employees there he was

a student, but he told me... I was wearing just a regular shirt, I guess it was just low cut.

He asked me, ‘Why are you showing so much?’ That just really made me rethink, ‘Okay,

what does it mean for real to have a safe space?’ We have this space designated for black

students on campus, the African American cultural center, but I'm coming into this space

where someone is questioning me about the articles of clothing that I'm wearing. And I

don't know that I necessarily took any action after that. But I think to me, it was

something that was pivotal because it made me rethink what a safe space looks on

campus ... Made me really rethink the nuances of spaces carved out for students on

campus. I think part of it had to do with the response to the action. I think I had an

entire... I don't want to say I had an entire falling out with the staff at the African

American cultural center, but there was definitely a moment where I just sat and was

basically publicly berated by a staff member at the African American cultural center. I

think in terms of rethinking those safe spaces, what does it mean to truly be a support to

students. Because it can be one thing to have a space that's ‘Oh, we're the African

American cultural center. We're here for black students.’ It's one thing to have that

physical space. But I think it's another to take care with the staffing on both the

professional and the student side. I think the people you put into these spaces has to be

very deliberate because even if you have this mission or you have this framing, you still

can have people that don't necessarily uphold those standards, that don't uphold those

beliefs or that mission in that space. So I think just some sort of... Just rethinking how

those spaces are curated. What sort of questions are folks asking themselves when they

create something like an African American cultural center? Are they paying special care

to not only staffing, but just how the space is curated? Not just physically but with the

people in it?

In this quote Peach shifts the discussion of what happened to her from an individual lens to that of an institutional lens, questioning the institution’s meaning and thought processes behind safe spaces. Also, Peach felt that yes, the space was safe for her Blackness in that moment, but it didn’t feel safe for her fem-ness, and the encounter with a man who served as a student staff member made her question the training around all identities the staff received.

Other students chose to frequent spaces on campus like the Commuter Center that does intentional programming to help students connect to one another on campus and even held

83 student jobs on campus but still felt disconnected. Jesus, a Latinx first generation student leader in Greek Life and cultural programming shared,

I felt when it came to the community [at my on-campus job], it was a niche. Most

students there weren't really a part of or active in organizations on campus. They just

worked, they went home or worked then just did their own thing. They were pretty to

themselves as well, somewhat like how I was when I first started out.

RS, a non-binary student leader in an on-campus collegiate ministry shares about frequenting the

Commuter Center yet not connecting.

I often went to the Commuter Center, but it was never really something like ... It was

never really like I built community there. I felt welcome but I didn't necessarily feel in

belonging with community. I felt like I could walk in there, and I could do my

homework, and eat, and just be in peace with myself. Nobody was going to shun me out

or tell me to leave, but it wasn't necessarily like I was being called in. there was the video

game-type center, and there was always this group of guys that was hanging around there

playing Mario Kart or playing whatever Wii game they had on. It always felt like they

had the strong connection, but I felt like that was because they were bonding over a

common interest that wasn't necessarily created by the space. That was just they all

happened to frequent the same space and be interested in the same thing there. They

created their own community within that space. I know that there are monthly commuter

events, and sometimes I would partake in some of the activities that they did, but I don't

think that it was necessarily ... It wasn't that call in. It was just facilitating and making

room for that to be there, but it also felt, for lack of a better word, half-assed, just like we

84 have this thing for you if you would like to come and join us. It wasn't like I want you to

come and be here with me in community right now.

Other students’ experiences before becoming Student Leaders echo the need for a call in.

Oftentimes university professionals fall into the trap of thinking that if students merely come to events or services on campus, they are able to build a deeper connection and thus be exposed to all the greatness student engagement has to offer. The experiences of these top student leaders before they were called into community on campus highlights just how false this myth is. Not only were students on campus, in residence halls, and in classrooms not connecting with each other both based on their fear of reaching out and being in classroom environments they felt weren’t conducive to connecting with other students, but some of these students were also in our spaces built to facilitate connection to community such as identity based spaces and commuter lounges and some are even employed in our units on campus and still weren’t connecting in a meaningful way that leads to deeper engagement. Students detail the need for an actual “Call In” to truly feel they have a pathway to engagement. And the Call Ins helped draw students from their crisis of disconnection into community on campus. Call In needs to feel specific to them or be followed with intentional attention that facilities students’ entry into engagement experiences.

Informal Random Call In. Once students realize their state of disconnection from the campus community, they become better tuned to receive Call Ins from campus. One such Call In is the random / informal call in followed by showing consistent and true interest. This subtheme often showed in students involved with Greek Life. And the students often talk about campus events such as the involvement fairs serving as a medium for these call ins. For example, Jesus shares how he was randomly stopped while walking through the Quad.

85 But I guess just for me, when I got involved with my fraternity initially, even then I

wasn't interested. It was just random; I was walking down the Quad and one of the

members from my fraternity just walked up to me and just started having conversation

with me. So, it was just out of the blue and just having that conversation with them just

sparked my interest. They volunteer, they give back to the community. So I looked into

them and that's when I got more interested. I asked questions like “How can I get more

involved or how can I become part of this community?”

Steffon had a similar experience. His future fraternity showed up to present at a student organization meeting he was attending, and he shared it with his academic advisor with whom he had developed a relationship. "This organization came to my event and great guys, man.”

Steffon’s advisor turned out to be a member of the same chapter of the organization

Wow. It was crazy. And he vouched for the guys and he told me if I seek interest, speak

with them. I spoke with them and man, the [members] that I spoke with, showed me so

much love, more than [a different Greek organization] ever gave me in a year’s time.

They show me much more love in a week than the [a different Greek organization] gave

me in a year's time. They showed me love through how transparent they were.

In both examples the informal Call In at a random event or in the Quad was followed up with real, individual conversations between the organizations and the students letting them feel seen, and in turn, helping those students see a place for themselves in these organizations. These organizations would later serve as catalysts for these students’ engagement in broader and deeper roles on campus.

Call In From Peer in the Same Place. Peers are often a source of information and connection for each other in student engagement literature. This is certainly a trend that

86 replicates itself in this study. Students who join together during the first semesters on campus often serve as connecting forces for one another on campus. They share vital information to one another, and even if they don’t end up connecting with an opportunity, they may just connect one of their friends to something. This happened with Anna, a Latinx first-generation student leader on the Activities Board.

I actually kind of found [the Activities Board] by accident. I didn't even know they were

taking like applications are looking for people and one of my friends like decided they

were going to apply and they let me know about it. So I was like Oh, this is really

interesting it kind of reminds me of like steps have been done before, so I just kind of

applied like on a whim, like, I really didn’t think I would get anything out of it, and I did.

[My friend] had been looking things to get involved with and just ways to like be more

active on campus, and so I think they found [the Activities Board] online or maybe social

media and just [told] me. It’s interesting, they are the ones who found it, but I ended up

getting it so.

In other cases, your peers invite you into an organization they are already apart of and your common experience deepens your connection, as was the case with Alex.

So I was friends with [x] and [she] was the exact opposite of me in high school. She was

involved in everything, and she did it all even in college. She was like, "Okay, I want to

do it all." And she was involved in six things, and she joined [the Activities Board]. And

the second semester she was like, "Hey, this is something that you would really enjoy.

You should do it with me." So, I went to a couple events with her, and then she dragged

me to [the comedy show], I think. Yeah, [the comedy show] was my first event where I

was a part of [the Activities Board].

In both Anna and Alex’s cases, their peers were the ones who called them into the student organizations where they would have their most formative engagement experiences.

Call In From Advisor or Trusted Peer. Another major source to call in students to engagement is staff members, advisors, and senior student leaders. This call in is often after the students have already had an entry level experience and are being challenged to go deeper. Many of times those surface level experiences can be as a loosely committed general organization member or an entry level student worker position. The trusted source recognizes the potential of the student and invites them into deeper connection. A perfect example of this is Jay Doe, a

Latinx student leader in student organization support who initially connected by working at the front desk but was not being challenged enough.

[My student manager] definitely helped me a lot just by observing, just because I think ...

he was my manager at one point, but beyond that, he was, I think a really good influence

on me just because there is a point in time where I was slacking with my schoolwork and

he put me in my place. He was just like, "You got to really focus and take this leadership

position seriously because it's a big thing and it's going to help you in the long run." I

think having someone to guide you is a really good thing to have.

Staff members were also major connectors for students, introducing them to new activities and recommending that they connect with various areas on campus. RS shares how the campus ministry director reached out after receiving their response to the prayer request form.

It was my first semester and I was hating college. I really hated it. I had picked up an

[organization] sticker or something at the orientation fair. I got a weekly email, and there

was the prayer section at the bottom. I put in the comments section “College sucks” or

something like that, just being emo. Then, [the ministry director] reached out to me, like,

88 "Yo, you good?" That was a really pivotal experience for me because afterwards we got

coffee and he really took the time to sit down with me and really listened to my story.

That was the first time that I've ever experienced somebody showing that genuine interest

in pulling me in like that.

RS would join the organization and hold a leadership position because of the ability of the group to execute this call in. Another unique form of the call in from advisors is that they can entice a student who may have had a bad initial experience with their engagement to come back, so that they do not become detached from engagement experiences. This was the case with Brendan, a

Black, gay, first generation student leader in the Activities Board.

Honestly the reason that I even joined the executive team for [the Activities Board] was

because of my advisor. I told her that I didn't like how the organization was run, and I left

it as a general board member and she asked me to come back as a committee member and

shape it to the way I thought it should be run, to fix it. To be the change I want to see

instead of just sitting back and disliking whatever is going on.

In Brendan’s story, the advisor was able to call the student in deeper by challenging him to be the change he wanted to see in the organization. This belies an important part of the call in, not only should it at some point be individual to the person, but it also works best when it takes in the unique motivators of the student, especially when it is being utilized to draw students to the deepest levels of engagement. It worked for Brendan. That example showcased how he became a committee chair. He would end up going on to serve as president of the same organization.

Call In from Authority Figures. A final version of the call in only occurred with one participant in this study, but it showcases the power of what the university can do when it channels its authority to empower student leadership. Roman Pierce, a Black first-generation

89 student leader in the Greek Life community shares about being empowered after visiting the

Chancellor’s house for a student leadership dinner.

This year was my second time going to the chancellor's house with all the student

organizations. The first year that I went, he was explaining how we don't have a football

team, our basketball team is our basketball team, but there's no comparison when it

comes down to other schools. He, even though I wore a Harvard hoodie he made the

point that, you have a lot of people on campus that walk around with a lot of other

colleges’ shirts. How do we change that? And then he made a very good point which was

these organizations on campus shape this school to a certain extent outside of academics.

You know what I mean? Academics is one thing. With us being in the middle of the city

and with everybody pretty much commuting and things like that, how do you get people

engaged? You know, and sometimes you have people who are in the organization, who

are on the council and it's like “where's the motivation?” There’s not too much

motivation if you don't have anybody participating on campus. So now there's a

disconnect with that and with the students, and with the people inside the organization.

And so it was like how does that change?

Roman Pierce shares in the above story that the Chancellor’s challenge to the student organization leaders really resonated with him and lit a fire within him to actually do the work of bettering his campus community.

Stretch Work

After students receive the call in to community, they are met with increasingly challenging work on teams forcing them to navigate complex systems mirroring real world situations. Oftentimes it is what I have termed “stretch work” coupled with what I’ve termed

“holistic support” given by both peers and professional staff on campus that provides the conditions possible for students to develop. Because they are engaging in the intricate, complex work of building organizations and in varied ways providing a product or service to their peers or the greater campus community, the student leaders are forced to bring their whole selves to the table, introducing new ideas and concepts, challenging the ideas of others, defending ideas, and adapting their proposals to incorporate the ideas of others. This constant, iterative process of exchanging ideas results in constant feedback for the students both from advisors and their peers.

And it forces students to constantly adapt and re-engage peers as they tried to bring their many visions to fruition and advocate for and lead change in both their organizations and their campus community. For study participants this process also often ended with very tangible results, whether they executed a major event for campus, the rebirth of a signature event for a council or something as mundane as an event planning guide or a inter-organization agreement document.

The work made student leaders feel like they had something important to invest in further fueling the students to continue to engage in the process. This stretch work consists of four major elements for the student leaders– work that is well resourced, work that has real world implications, work where they can exercise agency by advocating for others, and work that requires them to be on, and sometimes even lead, a team.

Well-Resourced Work. Once students delve deeper into student engagement, they serve in para-professional student leadership roles imbuing them with a level of agency and letting them manage a level of resources that they often have not managed before. Also, many students share that the exposure this level of resources gives them helps expand their view of what’s possible and just how much is actually out there for them to utilize. Nicole shares these sentiments in her recount of her first engagement experience.

I didn't come from a wealthy family, so the budget that we had for the year was larger

than my household income. So I think that was pivotal as well, just the access to so much

money. I mean, obviously not for myself, but being able to talk with others about how we

will manage and spend and stuff like that.

Steffon further elaborates distinguishing between the amount of resources certain offices have on campus versus others.

[Student Activities] had the keys. [Student Activities] has the keys in making a lot of

decisions for the students and this is where I'm leaning to. I didn't know the name for it at

the time, student leader. But if I'm leading to take charge, like everyone else is, I was

looking to Student Activities as the place to be. But Greek life impacted me and being

more involved culturally than anything. Yeah, they got funds, they got the juice, they got

the voice.

Persephone Jones, a non-binary, Middle Eastern / North African, bisexual, first generation student leader in Residence Life and Student Activities operations, shared that even being the person to help process the transactions and contracts in her student management role gave her great exposure to the resources that abound.

[Student Activities] was like one of the richest departments on campus. I mean, I saw

how much we paid people because I would be helping [the business manager] process

financial forms. I'm like “Dang 50K for one night. Some people are living on the streets.

Okay.” And we're paying like we have all this money. And I just accepted obviously,

cause I'm just the student manager. I'm like, yeah. I mean, we got to give people what

they want. We got to have Leslie Jones come here. So I think it showed me what was

possible because I had never been in a department or job that had so much expendable

money. I was like, whoa, like there is this much money and we are just one department.

Um, and we weren't one of the richest departments either. That's the funny part.

When students are given or even just exposed to the resources available, they develop an expanded understanding of resource allocation and the true cost of good and experiences for students, which sets them on a course for doing even more impactful work when the leave the university setting.

Real-World Implications. Another aspect of stretch work is the opportunity to engage in work that has real world implications or that mirror real world experiences. Students spend time navigating complex systems, negotiating contracts for services, coordinating team of entities for initiatives, and executing programs and events. This work stretches students and forces them to grow into their full potential. Alex shares

I had real responsibilities that actually impacted real people. And the deadlines that I had

were strict. And if I didn't meet them, they would impact the entire organization and then

possibly the entire student life because that's what we were dealing with. So it really gave

me a sense of not necessarily purpose, but urgency I guess. Because whatever I was

doing was really impactful. And I got to see those numbers, and I got to see the crowds,

and I got to see what I was doing. So, it made me realize that I'm not just sitting behind a

computer screen. Whatever I'm doing is reaching people and they're seeing it. And they're

showing up and they're interacting with us, which is really cool.

Oftentimes seeing the results of one of their first projects showed the student leaders what was possible. Roman Pierce details resurrecting a programming week for his council. It took a lot of work to ensure his team was actually doing their part, but when the first event of the week was

93 an unexpected success, he learned the true value of the product he was providing to the campus community.

“I had to put the motivation into my council to let them know we make this, like we make

what we have going on. I feel like that week right there showed me what was possible

because karaoke started with just a couple of us from the council. And then we had

maybe two or three students. But we were in [a main walkthrough space in the student

union] and the lights, the music, the noise, just that presence drew people, and it drew

people, and then the crowd got bigger and it got bigger. And everybody's having fun.

Everybody's laughing. It's a good time. And it's like, this is easy. We just got to put the

work in it, you know? And so that right there, starting the week off like that showed me

that as long as somebody takes that first step, it's possible. And that kind of put a lot in

me like this is real, this can be done.”

Another feature of work with real-world implications is the fact that the students were doing the work themselves. But tackling these complex tasks themselves, students were able to savor success. As Isha, an Asian, Muslim, woman on the Activities Board details:

I feel like we're having more of a say in what we're doing and like more of actually

planning out the events. Because I remember my first semester as a committee chair, [my

advisor] did all my work for me. Like I pitched the idea and I'm just like ‘I want this, this

and this.’ And she did all of it. So, having to plan out the event from start to finish and

like seeing it come to life. That's one of the moments that I felt like wow, this is actually

like real life. Like this is what having responsibility is.

Brendan echoes Isha’s sentiments.

Well from day one they have you on the phones calling vendors, speaking with pro staff

members who are around the front desk, et cetera, organizing these things, talking to

people in events and planning or even calling over to speak with the [professional]

marketing team over there. From day one in [the Activities Board], I was speaking to

someone and I was very uncomfortable. I probably didn't do a good job whatsoever the

first few times I made phone calls because the nerves made me shake or my mind would

go blank and I'd forget why I called, et cetera.

In all of these situations, students were entrusted with the responsibilities of actually bringing their visions to fruition themselves. In so doing, students felt compelled and drawn in to do more work.

Advocate for Others. Another aspect of stretch work occurs once student realize their agency and begin to use their positions and power to advocate for others both in resource allocation and outward programming as well as advocate for others internally by intentionally creating the team environment they work on. It also creates another layer of real-world experience as they tackle real-world issues. This advocacy also showcases the first way in this model that identity impacts student leaders’ experiences as a result of the agentic nature of student leadership in departmentally advised student organizations. Often it is through their advocacy and the utilization of the resources they have to accomplish specific goals that students engage in covert and sometimes over forms of resistance fueled by the passion to create the space they want to see for their committees both on and off campus. Jesus shares an example of working with other Greek organizations to hold the institution accountable for reprimanding organizations accused of sexual assault.

It was the most impactful as I was exposed to the widest exposure to rallying with

different students and departments. The relationships and the situations that I was placed

in had to be not only my own concerns, but other's concerns as well, before making any

decisions on my council. It was very different, at least from my own experience, any little

detail or wording, any little decision or comment I would make has an impact, not only

for myself, but other individuals as well. [The Administration] wasn't really addressing

certain issues on how [the fraternity] should be held accountable for both departments

and student organizations and when exactly to proceed. And just the language behind

how to address that, was a little bit more difficult as students never having any prior

experience in doing that.

In standing with the sorority voicing the complaint, Jesus found himself at the center of a very delicate dance on how to hold the leadership of Greek Life and the university accountable for taking appropriate action with the fraternity over a real-world issue, sexual assault this advocacy for an on-campus sorority also occurred while Jesus’s fraternity actively worked through programming and service opportunities to tackle machismo in their Latinx communities. Though

Jesus did not see a direct link between the two actions, clearly advocating for the better treatment of women both within his Greek community and within is ethnic community was a theme of his leadership journey. Brendan shares an example of advocating for making the internal experience of the organization better.

[At first] there wasn't much conflict resolution. It was just spoken amongst us. And then

moving up to the committee chair section myself, I really wanted an open and honest

committee. I wanted everyone to feel like if they didn't like my leadership or if they didn't

like a certain way it was going, they had a voice. And then I took that step higher when I

went to presidency because I saw it went well. Two of my board members actually went

to become E-board members, and now they're the president and vice president of the

organization. So I was clearly opening communication and letting everyone feel like their

voice is equally important as my own, even though I am in the higher position. That was

huge

Peach story below shows how students were able to use their platforms to ensure their salient intersecting identities also received representation and visibility in programming on campus, thus using their agency to create a space and dialogue for others.

I think as far as Black History Month, or even just my other organizations, I think... So

yeah, I am someone who is queer. I recently... I won't say recently. I came out in my senior

or junior ... I think second semester of my junior year to friends. I came out to, I think, my

mom and... I'm just exploring and I think it hasn't been a huge... I don't want to say it hasn't

been a huge part but it hasn't been something that I've focused on just because I recently

came to terms with it. But I think definitely with Black History Month programming, I

think I at least try to be intentional about programming around the intersections within our

community. The fact that queer people, queer black people exist for one. And also just the

fact that queer Black people absolutely fought for your rights and you wouldn't have rights

without Black queer folks. So I think I’m making that a part of the learning that I do in

these spaces, but also a part of the teaching in some regard.

In the above excerpts, as a result of the real work students are tasked with, they are able to find their voices, realize their power, and utilize that power to advocate for the change they want to see both inside and outside of their organizations. This opportunity for advocacy both leads to

97 students recognizing and utilizing their voices and helps deepen both their experience and their connection with the campus and their peers.

Working on a Team. The final major contributing factor to stretch work is working on a team, and for some, actually managing a team of peers / working to move a group of peers to a solution. This subtheme was so salient to the student leaders experience that 90 percent of participants spoke about it whether they worked on formed teams or served in solo roles. Though working with others is often a positive experience for students (some students attribute group work in classes as a catalyst for making friends for instance), there is often an adjustment period that comes with engaging in meaningful work with peers. Student leaders were forced to negotiate relationships with their teammates and often ended up navigating tough work and situations as a result of working with people with different backgrounds and diverse perspectives. Veronica, a Black woman, first-generation student leader in Orientation and

Student Activities Operations describes navigating relationships with appropriate boundaries in the following way.

When I was a senior orientation leader, I was in charge of about 40 different student

orientation leaders and I had three additional senior orientation leaders as my coworkers,

so it was a team of four of us. I noticed the other three, they were very buddy buddy and

attempting to be likable with the staff and wanting to joke and everything. And again,

nothing wrong with that, but I noticed again, they would hang out with them outside of

working hours. If [the orientation leaders] wanted to go out to a club or go out to a party,

they would do that with them. And then sometimes they would run into awkward

instances during the workplace when they've already shared those, for lack of better

words, nonprofessional exchanges outside of the work medium. So I abstained from that.

I have absolutely no problem with grabbing a bite to eat or whatever and then just go

back to our rooms. But that would be the extent of the relationship outside of work

Arthur, an Asian bisexual student leader on the Activities Board and Speech Team details working to come to an agreement with his friends after becoming the authority figure in the group.

I always saw it as these are friends that I'm working with, these are peers, these are just

people that I have a good relationship. It finally hit me when I just sat down with my e

board and said, hey, like we're all friends. We all appreciate each other and we can have

fun outside of this organization. But I want you all to know that if I am being, I'm very

strict with deadlines or if I'm setting these expectations that you might find harsh. It's

coming from a professional standpoint and there is no hard feelings. If you do feel like I

am being unfair or being unjust, then communicate that with me and we can have a

conversation and I think just setting that guideline helped a lot.

And Isha describes realizing the importance of having tough conversations but making sure you consider the other person’s feelings:

I always thought being blunt is the best way to go about things. I learned this a lot this

year. You can't just outright say like, ‘this is what you suck at’ or, ‘this is what you

should be doing and you're not doing it’ without letting them know that you're coming

from a good place first of all and it's, it's so that we can work better in the future rather

than now. Like, the whole thing with our director of marketing, I tried different ways to

approach her. At first I let her do what she wanted to because I was like, ‘okay, she's

coming into her role, she's new, , let her create what she wants marketing to become.’

And then um, she messed up a couple of times and I called her out finally on the third

time and she was like, ‘okay, why are you calling me out? But I'm only human.’ I, I

should've directly call her out like that, but I shouldn't have let the other two times slide.

So setting up expectations beforehand so that I'm not struggling or scrambling in the end.

That's a huge thing professionally. That's a huge thing that I've learned through the

presidency is that people can take things the wrong way if you don't think it through.

Engaging with people who either had different working styles than the student leaders or disagreed with what the student leaders were trying to accomplish also proved challenging to the student leaders. Arthur details a time when he led a major restructuring of his organization. One main committee chair stood in opposition to the restructuring efforts and eventually left the organization because of it.

We learned a lot from it. Throughout the process there were a lot of setbacks. I think at

the end of it we finally reached a good conclusion, and I think a lot of the parties were

satisfied with the conclusion that was reached and we all came out a lot stronger. And we

bonded over it, which is weird to say because if there were a lot of disagreements, how

do you bond over it? But at the end of the day, having reached the conclusion where

there's a lot of compromise that was in that a conclusion and knowing that we can find

that compromise it just let us know that ‘hey, we are a team who can get through these

big problems. We bonded over it and now we just move forward positively from here.’

Working with others on complicated tasks provided the biggest challenge to student leaders.

They found themselves having to distinguish for themselves the difference between friendships and professional relationships, they had to navigate relationships once they took on a different level in the organization, and student leaders often had to discover how to provide adequate feedback to their peers as well as find ways to challenge the behaviors of their peers if they felt

100 those behaviors were not in alignment with where the organization was headed or if those behaviors did not prove helpful to the group solving the challenges that it faced.

Holistic Support

Once students have been called into experiences and are met with work that stretches their skillsets and knowledge, they are also provided holistic support from the caring relationships they develop with both staff and some of their peers. These caring relationships are holistic in the sense that they permeate every facet of the students’ lives. The members on their teams becomes their friends and their advisors provide support not just in their engagement activities but also in their lives. And the relationships are caring due to the amount of emotional support they provide for each other. This caring space created as a result of the holistic support pushes students to show up as their whole selves and provides a safety net where students realize it’s ok to fail and thus show up even more and engage in these purposeful tasks even more. The caring relationships that underpin holistic support comes from three main aspects –permeance of these relationships into students’ lives, significant investments of time, and candor.

Permeance of the Relationships. As aforementioned, the relationships students forge with professional staff and their peers in the crucible of the challenges of their stretch work permeate through their entire lives. They rely on their professional staff advisors for help not just on their co-curricular tasks, but with other aspects of their academic and non-academic lives, and they form friendships with some of their peers that extends past their involvement. Blue Sky shares how essential her relationship with her Student Activities Advisor has become in her life.

I don't meet as much for example, with [my advisor] anymore, because I am doing

marketing now so it's more like an independent process. But it was really important for me

to have that person to go to, because she was not only helping me with [the Activities

101

Board], but before we started talking about [the Activities Board], she was always like,

"How are you? Are you okay?" If I was like, "No, I'm having financial problems." She

would be like, "Oh, well I have this contact number, go or apply to this." She was kind of

like my advisor of my whole experience. I remember I was doing my taxes and for me it's

just such a complicated process because I have no idea. I remember that it was last

semester I think, because it was with COVID. Well, usually people are more helpful but

with COVID people are like, "Stay away from me, right?" I was there and I had my taxes

and I didn't know where to send them. I don't even know how an envelope works. I was

like, "How do I write this? Where should I send it?" I didn't know what the address. It was

just really complicated for me. I was about to call [my advisor] and I didn't call her because

I figured it out. But I realized that it's that support system that is a person that makes you

feel like, "Hey, I'm here for you." It could be a Saturday or a Sunday and she might get

bothered but it's just a support system too that also allowed me …. It’s another thing that I

see [the Activities Board] has given me.

Roman Pierce shares similar sentiments about the role his Greek Life advisor has played in his life.

[My advisor] and has been instrumental in everything. Like everything. The person, the

leader that I've become is because of her, her being an advisor, her putting confidence in

me, her letting me know what's possible, her giving us opportunities that are actually

outside of the actual organization. She actually cares. She knows exactly what I have

going on, whether it is my class, whether it was with my personal life, you know, she's

everything. She's an academic advisor, she's the council advisor and she's my, you know,

sometimes, she could be my therapist sometimes and her understanding every aspect of,

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my life, you know, she was able to put a lot of insight. She was real as well. Always real.

She wouldn't bs me. She wouldn't give me that short term ‘You're good. Don't worry

about it.’ You know, she told me what I needed to hear, whether I liked it or not. She's

the person that got me to accept, stop giving excuses and accept responsibility for my

actions.

Caring relationships weren’t just reserved for students’ primary professional advisors.

Professional staff in the office also play important roles in furthering the caring environment.

Alex details how the actions of the department director helped extend the support she received.

I miss [the director] so much. But she was always so encouraging. [The director] would

come in everyday with a smile on her face and she would tell us that we were doing a

good job, and she would give us that positive reinforcement that I love. And she was just

overall a very caring person. And like the fact that I called her Mama [director] means a

lot because she was literally our mama from on-campus. She cared a lot about us as

individual people and she made sure that we were ... she literally fed us several times,

which is great. I've talked to people in other departments that didn't get anything from

their supervisors, or their directors, or anything. And they didn't really have a relationship

with them. But I think within [Student Activities}, everybody aside from maybe two

people cared about each other. And we all motivated each other, and we tried to uplift

each other. And I saw that a lot with the staff and I saw that a lot with the students too,

where we were all caring for each other and trying to make sure that we were doing our

best. And we were there for each other when we needed something.

103 Alex’s story showcases how staff creates a culture of support for students but also highlights the peer-to-peer care necessary for a holistic support. Rachel, a Middle Eastern / North African woman and student leader in Greek Life shares how her peers supported her during a tough time.

I'm pretty close to them as well. They're my roommates. I mean, at that time, my mom

passed away, so it was pretty hard dealing with things, so I didn't really get to know them

at the time, just because I wasn't really going out or anything. But I feel like everyone in

my sorority was pretty supportive, and they were all there for me. Actually, the past

president was there for me when I like found out it happened. So, they were a pretty good

backbone, and I'm glad that I have people in my life that I can actually count on and that

actually support me.

Another aspect of permeance of these caring relationships is the holistic impact peers can have on each other. Anthony, a Latinx, first generation student leader in student organization operations showcases the impact of his student manager.

Last semester, we had a couple, we have many shifts together. Throughout that time, we

both grew comfortable with each other. Being able to talk about, anything, anything that

was other than, “Oh, how's classes going? How's the semester going? Like how, how's

the family, how's this person?” And like pushing each other to do more internships and

all that kind of stuff. Like I would be able to ask her how she manages to do her three

part- time jobs, full time student and still be a student employee manager. And she would

tell me how she does it, give me tips and constantly encouraging me to do the same to get

five internships, be a full-time student, which I gave into it. Not, not all five, but

definitely a lot more like putting myself out there, attending more networking events.

Um, like right now I'm applying for summer internships to see who offers the better plate.

104

But if it wasn't for her, I think I would have started applying, but at a much later stage

probably at the beginning of my last semester rather than a whole year ahead.

Anthony ended up getting the internship after being encouraged to apply by his student manager.

In his case, and the other examples shared above, the fact that students shared more with their peers and advisors and vice versa worked to deepen the relationships between them and provide a more comprehensive, rewarding experience for the student leaders.

Significant Investment of Time. Because student leaders engaged in stretch work that required full engagement, they often spent a significant amount of time with both their advisors and each other leading to deeper relationships and sharing more of themselves with each other, which in turn afforded the student leaders more opportunities for holistic support from those relationships. Time in this subtheme refers to both the frequency and volume of time and the number of years or compounded time spent with each other. Amy shares that the amount of time she spent with the other orientation leaders really cemented their bond.

The first training we had to do as a group was once a week for a month. And we were all

together that time, we had they keep reintroducing our names are pronouns, our majors and

then we had our team retreat where we saw each other, like once a week for a month. But

then it's like they force us to live with each other, so we had to have roommates. We went

to the team retreat and we had to hold our roommate accountable for like getting up on

time, going to the meals on time. I guess, we learned to bond, and then we got to training, it

was every day, as a group for six hours a day for a week and a half. So we're eating lunch,

together, we were we were having meals together and at some point is like once you're

working more closely with each other, you know, we eventually got tired of each other.

But we do understand that we were like a family, so we did things like family movie night,

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a family dinner night when we go to different restaurants, and like family shopping night.

And we will always make a joke with our students they'd be like “oh like are you friends

with my leader? So y'all live on campus the summer?” And we would say “Yes. We eat,

together. We sleep together. We shower together … we do all of it together.” So it's like

you really had to make bonds with these people like because you're going to be together

the whole summer.

Harleen Quinzel, an Asian, Gay, woman and student leader in Greek Life and cultural programming details the importance of time in with her advisors.

I would definitely say the one person that stands out is [my advisors]. I guess my sisters

had made it very clear that, he was the guy to go to if you had any issues or anything like

that. And I don't remember how this started out or where I even met him, but eventually I

just started visiting his office a little too often, just for fun and random stuff like that. I

remember I went to AFLV with him as well....I can't believe I forgot about [my graduate

advisor]. [My graduate advisor] was definitely also a person I had an important relationship

with that whole year with the [programming team]. We all just got really close and just

spending that much time together to plan things and all those meetings and just sitting

together, working on that, definitely just made them feel like friends. And literally anytime

I saw [my advisor’s] office empty, I would just go and be like, "Hey, you want to hear

about my problems?" And he's "Yeah, of course I do." And it would just be that sort of

thing. So yeah, it was really nice and it was one of my favorite parts of being in [Student

Activities] and walking around there was talking to them and hanging out with them.

Gabrielle Orta, a Latinx, bisexual, woman and student leader in Greek Life echoes the importance of the amount of time she spent with her advisor.

106

[My advisors were] readily available. So, I would sit with [my graduate advisor] in her

office until four in the morning, sometimes at [the student activities office] just talking and

building that relationship and getting to know each other and figuring out ways to better

[my sorority], but also, I took a lot of those things to heart to better myself, and they were

things that I really took note of that I wanted to carry with me for the rest of my and like

become a part of my value system.

In each of these examples and countless of others from the interviews, the amount of time student leaders spent with their peers and their advisors helped to deepen their relationships and this deepen their engagement experiences and their learning.

Candor. The final element of holistic relationships is candor. Oxford defines candor as the quality of being open and honest in expression. Merriam-Webster additionally defines candor as unreserved, honest, or sincere expression and freedom from prejudice or malice. These definitions together provide good context for a major subtheme of student leaders with historically marginalized identities. The open and honest feedback from both peers and certainly advisors that they built trusting relationships with was one of the greatest catalysts for their development. Also, that freedom from prejudice or malice served as the bedrock of the welcoming environments these students experienced that encouraged them to risk freely in hopes of great rewards which led to further development.

Open and Honest Feedback. This open, honest, and frequent feedback is one of the main underpinnings of both the theme of candor and the overall theme of holistic support. One of the main drivers of development in high impact engagement literature is frequent feedback and the reflections and change in behavior it inspires. Steffon shares how feedback from his peers led to him changing how he interacted with, and even walked through, campus.

107 The two [friends] I was closest with, sat me down in one of the kitchens in the dorms, and

it was like in the middle of the night. We just got done in the lab, and they wanted to talk to

me, it seemed serious. This was a Thursday night, and they were having an intervention

with me and discussing about my emotional abuse. This is when I learned that I can be

rude. My conversation with folks is different, my jokes are different, the way that I speak. I

know that about myself now, more than ever, because of [my girlfriend]. The [big city]

lingo -- you don't know this stuff, man. You don't know this stuff, I didn't know this stuff. I

come talking with people with the same lingo as I joke around with my family. We joke

around and there's no hard feelings about it. But you come to BCU, you got to stop. You

have to know who you're talking to. And I know that rule. I do that … know who you're

talking to, when you're in front of a white person. Know who you talking to when it's from

someone of a different cultural background. Know who you talking to when there's an age

difference. But know who you're talking to when you're around other kin folk? I saw the

color of the skin to be something that we can resonate with. And my background was too

aggressive for them. I had to tone it down a little bit. I had to learn how conduct myself,

learn how to express my feelings, learn how to be more compassionate towards someone

else's feelings. I think that that intervention was a wake-up call as to the person I was.

The feedback from peers he was close to served as a fundamental catalyst for Steffon to both evaluate how he was coming across to people and to change his approach as he worked to connect deeper to campus. Feedback also is important in the context of students’ work. Harleen

Quinzel shares that the feedback she heard on her Greek Council helped expand her view.

Hearing feedback from other people and getting that disagreement really helped me

because I was in kind of in that bubble where everyone was agreeing with me, and it felt

108

really nice, really easy. So when this was introduced, it was a wake up call where it's like,

finally I was okay, not everyone's going to like me, literally pleasing everybody is

impossible. I didn't learn that until then.

Receiving open and honest feedback from advisors was also essential for students. Amy shares how critical feedback in her performance review helped her shift gears in her work.

We had performance reviews every year. They were both like a positive and negative

experience for me, because one year my positives and my areas to grow contradicted

each other, and I was in my feelings about the next year, I remembered that feedback, but

I did feel like I was overcompensating a little bit, which led to my burnout. But I think

that my students will reflect that this was my best performance. The next year, having

that and like having a performance review from this and from that second summer, I

really did feel confident to step into more leadership potential.

Blue Sky shares how a frank yet caring conversation led to her discovering the need to take better care of her mental health.

I let myself behind. I don't really take care of myself a lot, especially when the semester

ends in person and everything's work. I remember that we had a meeting and it was in

person. I remember that I had so many things to think about and when I do this, I tend to

do this movement with my leg because get really anxious. She was talking to me and we

were just having a check-in and she was like, "Let me tell you something that I've

realized about you". She said like, "You do this a lot and it's because you're lost." She

analyzed me on everything, without her even noticing that I was doing that at the same

time because we were so far because it was COVID. She wasn't even noticing that I was

super anxious at that time, but she had noticed that I was anxious before. She took the

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time off our meeting and was like, "You are anxious all the time so you need to take care,

I mean, you need to breathe and you need to make sure to... Your parents are going to be

happy." She just took that time off our meeting to just make sure that I was okay and that

I was taking care of myself. In that moment, I don't think she even noticed but I wasn't

really taking care of myself.

In the examples above and countless others, student leaders’ peers and advisors provided them with open, honest feedback that helped reframe how they were viewing themselves, their work, and their situations. This feedback served as a cornerstone of the holistic support they received and the process that resulted in their development.

Welcoming Environment. In addition to and sometimes a prerequisite to the open and honest feedback student leaders received, welcoming environments without prejudice or malice were important to helping students experience holistic support. Knowing that they could fail and not be punished led them to taking even greater risks and investing even more of themselves into the experience. An interesting subtheme of welcoming environments from advisors is this notion or professionalism. Many students would juxtapose the notion of professionalism with their ability to connect with advisors. Thus, the more “unprofessional” their advisors were to them, the more they were able to connect and feel comfortable. Steffon shares his unique bond with his advisor as an example.

[My advisor] made it a business to be in our business. Off jump, there was no professional

with her, it was straight, that's what- Like I said, you had to be professional. You have to

let them be professional, which they always are. Let them cross the line. Then you meet

them there. [My advisor] ain't believe that shit. I don't know who taught her anything but...

“Why are you talking to me this way, lady?” But it was love from anyone who saw it this

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way. You could have seen it to be, “She's just disrespectful, I can't vibe with something

like that.” But I believe that'll would be someone who never experienced that kind of love

from someone. I've experienced it every time. My grandmother is that way. Period. My

mother is also that way. People that come from that tender, loving lifestyle or who doesn't

have that cultural competency may not understand that that's how we love. They won't

understand. I wasn't upset by it. No, but I was definitely scared. No, don't piss her off. She

about that life. It was with her motivation, that got me involved and more involved.

Upon deeper analysis of this theme, I realized that what student leaders juxtaposed professionalism with was authenticity. Professionalism seemed sterile, cold, and often colorblind for student leaders, creating a space where they could not connect or could not dive deeper in connection with people they perceived to be “professional.” Professionalism is also an extension of and a tactic of whiteness because it forces the people taking up the mantle to capitulate to the norms of the space in which they work, which is intertwined in the dominant culture. It’s a perfect illustration of the pervasiveness of whiteness tenant of critical race theory. But because students with historically marginalized identities were seeking out staff with whom they could relate, the latent whiteness of professionalism served as a barrier for them.The authenticity of advisors made them easier to connect to and be candid. Also, it helped advisors meet student leaders where they were. Persephone Jones highlights how the student activities director having frank conversations after the murder and sexual assault of a student on campus helped create a more open environment.

I brought [the murder] up in the office to [the Student Activities Director] and she was like,

“Wow. Yeah. Like that makes a lot of sense.” After that, she was like, “I brought it up in a

committee meeting.” She like brought it up in a meeting where she was like, “Okay, yeah,

111 there's all this discourse. But also we also need to prioritize like the safety of black

women.” And then [the director] was like, “Okay, we're going to do a self-defense class.

Okay. Here we have mace.” And we were just like having open conversations about like

the nuances that race had to do in the situation. And I really liked the way that … seeing

[the director] navigate that and seeing how she brought it up to people who were like

higher up than her. Like, it didn't necessarily inspire me, but I was like, “Oh, like you can

like bring stuff up to people.”

Blue Sky shares another example of a moment when her advisor was open with her, making her feel more comfortable with taking risks.

I was really scared too of making mistakes at the beginning. Especially once you have a

really... I was a committee chair. Especially when I was a committee chair, I had these

whole events on my hands and I was like, "I really don't want to fail." I was scared of what

[my advisor] was going to think or my other E-Board members. Once I got my actual first

event canceled, I was just crying and I felt really bad. That also led to growth of thinking

my work is not me. I tried, COVID happened, and just a lot of things happen at the same

time. I think making those mistakes and make... Because before making them, I was really

scared of what [my advisor] and my other E-Board members were going to say or even my

parents. It was a lot. But once I made those mistakes and I had two events canceled -- and

was more my fault and the other one was really COVID's fault -- [my advisor] was like,

she hugged me. I remember that I was with my mom because she was visiting me, and I

saw [my advisor] and [my advisor] was like, "What happened with this event? And I was

like, "I think I got to cancel it because it was just..." Nothing was going correctly. She

hugged me and it felt like so much. My mom was there too. It's okay. It's not your fault." I

112 think that after making those mistakes, it was important for me because I was like, "It's

okay." This is actually a safe space for me to like grow and be myself and make mistakes.

These three examples showcase how advisors play a pivotal role in creating open, welcoming spaces for student leaders to thrive. But students’ peers are also just as integral in creating these welcoming environments. Anna shares how the welcoming environment the president of the organization and other, more seasoned student leaders set helped her connect to the organization as a new member.

I definitely think [other student leaders helping her out] definitely built like community a

little bit more, for me, because I felt like everyone was so accepting and like meeting [a

seasoned student leader] and meeting [the Activities Board president] especially I think

like it felt very natural and like I didn't feel like an outsider very much like I felt like they

very much like took me in like right away, so it just felt like really natural. I feel like we

shared like a lot of personal like stuff like first off like meeting each other and stuff,

especially with [the president] I feel like he was so open with me like from the beginning.

And even though he was like there to like teach me about like [the organization] and

everything, it wasn't just that it’s like it was more than that, it was like our personal lives

and talking about everything outside of school too. [The seasoned student leader], [the

president], and I like would hang out sometimes at his apartment, and it'd be like just

something fun like outside of work or [the organization].

RS details how the different students in their organization went out of their way to make everyone feel included.

I don't want to get myself stuck on this phrase too much but I think it, again, was just the

calling into community. It didn't feel like, "Hey, we're hosting this thing if you want to

113

come to it." It was, "Hey, we're hosting this thing and I would really like for you to come to

it as somebody that we want in our community." I think that that was really important for

me to hear as somebody that felt so alien in the environment that I was in. I feel like that's

something that they really ... They emphasize that really well to anybody. It's a very

welcoming environment. You don't just see that through their words. You see that through

the way that way intentionally reach out to people and, again, really call them into it and

show the interest in wanting you in that community.

The above examples showcase the crucial role students play in creating welcoming environments in these student organizations for their peers. These environments serve as a trusting space for the candor that must take place for student leaders to develop and are a major component of the holistic support needed.

It’s important to note what relationships look like when they are not infused with care, and thus are not holistic. They are still important and are often vital to students’ scholastic journeys as institutions. But they are also significantly less impactful to the student overall and potentially contribute less to retaining students at the university. All but one student in this study identified their student affairs advisor as their most impactful staff relationship at the university. And the other student named their academic advisor as their most impactful relationship. In fact, only a quarter of the study participants mentioned any sort of meaningful relationship with a faculty member at the university – spanning from visiting office hours to working on research teams.

And, as shown above, even when students had meaningful relationships with faculty members, they still identified their relationship with their student activities advisor as their most impactful staff relationship. Blue Sky shares the difference in the relationships between her student activities advisor and a faculty member on whose research team she works.

114 I think my closer relationship would be [my student activities advisor]. Apart from that, I

am doing research with a professor and I wouldn't say we're really close to each other, but

she's also my Honors College Fellow. That's how I got connected to her ant that's how I

realized that I really like what she was working on and I kind of followed her until she

allowed me to be on her research team. We met I think one time every semester. Now that I

joined her research group and this is my second semester with her in this research group, I

meet her every week. Again, it's not a relationship where it's super supportive or she

doesn't... She shouldn't… but she doesn’t care about [me], she cares about like her research

team, right. That's why she's meeting me because I get to be part in her research team. It's

not really supportive. I don't think she knows my last name. She might. I mean, she's great,

but it's not a close relationship. It's more of a faculty, student relationship, a really, really

professional relationship.

This excerpt highlights the dynamic of non-holistic relationships. Blue Sky shared how excited she was to join her Honors College faculty fellow’s research team because of the faculty member’s work on gender – a topic she said is important to her because of her queer identity.

And even though she meets with her faculty mentor weekly, she’s not even sure her faculty advisor knows her last name due to the professionalism of their relationship. Other study participants listed the “professionalism” of their professors as a barrier to connecting in a significant way to some faculty members.

Barriers and Bridges

This study focused on how student leaders with historically marginalized identities develop through their experiences on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations. Situating the student leaders’ development in the context of their intersecting

115 identities is essential to understanding what truly is occurring during these leadership experiences, and, more importantly, how it is occurring. Throughout the student leaders’ journey to and through deep engagement experiences, they wrestled or chose not to wrestle with their identities. And that wrestle and resultant states of being led students in determining what opportunities to engage in, which staff and faculty to engage with, and ultimately impacted even their ability to engage deeply with the campus. Students’ intersecting identities often served as both bridges to their engagement on campus, determining what the students foregrounded in their quest for engagement and were the source of barriers resultant from an environment that did not provide adequate space and care for those identities. I argue that when identities were met with care / acts of care, they often became bridges for students, helping to connect student leaders to community and to resources. Also, these bridges often served as a site of agency and even covert resistance as they actively determined with whom and what to be involved. However, when these identities weren’t met with either institutional or direct, personal acts of care, they often served as points of marginalization for students when accessing and navigating university systems and constructs.

Identity. In this study, student leaders typically fell in one of two camps – students who foregrounded their identities when deciding how to engage with campus either out of necessity or advocacy, and students who preferred multicultural spaces open, accessible, and affirming to all students no matter their identities. The more minoritized the group was on campus, the more they sought out experiences leading with their racial or ethnic identity. For example, as aforementioned, Black students comprise the smallest ethnic group on BCU’s campus forming about 8 percent of the student body, just 3 percentage points above international students. All but one Black student in the study explicitly sought out experiences with, for, and by Black students

116 and staff to in which to engage. And most Black students in this study shared the importance in creating spaces for Black students and the Black community on campus. The student who did not specifically seek out Black spaces still participated in a summer bridge program for Black students that afforded him an opportunity to connect with other Black students and staff on campus. On the other hand, Latinx students form the plurality of the student body on campus forming 34 percent of the population, which is 8 percentage points more than the next racial group of white students. Of the 7 study participants who identified as Latinx, only 2 engaged in explicitly Latinx experiences, they both opted for Greek experiences in Latinx based organizations. But only one of those students shared that their involvement was an explicit choice used to connect with and advocate for their Latinx culture. The vast majority of the Latinx students in this study opted for multicultural experiences that highlighted inclusion of all people instead of highlighting their specific ethnic identity. Many of the students shared that this was a result of coming from high school experiences where they were not used to foregrounding their race in an effort to fit into their white environments. And I should also add that the Latinx students in this study typically hailed from either higher SES backgrounds or was accustomed to being in environments with higher SES backgrounds. Because the Latinx student population is the plurality of the student body, the Latinx serving offices on campus are both well-resourced and well connected politically. These students shared that different Latinx student support offices on campus reached out and attempted to connect with them, but that they rebuffed these approaches opting for other experiences. These students’ experiences surfaces an interesting question regarding the ways in which historically marginalized identities influence students’ experiences on campuses where their identity is no longer in the minority nor on the margins of a space. In all cases, the departmentally advised student organizations students chose and decided

117 to stay with served as a caring environment where they could show up as their whole selves. This choice was often an example of students agency, actively using identity to choose their experiences. Steffon exemplifies how his Black identity really lead his involvement on campus.

I made it a mission to not just be a number, so to be more involved. And the only way I

could be involved in something is to be passionate about it. And that was all black.

Everything I did was black. Everything I did was cultural, anything. And I made a name

for myself. All the things that I got involved in, all the things I spoke for, all the things.

And for example, they brought me in for some mental health, you gon damn straight hear,

black come out my mouth. It's going to be a conversation about it. I know they were

talking about the general BCU public, but I care about the black community. That's what

I was there for. It was made known by me to everyone.

Peach echoes Steffon’s sentiments saying she actively chose activities to be in community with other Black students.

I didn't really go to school with a lot of Black folks till I went to high school. I think even

though the Black population is very low at BCU. I think I was always putting myself in

places to find those folks. I think also because it's so small, I think we are closer knit if

that makes any sense. I think BCU is a microcosm of the city. I think folks definitely self-

segregate which I don't know is necessarily a bad thing. But I think people stick to their

racial group or ethnic group or their... people who look like them when they create friend

groups. So just deliberately putting myself in those places. So going to the African

American cultural center. Going to events hosted by [Black Student Services]. Going to

stuff like the Black to school barbecue. Signing up to be a part of the committee. Joining

these very particular organizations that have to do with Black students and also my Black

118 studies classes. I would say, most of my friends that I made from a class, they were from

a Black studies class.

RS shared how their gender-nonconforming, queer, and trans identities impact how they navigate campus and what they choose to connect with.

I feel like [my identities] definitely put a lot more caution on me and I've definitely ...

after going to one meeting and realizing what's the vibe of that place, for lack of a better

term, I've not wanted to go back. I think that it's a lot harder to engage when I get that

environment or default. I would say I have been witness to a lot of professors using

exclusionary language and such. I'm sure that they didn't mean to say it but there's been a

lot of defaulting I guess when I haven't made myself known as that stick in the mud, for

lack of a better word.

Though BCU has consistently been named as one of the most Queer-Friendly campuses in the country by outlets like The Advocate Magazine, Campus Pride, and Huffington Post, RS’s story also highlights the lack of support for LGBTA+ students on campus in a deep, more meaningful way. RS named the Gender and Sexuality Center on campus and a campus ministry as the only places their full identity was affirmed. Though these campus resources were vital to helping RS find community, true inclusion clearly had not permeated campus. Staff and faculty still defaulted to exclusionary language when they could not automatically tell if someone in their presence was a member of the community. This led RS to feel an extra burden of caution when interacting on campus. RS’s sentiments were echoed by Persephone Jones who shared her beliefs that the university only adopt practices such as pronoun sharing in a superficial way instead of a true shift in practice and beliefs. Each of these students’ experiences demonstrate how a lack of

119 depth in the university’s approach to inclusion creates undue and additional barriers for students to overcome to access community.

In each of these examples, students showcase how their identities drove them to determine which activities they get involved in. But students also chose involvement based on their explicit “multiculturalism.” Harleen Quinzel used it as a base to join her multicultural sorority, a decision that led to her deep engagement on campus.

I talked to [the sorority] and then instantly I was like, "I want to join you all." It was so

weird because I had always wanted to join Greek Life, but I had a little bit of hesitancy

because what was portrayed to me on TV was, I didn't see people like me, people of

color, women of color, different sizes, shapes, ethnicity stuff like that. And then when I

found out that there was a multicultural sorority, it was my dreams had come true. I was

like, "I found a place for me." It's not a specific type of person that they're looking for or,

they don't screen based on unnecessary things or whatever. So it was really nice. I felt at

home and I felt accepted. So I guess that was what really started it off. Because, before

that, there was none of that, it was just me.

Anna shares that the fact that her identities weren’t emphasized made it easier to connect with the organization.

So I feel like [the Activities Board] was more of a place where it didn't really matter

about a my identity that like I feel like maybe that's why I connected with him more

because it wasn't like all based around that, you know.

Amy showcased how being in an organization with so many other queer-identifying and queer affirming people helped her both build community with her team and settle into her own

Queerness.

120 The end of sophomore year, my second year in orientation, our team decided to get all

emotional and [our advisor] made us talk about our identities. I started crying but

thankfully half of our team is like queer anyway. So it was like easy to break the ice and

like nobody ever really made a big deal about it because, like it wasn't a big deal to be

made and we just like bonded over being queer. We all went to pride together. We went

like in groups that orientation team, so I really love that experience. Well not officially as

orientation thing, but you know we all live with each other over the summer, so we had

our little group chat going. We went to pride together like that that was so fun or if we

didn't go together, we saw each other, like going back and forth and we're just like

bonding over the experience.

In each of the above examples, students used their identities whether foregrounded or somewhat backgrounded to serve as a connecting force to engagement on campus.

Sometimes identities also pose barriers that students must negotiate to engage on campus.

Alex shares how she had to constantly negotiate with her Pakistani parents to be able engage in on campus activities.

I'm from a pretty conservative background. My parents were super strict. And if you're a

girl, you shouldn't be out past a certain time. And if I'm done with school … that's my

responsibility. I have to go to school, I have to come home. And that was what they

expected of me. So whenever I had to stay after school for whatever reason, it would be a

whole ordeal. And they'd be like, "We have to make sure that you're coming home on

time." I would get six phone calls. It was a huge ordeal. And even when I started coming

to college, I was commuting from home, and it was about an hour and I would take the

Metra. There were times where my dad would be like, "No, I don't want you taking the

121 Metra. I'm coming to pick you up right now." And it was super overbearing. So college

really gave me an opportunity to distance myself from them and then also to convince

them to loosen the reins. I don't know how I convinced them. I kind of just started doing

things on my own and telling them to deal with it. But it worked out, because they're a lot

less strict than they were, and they allow me to do a lot more than I was allowed to

before.

Blue Sky shared how during her international student orientation, everyone would greet you by asking your name and home country. When she would share her home country, negative ideas of home country initially prevented her from connecting with people.

Some of the problems that I had, I think, connecting with people is obvious stereotypes

that they had about my country. Because that's something that gets me really mad when I

see it on TV or when just people talk about it. For me, Colombia is my whole life, right,

my family, my friends, my everything. I remember that my first day of orientation, which

I think that's why it was harder for me to make friends my first day, they were like, "Hey,

where are you from?" I remember it so vividly. I was just meeting people. A Russian guy

came to me and was like, "Hey, where are you from?" I was like, "Oh, I'm from

Colombia." He was like, "Oh, so you're the girl we got to go ask for cocaine in parties,

right, before parties." I was like, "I have never tried cocaine. I've never even seen it." In

Colombia I go to parties, I go out and I've never even seen it. I don't even know how

looks. I remember just having really similar experiences too. "Oh, you're from Colombia.

I know Colombia, Medellín, right, Narcos." Or they would sing the Narcos theme song to

me in super bad Spanish.

122

In both of these examples and others that participants shared their intersecting identities provided obstacles that they had to negotiate, and sometimes continued to have to negotiate, to actually connect with others and engage deeper on campus. And for many, these identities remained at the forefront of their consciousness as they continued to navigate campus and the various spaces in which they found themselves.

Finances. Another vestige of identity that constantly appeared in the data is finances. At

BCU, 60 percent of undergraduate students are Pell grant eligible and 70 percent of undergraduate students receive some form of financial aid. Thus, finances are a huge factor for student leaders and form both a barrier for some students seeking to engage in campus. In this study, 80 percent of the participants worked part-time jobs to help offset their college costs and to help support their family. And oftentimes, students reported working anywhere between 30-60 hours a week, sometimes across multiple part time jobs to earn enough money to make ends meet. Also, at least two participants who reported that they did not work to help support their family shared in their interviews that they participated in experiences that paid them or worked summers for spending money. Thus, 90 percent of study participants worked at some point during their college careers. Veronica reflects on the role finances played in her engagement journey.

A lot of my leadership experiences, those quote unquote leadership experiences, were

paid experiences. I am paid to be here. I'm a first-generation college students so a need

for adequate funding was definitely essential. Every year of my academic career here at

BCU seemed different. I stayed on campus my freshman year. I moved back home my

sophomore year. I came back halfway my junior year and I got my very first apartment

my junior year. So I'm currently a senior still with my very first apartment. I'm fully

123 efficient, I'm able to pay big girl bills now, but a good portion of me growing up was

realizing that if there isn’t anyone that's going to do for me. It has to be me that's going to

do for me.

For Alex, the fact that her on campus experiences were paid both helped reduce her work burden and legitimized her staying on campus for her strict parents.

Finances played a huge role. I paid for my own Metra tickets. And throughout college,

there were multiple times where I was working two to three jobs at a time. Just because I

don't like relying on my parents' money, and they don't have a lot of money like to begin

with. So I didn't want to be asking them for things. So I paid for my train tickets. I paid

for whatever expenditures I had. And I wanted to be able to support myself at least to

whatever extent I could without asking them. So that led me to take on more roles where

I was being paid. If it was a super high commitment and I was not being compensated in

any way for it, I most likely would not have taken it on. And that's kind of, it's kind of a

thing to say. But I'm a college student, and I need to make my way for myself. And

especially coming from whatever socioeconomic background we have, I didn't want to be

a burden on my parents' wallet, because they already had plenty of burdens. So the fact

that [the Activities Board] let me get paid and the fact that [the Activities Office] gave me

a position where I was able to get paid was really great for me. And I think that the fact

that I had a job on campus made it easier for me. Because then my parents were like,

"You're actually working. You're actually making money for this, so you can do it." And

it was a time commitment that I didn't mind. I was actually enjoying the work that I was

doing and the things that we were planning, and whatever tasks that I was being given.

124 Both of the above excepts showcase a sentiment echoed by many of their peers – because of the real-world financial burdens placed on these students, they had to be very intentional on what they chose to spend their time on. Because, in addition to full time class loads and extracurricular activities, they also work well over part-time hours to support themselves and their families. In fact, several students said they chose not to participate in certain activities, especially joining

Greek Life, because of the heavy financial burdens they would incur.

In addition to the amount of hours student worked preventing them from engaging in too many unpaid activities, students also talked in detail about the financial burdens attached with just being in community on campus. Nicole shares the financial woes of her freshman year when she had less money saved.

I think finances were very different for me freshman year compared to where I've been at

post freshman year. Freshman year, I was still depending on my parents for money. And

so, I didn't mingle as much. I don't know, for a freshman it's like going out to dinner with

friends, I guess I didn't have as many like, "Let's go get coffee or let's go get a burger." I

just didn't have money to go do that type of stuff. So, I was very much so not able to

congregate with people off campus with this being very much so an off-campus kind of

university as much as I would've liked freshman year. I knew what I could and couldn't do

or can't afford. So, I would just shy away from conversations like that. I was not going to, I

don't know, a gathering across the city because I did not have the money to pay for an Uber

and I was not going to be on the train at like midnight or something. After freshman year,

because I started saving money, my parents allowed me, I should say to save money from

my internships. So, I was able to help finance myself throughout the year. I would go home

and work and they'd still pay for everything, but I could take my paycheck I felt like I went

125

out more with people and that just helped me, like after a student government meeting, if

somebody disgustingly enough wanted to go to [to a restaurant] I could go. Or if people

wanted to just go get Chick Fil A downstairs ... I mean, Black Folxs eat a lot as a form of

sharing time together. So, I felt like that was, I didn't get to do that. And I think about this

really in relation a lot to student government, like everybody always went out to eat after

the student government meetings and I didn't do that freshman year. But I got to do so after

freshman year.

Steffon echoes Nicole sentiments which made him be more aware of his socioeconomic status as well.

[Friends made on campus] are not working. I was working at the time, they were just goin

to school. They had parents paying for school. They have parents sending them cash. On

paper I'm sure [BCU had a lot of lower SES students] but, by experience, its “Oh, let's go

out every weekend.” And I'm a man, I'm a dude. When you're going out every weekend

you got to pay. So, we paying to go places. That's new to me, let me pay. “Oh, this place is

wack, let's go to somewhere else.” Okay! You know, it's getting later too, we got here

before 10, that was a discount. It's a little after 11 now, it's the extra $5, you got extra $5

money? You know, we go into another place. And that's one example, it's those actions that

right there is – we’re not one in the same. We don't do things the same, we don't care and

stress about the same things. I'm working for my family. I'm working for my education. I'm

working to make sure that by next semester I'm able to pay for this book. And, you over

here you're saying, you only worked for three months over the summer before you got to

college and you're using that money, plus your parents' money to do other things, we’re not

the same.

126 Both of these examples, and others study participants shared showcase just how expensive being in community on campus can get. In fact, RS shared that one way their organization showed care was by actively making space and assisting people who may not have been able to afford to costs of engaging with the group, rather that was working out carpooling for people who couldn’t afford Uber rides to and from events or arranging for lodging for people who would miss trains to their homes because of the time events ended. In all cases, finances and financial situations could serve as a major barrier to engagement unless individuals in the experiences or the university itself helped to turn it into a bridge. And of the biggest bridge building actions of the university was compensating student leaders for more of the traditional engagement experiences.

Students were able to use those positions to tap into the development that occurs as a result of engaging in these experiences while also still being able to contribute to their and their families’ budgets.

This study’s primary focus is to document and detail the process occurring in the experiences of student leaders with historically- marginalized identities that lead to their development. Thus, I do not spend too much time talking about the results of the model. There is a large body of work starting with Astin (1985) that documents the results of students being engaged on campus. And Kuh (1995) well documents the many benefits of student leadership.

The student leaders in this study detail those same benefits. They report learning real-world skills such as accounting and finance from working with various budgets, communication skills from their vast teamwork experiences, managing peers, delegating tasks, etc. They also all report

“coming out of their shell” and growing past being shy to actually being able to own themselves, their power, and their agency. Many students in the study reported coming into college and their leadership roles very shy and timid. And as a result of their stretch work coupled with holistic

127 support, they were able to grow out of it and do things like lead others and even speak on stages to thousands of people. Another major output from student leaders’ experiences is building community. Many of the study participants shared that they had not met their home on campus before getting engaged on campus. And the intense work on these teams with individuals they spent a lot of time with and delved deep into themselves with created strong friendships that persists even after those experiences.

128 Chapter 5: Conclusion

In Chapter One, I explored the evolution of higher education institutions from its racist origins and history over the past few centuries to its retrofitting to be more inclusive spaces and the ramifications of that evolution for all its components. Universities were initially built to serve as a finishing school for the male children of white landowners in this country. Over the past few centuries to now they have continued to be retrofitted to include poorer white men, white women, and ultimately people of color. But universities employed several systemic, racist measures to ensure that only the people they wanted in their institutions were able to attend. This includes everything from the manipulation of standardized testing (Karabel, 2005) to the pushing out of black and brown communities from their historic neighborhoods to make form university enclaves (Cole, 2020). It only makes sense that institutions built by slavery and other forms of forced labor on lands stolen from Indigenous Americans among others would continue to have white hegemony and racism at the center of many of its unquestioned /unexamined principles and practices, including its theories surrounding student development. And the continuance of the academy to oftentimes center the work of white men instead of newer work done by younger scholars and practitioners of color continues both the grounding of student development theory in white hegemony and the disconnect between research in the academy and the practice of student development on college campuses largely done by younger professionals of color in student support units and not academic classrooms. To begin to bridge this gulf between research and practice of student development theory, this study seeks to create a theory of development for student leaders with historically marginalized identities serving on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations.

129 In Chapter Two, I provided an overview of relevant literature. I introduced the evolution of the usage of Critical Race Theory in education and higher education research with specific emphasis on the concepts of marginality and power. I then reviewed some of the main critical critiques of student development theory in general and high impact engagement. I followed this with a review of high impact engagement literature including its main theoretical foundlings. I closed the chapter with the framework most salient to me as I entered this study including data from a pre-study that led me to two main critiques of high impact engagement literature after examining the experiences of students of color through a critical lens – the centering of the classroom in high impact engagement literature and the erasure of non-academic staff in high impact engagement literature.

In Chapter Three I provided an overview of the methodology I used to answer the following research questions:

1. How are student leaders with historically marginalized identities developed while

serving on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations?

2. In what ways do student leaders with historically marginalized identities exercise

power in their involvement choices and involvement experiences?

I employed the methods outlined in the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology to provide a qualitative analysis of the data. Constructivist Grounded Theory allows for the use of sensitizing concepts in the analysis of the data and calls for situating study participants in their relevant contexts. With these notions, I engaged in a phase of open coding that yielded 887 codes. I then engaged in focused coding where, through a process of comparing the emergence of codes in each interview to themselves, I was able to sort and merge the initial 887 codes into

41 codes that were then sorted into 6 main categories – Barriers, Bridges, Call In, Stretch Work,

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Holistic Support, and Development. I was able to also analyze the data for the ways in which power and marginality appeared and shaped the student leaders’ experiences, which was represented through the Barriers and Bridges themes and Advocacy, a subtheme of Stretch

Work.

After applying the inductive methodological tools of Constructivist Grounded Theory sensitized with the ideas of marginalization and power stemming from intersecting historically marginalized identities to answer the two aforementioned research questions, the emergent Care-

Based Process of Student Leader Development surfaced from the data. I introduce and detail this

Care-Based Process in Chapter Four. In the emergent theory, students are called into engagement

Figure 1 - Emergent Care-Based Process experiences from other peers, peer leaders, advisors / other trusted office staff, and sometimes authority figures on campus. The Call In is perceived to be direct to the student and, when it occurs randomly such as at a student involvement fair, it’s followed by consistent, earnest follow

131 through. Student leaders reported feeling like this call in was the first demonstrated act of care from the engagement experience to them. Once students are called into community, they are met with work that stretches them by giving them an increased level of resources that exposes them to new possibilities. The stretch work also affords student leaders an opportunity to advocate for their various communities and causes by both seeking the change they wish to see internally in their own organizations and externally by deploying their resources for inclusive programming and advocacy, their most poignant exercise of covert resistance. Finally, the work stretches student leaders by forcing them to work on, and sometimes manage, teams of their peers in complex systems that forces them to both engage with others from different backgrounds and navigate personal and profession boundaries and conflict. While student leaders engaged in this stretch work, they were given holistic support from caring relationships they developed with their staff advisors and other peers. These caring relationships were defined by the amount of time the students spent with both their caring peers and the open access they had to caring advisors. These caring relationships were also defined by the permeance of these relationships throughout their entire college experience both by advisors who student leaders felt advised them on both their activities and their outside lives, and peers who became their lifelong friends. The

Caring Relationships were also defined by candor found in the open and honest feedback students received from their advisors and each other and each other and in the welcoming, non- judgmental environments that persuaded student leaders to take risks and show up as their whole selves, which helped them further develop over a host of outcomes as well as build and find their communities.

Throughout their development process, students’ various intersecting identities could be made into both barriers and bridges to engagement and building community. For some, it drove

132 their decisions on what to get involved with and what to advocate for giving students a chance to exercise covert forms of resistance through their student leadership experiences. Other students formed counterspaces in their departmentally advised student organizations after experiencing marginalization in their own communities and in supposed safe spaces as a result of their compounding marginalized identities. In forming these counterspaces, student leaders were able to forge bonds with people who shared or were allies to their identities while feeling that their whole selves were seen, welcomed, and celebrated – sometimes as a result of a general welcoming environment. But students still felt marginalization as a result of their identities, especially students who were from lower SES backgrounds, and Black students who constitute the smallest racial population at Big City University – 8 percent. In this study, 80 percent of students shared that they worked to help provide support for themselves and / or their families, and 90 percent of students primarily participated in paid student leadership experiences. These students worked anywhere from 30 to 60 hours per week at times. The institution was also able to help mitigate the marginalization students felt as a result of their identities. For example, the fact that the university decided to pay students for some of their student leadership experiences helped reduce students’ barriers to deep engagement experiences on campus. Also, Black students who arguably felt the most marginalized on campus as a result of the low population (8 percent) of Black students on campus arguably participated in the most obvert, covert forms of resistance. They most bluntly stated that they chose to get involved in things on campus to further the Black community on campus and to make sure the Black community on campus was seen and spotlighted. Other racial minorities advocated for more of a multicultural, generally welcoming space, but they were very active in promoting that generally open and accepting

133 space. Following is a discussion of these findings and their implications for theory, practice and research.

Discussion of Findings

Study participants’ stories into and through deep engagement experiences and the resultant emergent model aligns, challenges, and expands the body of literature on student development theory and high impact engagement, as well as the literature on critical theory, particularly Critical Race Theory in student development literature. Theories on persistence, development, engagement, and involvement all tend to overlap. This emergent care-based model greater highlights the overlay of the processes and factors at the university that contribute to development, engagement, involvement, persistence, etc. This emergent model showcases the need for a more comprehensive model that accounts for all of the various ways the university and its related processes impacts students. It is no longer feasible to continue to attempt to part and parcel out institutions’ impacts on students if we seek to be most inclusive and holistic in our approaches to serving students. Below I will elaborate on the ties of each element of the emergent model to existing literature, and implications for practice. And through a discussion of potential integrations between this emergent Care Based model, Tinto’s (1993) Model of

Persistence, Sanford’s (1962) Challenge and Support Model, and the eight Keys to High Impact

Practices (Kuh & O’Donnell, 2013), I seek to begin the conversation on creating an even more comprehensive model that is more inclusive and holistic in its approach to serving students.

Overall, the emergent Care-Based Process for Student Leader Development fits well into the literature. Scholars have documented the role of care, usually in the sense of students feeling like the university cares about them in some fashion, in helping students integrate into campus communities and foster a sense of belonging on campus (Tinto, 1997; Deil-Amen, 2011;

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Strayhorn, 2012). Boyer (1990) even named the idea of students feeling their community colleges were “truly caring” types of institutions and that student affairs units and student organizations / Greek Life played significant roles in helping students feel like the university cared about them. But this feeling of care is normally a subtheme of socio-academic integration, sense of belonging, or even being in community – it has neither been adequately developed to further conceptualize the experiences of marginalized students specifically nor centered in model development. And often it gets missed in the shuffle as practitioners attempt to operationalize models and researchers continue to expound upon various threads of discovery. This emergent

Care-Based Process centers the role of care as the preeminent driver of students connecting to and growing through engagement opportunities. In every step of the model, students perceived individuals and organizations care about them and the students’ care for their communities and their work served as driving factors in their engagement and resultant development.

Call In. The Call In is the first act of care students perceive when entering their engagement activity. Students referred to the call in as organizations through their members

“showing them love” and “calling them in” in very intentional ways. Student engagement literature has highlighted the ability of the university to “pull in” students through programming and other institutional interventions (Stuber, 2015). But most of the high impact engagement literature has largely ignored how students get connected to and brought into deep engagement experiences. This concept of a “call in” fills that gap in the high impact engagement literature and goes further than just the institutionalized lens of Stuber (2015). It details the necessity of a call in not just for the generation of an overall connection to campus, it necessitates the need for an explicit call in to draw students deeper into individual engagement activities. Also, it showcases the need for call ins to community to be done on the individual level to be effective,

135 not just studied, implemented, and seen from an institutional sphere. Too often practitioners believe that if students merely show up in our spaces -- be they residence halls, support centers, programs and events, or even classrooms and office hours – that their connection to the university will be fortified, their retention and matriculation all but preordained, and their success in their post collegiate lives imminent. This theme of the emergent Care-Based Process challenges that notion. Students were in spaces built to engage them. They were employed in on campus roles. They lived on campus in residence halls. And they regularly attended classes. Yet, before their targeted call in, these students still experienced some form of a crisis of disconnection that left them feeling untethered from the university community.

Now we must take into account the fact that all of this study’s participants held multiple, intersecting, historically marginalized identities. These identities and their negotiations forced students to consider involvement and engagement opportunities in different ways. And they both impeded and aided student leaders’ ability to receive call ins at the university. Thus, the more apt take away would be that students with marginalized identities require a more direct and personal call in to engagement activities in all manners at the university. But, connecting back to Stewart

& Nicolazzo (2018), if we build and center practices and policies to and for those most on the margins, they will be generally applicable to all students. Thus, it is apparent that students with historically marginalized identities require a more tailored call in, so that tailored call in would work best in connecting all students to engagement opportunities on campus. And higher education institutions would be well served to discover a way to institutionalize and scale individual call ins for students.

At first glance, the term “Crisis of Disconnection” that I use to define the moment when students realize they are not as connected to community may seem to conflict with one of the

136 more interesting findings scholars of student communities with historically marginalized identities have detailed recently. These scholars have found that Black Queer students (Blockett,

2018; Blockett, 2017), Trans students (Jourian & Simmons, 2017; Jourian, 2016), and

Indigenous students (Waterman, 2004; Waterman, 2007; Waterman, 2012) sometimes chose some form of disconnection to campus to find community with like people, connect to familial and home support systems and perform familial duties, and as a result of trauma or harm experienced on campus stemming from racist, homophobic, or transphobic actions or events. But

I contend that these findings by other scholars don’t conflict with the notion I present of the

Crisis of Disconnection – in fact, in many ways their work supports my findings. It is important to note, that in most of these studies, students still sought a relationship with the campus or communities on campus initially and, in some ways, still desired one and wished that the campus was more inclusive and able to offer the experience they advertised. Jourian & Simmons (2017) still argue for making both on and off campus leadership opportunities accessible to trans students, as well as redefining traditional framings of student leadership to include the acts of resistance and activism in which trans and other historically marginalized populations of students engage. The authors also detail programs where trans students on campus help one another navigate and find community. Blockett (2018) details how though students felt they had to forage for community and would meet at a neighborhood Black, gay bar to further extend their community of queer men of color, they still engaged in the support program for queer men of color on campus and still sought out connections with people who shared similar lived experiences as them even while finding trouble relating with white gays. Even Waterman’s

(2004; 2007; 2012) work that details the practice of Haudenosaunee students returning home

137 often to find connection and support with their families still recognize the role of the on-campus communities in the students’ success.

Crisis of Disconnection as I use it refers to the moment students realized they are not as connected to community on campus as they would like to and are then more open to finding that community. Even in the aforementioned studies, there are moments when study participants realize they are not as connected as they wish to be for various reasons. What the findings in these studies outline that the findings in this study also support is the permeability of campus bounds when students are seeking to build their community.

Stretch Work – Once students have been called into engagement, they are met with a greater level of work that is well -resourced, has real-world implications, and allows them to advocate for others all while working on teams in complex environments. This work serves as a stretching source, forcing students to grow new skills and build upon other existing skills to meet the challenges confronting them. And that growth serves as one of the catalysts for student leaders ‘overall development through their engagement experiences.

The concept of work that stretches students is well supported and documented in both student involvement and student engagement literature. Scholars have all agreed that when students devote significant time on meaningful tasks both inside and outside of the classroom, they develop over multiple outcomes including career readiness, retention, matriculation, personal, social, and academic (Astin, 1984; Kuh, 2008; Strayhorn, 2012). In fact, scholars have long documented the impact of work that includes the following keys – high expectations of performance, significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time, interactions with faculty and peers over substantiative matters, experiences with diversity where students must contend with people and circumstances of which they are not familiar,

138 frequent and constructive feedback, periodic opportunities for structured reflection, opportunities for real world application of learning, and public demonstration of competence (Kuh &

O'Donnell, 2013 & Chickering & Gamson, 1987). Many of these keys to deep engagement are align with the theme of stretch work. Because of their work on teams, student leaders reported finding themselves experiencing diversity of thought, receiving frequent feedback from their peers and advisors both on their work and how they handle various situations, and interactions with their peers and advisors over substantiative matters. And due to the real work they had to accomplish in their roles, student leaders also found themselves investing significant time typically over multiple years with their organizations, meeting high expectations of their work both because of the often public nature and real world ramifications of their work and of frequent conversations with their peers and advisors, applying concepts they learned in class to real challenges and sometimes even discerning what academic paths they wanted to take as a result of those real world challenges, and public demonstrating their competence because they produced real events, initiatives, and program for their peers and university community. Students also mentioned the various leadership retreats they experienced and conversations with their advisors as opportunities that both equipped them with new knowledge and provided moments of reflection that allowed them to better understand themselves and their roles in the community.

The student leaders’ experiences clearly indicate the power of engagement in departmentally advised student organizations as a vital high impact engagement opportunity. But when one considers their experiences through the lens of marginality and power, their experiences further extend the bounds of high impact engagement literature by emphasizing the agentic nature of student leaders’ experiences in these organizations. Solorzano & Villalpando

(1998) argue that students of color can engage in both overt and covert forms of resistance /

139 cover oppositional behavior. Many of the student leaders in this study shared that they used their positions, the resources at their disposal, and the access they gained as a result of these positions to advocate for other students with historically marginalized identities, other students who shared their marginalized identities, and to ensure increased visibility and support of programs that showcased and provided visibility to their historically marginalized identities. An example of this is student leaders using their roles within the Black History Month programming committee to advocate for Black History Month programming that highlighted the intersections of being

Black and Queer – an intersection they often felt was missed during previous iterations. Some student leaders also used their relationship with the Gender and Sexuality center director to push the center to be more involved with cultural month programming. Furthermore. student leaders also used their roles in these organizations to tackle ways in which their marginalized cultures marginalize other identities both in a global scale (Latinx student leaders in fraternities doing intensive programming around machismo in their culture and standing with sororities to hold fraternities accused of sexual assault accountable) and on an individual level (Muslim woman and student leader utilizing her student organization roles to break free of the constraints her parents place on her because she is a woman). And some student leaders shared that students joined their activities board committees to advocate for programming around their particular identities. These students are not marching on the campus or choosing to sit out of the campus community, instead they are using the power that comes with their student leader positions on campus to advocate for their communities and to allocate resources to highlighting their communities. Thus, they add a new dimension to student development theory – the agentic nature of student leadership in these roles and ability to build the community they want to see on campus both internal and external to their student organizations.

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Holistic Support – Along with the aforementioned stretch work students are met with, they build bonds with their peers and advisors that help them find community and navigate challenges they face. These bonds are notable because they permeate from students’ engagement opportunities through their entire academic careers and often lives. The relationships they form with friends in these settings often outlive their time at the university. And they often see their student affairs advisors as their entire campus experience advisor, going to these staff members for support on a range of issues both connected to their university life and their personal lives.

The open access and welcoming environments they experience matched with the candor of feedback they receive in these spaces push students to risk more for greater rewards and greater applications of knowledge to real world challenges thus allowing them to fully actualize the great extent of their agency and resulting power in their roles.

The Caring Relationships that underpin this theme of holistic support is well documented in existing literature. Though primarily focusing on relationships students at community colleges forge with their professors, Deil-Amen (2011) documents the role institutional actors or agents play in helping students integrate into campus and acknowledges the importance of personalized support and relationships with faculty that expand past the classroom in helping students integrate and feel like they belong. Tinto (1987, 1997) also emphasizes the need for supportive relationships for socio-academic integration into universities and he asserts that those relationships both in the academic realm and social realms of higher education are vital to student persistence. Furthermore, Harper (2013) details the importance of peer support networks for Black students studying at PWIs. And High Impact Engagement literature has uplifted the importance of students spending significant time discussing substantive matters with their faculty and peers to their development as a result of engagement activities (Kuh, 2008; Kuh &

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O’Donnell, 2013; Chickering & Gamson, 1987). But this study also expands what this support looks like and centers specific actions and qualities of the support students receive that leads to their holistic development.

Student Leaders saw the support their peers and staff rendered to them as acts of care, that expanded past normal support provided at the institution. This finding aligns with Boyer

(1990) that found students view keeping offices and service centers open later to provide more access for working students as examples of the institution caring about them. Boyer (1990) also found that it was mainly student affairs units emphasizing the importance of providing this type of access and care to students. My study also supports this finding. Only one student shared that they built a caring relationship with a faculty member who rendered holistic support, though about half of the students reported taking classes that matched with their interests thus expanding their views and prompting them to interact more with those faculty members. And one student highlighted the importance of her academic advisor to her persistence at the university. Yet all of the students named their out-of-the classroom advisors as the university representative who had the largest impact on them. And more often that impact correlated with the deep bond students were able to cultivate with those staff members.

Scholars have also remarked on how these relationships sometimes expand past the university bounds and into these students lives (Deil-Amen, 2011; Strayhorn 2012). But the fact these relationships, both with staff and peers, permeate into broader facets of the students’ lives is central to the significance of the impact of these relationships on the students. Also, the permeance provides a space for these student leaders to show up as their whole selves, thus affording them the opportunity to receive holistic support from their peers and advisors. This support has helped connect students to financial aid resources, mental health resources, and even

142 physical health resources that had the students not been directed toward, perhaps they would not have been able to persist.

Evaluating this concept of Holistic Support through a critical lens also yields an expansion past existing student development literature. Student Leaders most often connected with advisors who shared some form of their identities – whether it was race, socio-economic beginnings, gender, ethnicity, immigration status, or even similar involvement patterns or histories and who were able to showcase that identity in an authentic way. Also, analyzing this through a lens of power and marginality yields the fact that students exercised agency in choosing to whom they would connect. Though student leaders typically connected with staff they shared identities and/or interests with, it is important to also note that the showing of care was the most important connecting factor for student leaders choosing to lean in to certain advisors. It was after the advisor challenged them in a candid way showcasing the amount of attention the advisor paid them, helped the student leader find opportunities or resources on campus, or provided some sort of general form of care and support that the student leader felt comfortable leaning into that relationship. Showing care is the most pivotal factor in student leaders choosing advisors with whom to connect.

Barriers and Bridges – Many scholars have worked to document the impact historically marginalized identities and other marginalized student statuses like first generation, socio- economic or commuter status have on a host of developmental outcomes that lead to growth, persistence and matriculation. (Braxton et al, 2004; Tinto, 2012; Stuber, 2015; Gormy, 2017;

Young & Keup, 2018). These scholars have found and argued that institutions must do more to provide support to students with marginalized identities to connect them to community, to help them fund their experiences on campus, and to help them manage the unique stressors their

143 marginalized identities may cause while they navigate the new and often strange terrain of higher education. The findings of this study align well with those arguments. I represent the various historically marginalized identities and statuses in this this emergent Care Based Process of

Student Leader Development with the concept of bridges and barriers. Also, the findings and subthemes of Barriers and Bridges answer the second research question. I often found in the data that these historically marginalized identities often manifested as barriers to community for these students. We saw the Southeast Asian, Muslim bisexual woman fight for independence from the compounding marginalization of her race, religion, and gender and the resultant expectations for her behavior. Had she not resisted, she would have been unable to tap into the benefits of deep engagement on campus We also saw how the first generation, Black student struggled to fit into his new campus home and its resulting cultural expectations of his behavior. Had he not begun to smile more and employ more disarming and less aggressive language more and had he not chosen to seek out relationships with peers who were willing to share honest feedback, he would have found himself even more marginalized on campus – the same feelings that led his peers from high school to depart the university after their first year without realizing their goals of attaining degrees. Had the gender nonconforming, queer student let the cisgendered, heteronormative orientations of the spaces on campus and the people inhabiting these spaces continue to lead to their feelings of alienation, and not reached out for help, then they would have continued to feel increasing forms of marginalization and perhaps would have chosen not to persist. These are just three of the many examples students shared of having to negotiate feeling marginalized as a result of their identities.

Sadly, there was no major institutional intervention that ended the above students’ marginalization. These students in some way had to reach out for help. They had to find their

144 way into the path of someone to receive a call in. Sometimes this is as simple as deciding to attend the involvement fair on campus and being open to the student organization reps that would approach them. Other times, students had to engage in a process that in some ways forced their conformity to tap into the benefits of the university community. But it is apparent that when these marginalized identities were met with care, they could turn into bridges. When staff of color, and even faculty members for that matter, shed the colorblind mantle of professionalism to show up in more authentic ways, student leaders with historically marginalized identities found it easier to connect with them. When the institution offered stipends or pay for traditionally unpaid student engagement experiences, it enabled student leaders from lower SES backgrounds tap into the benefits of these deep engagement experiences while still being able to earn some additional income to support themselves and / or their families. When staff stayed late on campus, it provided students -- who worked 30+ hours per week off campus in addition to their on-campus roles -- a chance to form deep meaningful connections with them and their peers. And the student leaders perceived all of these examples to be acts of care by the institution. Critical Race

Theory teaches us that when don’t foreground racism and other forms of marginality and take intentional measures to combat them, the oppressive system pervades. Thus, though students resiliency in finding and creating opportunities and spaces that mitigated their marginalization is commendable, institutions must take much more systemic action to combat the marginalization some students experience.

Evaluating these experiences through the Critical Race Theory lens of marginality and power, what becomes apparent is that students met these instances of marginalization with resistance and agency. Student leaders decided what they wanted to get involved with on a deeper level, decided who they wanted to connect with in a more meaningful way in those

145 experiences, and when in those roles they used whatever authority or resources they had to advocate for their chosen communities and bring about or be the change they wanted to see on campus. But an interesting expansion of Solorzano & Villalpando (1998) is the subtheme of what happened when students felt marginalized and/or unsafe in spaces built around one of their identities due to the compounding of their marginalized, intersecting identities. And it begins to answer the call of Solorzano & Villalpando (1998) to examine the intersections of marginalized identities heralded by scholars such as Collins (1986), Zavella (1991) and Frye (1992) who pointed out the compounding and intersecting marginalized effects of race, gender, socio- economic status, and sexuality, to name a few. In this study, there were multiple examples of students feeling marginalized in spaces built to hold some but not all of their intersecting identities. There was Alex who avoided the Muslim Student Association because of her less orthodox approach to cultural norms, Peach who reported being publicly lambasted in the

African American Cultural Center for wearing a shirt a male student worker thought to be too revealing, and Nicole who often felt she was mocked for being too proper in traditional Black spaces, which led her to prioritize involvement in student government over attending Black

Student Union meetings. Each of these students chose to separate themselves from the space they did not feel safe or supported in and created an alternative safe space for themselves on campus.

Interestingly enough, they were still able to make connections with people who shared their salient marginalized identities. And they used their new roles to advocate for the betterment and inclusion of their communities.

Also, BGC is not a PWI, as aforementioned. There is no racial majority and Latinx students make up the racial plurality of the student population. This led to a situation where

Latinx students and Asian students seeing greater numbers of members of their race on campus.

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But instead of leaning into the main sources of authority connected to their shared ethnicity like a well-funded, well-connected support service center for Latinx students, they opted for either fraternities and sororities matching their ethnicities or student organizations that emphasized multiculturalism and openness. In some ways, these student leaders still covertly resisted authority systems, even though those authority systems were rooted in their shared identities.

And much like the students who opted for alternative safe spaces, these students used their new spaces to build community with people who shared their identities and values of openness and inclusion and used whatever access and authority they gained to better their chosen communities and advocate for other individuals with historically marginalized identities. Also, though I found few to no examples of overt forms of resistance by student leaders, this emergent Care Based model does provide space for those actions. Student leaders talked about challenging the university administration directly (in the case of Greek student leaders holding a town hall with university administrators to address the handlings of sexual assault cases often perpetrated by historically White fraternities) or intentionally working to get answers for administrators they found more willing to share and less driven by an agenda (in the case of the student government leader). But in both cases, students worked within the system in power instead of choosing to challenge the system externally. These findings give us insight into how students with compounding marginalized identities use agency to enact covert forms of resistance by choosing other marginalized spaces, a concept hooks (1990) details.

Furthermore, analyzing student leaders’ experiences through the Critical Race Theory lens of marginality, power, and forms of resistances provides insights and data that begin to complicate some of the latent notions in Tinto’s model. The first notion is the idea that pre-entry attributes such as family background, community, and their inherent attachments do not continue

147 to be relevant once the student integrates into the social and academic experiences of the university. This certainly is disputed by the experiences of the students with historically marginalized identities in this study who continued to be influenced both positively and negatively by their parents and families, and many of whom still lived with and / or interacted with parents and families on a regular basis. This notion has also been disputed heavily by scholars for both students with historically marginalized identities and students from privileged backgrounds (Hamilton, 2016; Braxton et al, 2004; Kuh, et al, 2006; Rendon, 1994). Also, the agentic nature of these departmentally advised student organization roles and the experiences of the student leaders in them show that students are not just integrating or assimilating into a pre- determined, non-fluid university culture, but that they have the agency to change those existing cultures by their presence and by their advocacy for inclusion of their values and important identities. These changes have largely occurred through covert forms of resistance in this study, but this model also leaves space to study overt exercises of resistance through student leadership in these settings. Finally, the Barriers and Bridges themes are the beginning of operationalizing how the reinforcement of the goal commitment tenant of Tinto’s model happens for students with historically marginalized identities.

Higher Education Alignment. This emergent Care-Based Process for Student Leader

Development aligns well with and expands the predominate models and literature of general student development in college. Astin (1984) Theory of Involvement sits well within and is a major foundation of Kuh (2008) high impact engagement work as illustrated above. The eight keys to high impact engagement (Kuh & O’Donnell, 2013) all fit within the Stretch Work and

Holistic Support portions of this process. The Care Based Process expands those keys to high impact engagement by accounting for the role of identity in the development brought on by high

148 impact engagement, the lack of which scholars have often criticized Kuh and his associates over, and it adds this novel component of a Call In that realistically demonstrates how students are called into high impact experiences – something Kuh and his associates haven’t really addressed.

The Care-Based Process also aligns well and expands Sanford (1962) theory of Challenge and. The Challenge and Support model remains one of the preeminent models of student development and is still taught and quoted in student development classes. Sanford (1962) argues that development happens with students are challenged and provided an appropriate level of support to meet the challenge. He argued that if too much support is offered it would actually stunt the development of the student because the student would not be forced to work to meet the challenge. Sanford would latter add readiness as a precursor to challenge and support. This concept fits into both Kuh’s high impact engagement literature and is found in the tenets of

Stretch Work and Holistic Support of the Care-Based Process. The emergent Care-Based Process also expands this notion of challenge and support. This study better details the aspects that make work challenging for students thus inciting them to stretch to meet it. This study also better defines the level of support and key hallmarks of that support. I also include chosen peers as important providers of support and caring relationships. Also, the addition of the Call In tenet is also important here. Students don’t just happen into challenging work, according to this study.

They are called in to that work – a process that is important to understand in order to grow the number of students involved in deep engagement experiences.

Furthermore, the Care-Based Process aligns well with and expands Tinto’s model of persistence. Tinto details pre-college “characteristics” (1993, 1997) students have and in subsequent iterations he detailed the “pull effects” these characteristics continue to have once students have entered the university. This same concept arose in this study and is reflected in the

149 barriers and bridges concept. In an attempt to account for the impact of these characteristics, I found that these elements can both be positive and negative aspects for students as they attempt to connect to the university. And in the stories study participants shared about their lives, they do not experience these factors as “pulls” necessarily – merely, these factors are all seamlessly interwoven into their experience while at the university and are factors that the university itself can impact and mitigate by providing means and systems of support. Furthermore, I situate this emergent Care-Based Process in the midst of the institutional experience, touching both the academic and social integration spheres. About a half of student leaders reported that their student leadership experiences heavily impacted their academic pursuits by providing motivation for students to maintain higher GPAs, providing a grounding for students as they acclimated to the new levels of freedom they experiences living away from home, giving them a space to explore interests and identities thus helping them to crystallize their academic interests and pursuits, and giving them an opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world pursuits. Though the Tinto model has a link between academic and social integration sites, my data suggests the need for a more robust connection. It is clear for some students in the study that their social integration fed their academic integration, and that before finding any semblance of academic integration, they felt fully connected and engaged through their involvement endeavors. Another, albeit smaller group of students also met people in classes that would turn into their main source of social friendships and engagement partners showcasing the integration between the social and academic spheres on campus.

K-12 Care Theory Alignment. Though scholars of higher education have not usually centered care in an analysis of what leads to the growth and development of students, scholars of

K-12 education, starting more heavily in the 1990s, have critically examined and centered the

150 role and process of care in student engagement and student success. The emergent Care-Based

Process of Student Leader Development well aligns with some tenants of this body of work and expands on this work in important ways benefiting the higher education setting. McKamey

(2004) as cited in Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) argues that care is symbolic concept often charged with various social, political, and cultural meanings and being used to mean multiple things even in the same document. The researcher further outlines three main forms of caring in k-12 literature – teacher caring theory that assumes a relationship between the caring behavior of a teacher and student success, caring environments theory that argues the necessity of schools and communities to create caring contexts for students who may be lacking such at home and in their lives outside of school, and difference theory that acknowledges the myriad definitions of care among social, class, gendered, and racial groups and argue that schools that incorporate these differences are most inclusive of their students (McKamey, 2004 as cited in

Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus, 2006).

Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) weaves all three approaches to caring together to gain insight on the role of care in small community schools in Puerto Rican and Latinx neighborhoods. They argue that the difference theorists hold most merit because of the ways the theory challenges assumptions of power and colorblindness. And they point out Angela

Valenzuela’s (1999) modified three-year ethnographic study of academic achievement and schooling orientations of Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant students at a high school in

Houston Texas. Valenzuela (1999) found that schools are both formally and informally structured to subtract resources from US-Mexican students by dismissing cultural definitions of education that (at least in Mexican culture) is grounded in caring relationships between students and teachers that emphasize respect, responsibility, and sociality, and by adopting assimilation

151 policies that divest students of their culture and language. This subtraction leads students to feel the school does not care about them because of the lack of caring relationships and culturally relevant curriculum. Feeling this lack of care, students engage in various forms of resistance from appearing indifferent to teaching to actively displaying hostility toward a teacher they felt unfairly punished one of their peers. Teachers in turn, then lament that the students don’t care about learning. Valenzuela (1999) points out that due to cultural norms the need for students to feel cared for must be met first in order for them to care about school and learning. Valenzuela

(1999) incorporates Noddings’s (1984, 1992) notions of aesthetic care versus authentic care. She echoes the argument that schools are primarily organized around aesthetic caring that focuses on things and ideas instead of having a moral ethics of caring that nurtures and values the relationships between students and teachers. Valenzuela (1999) argues that it is only when schools move in the direction of authentic caring that affirms students’ culture and language in the curriculum can schools end their subtractive policies and structures.

Blending the above approaches, Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) posits a theory of critical care that encompasses the ways communities of color care about and educate those in their charge and deepens the understanding of the role of care in education. This text could serve as a companion piece to Valenzuela (1999) because as Valenzuela (1999) highlights what uncaring schools look like, in studying these two small community schools, Anthrop-Gonzalez &

De Jesus (2006) showcases what education looks like when the formal and informal orientations of schools are embedded in authentic caring. The authors found that authentic caring led students to develop trusting relationships with school personnel because the students felt the staff both cared about them and respected them and the knowledge they carried before entering the class.

These trusting relationships also included high academic expectations of the students, by the

152 staff, and the staff engaged in hard caring practices such as staying late after school to tutor students to meet those high expectations. The curriculum also interwove culturally relevant lessons and classes with other, standard k-12 standard coursework that served as an engaging force for students – students shared that they learned more about themselves and their cultures further igniting their passion for school. The authors identify four tenants as key to critical care are – critical and caring curricular, authentic caring that legitimizes students role and gives students some agency in the educational process; an ethic of personalismo that places high importance on high-quality, interpersonal relationships; pairing high-quality interpersonal relationships with high academic expectations that the authors argue lead to hard caring; and creating spaces that are safe to learn in by being aware of the social contexts the school is situated in and taking actions to help keep everyone safe.

Certainly the later iterations of care in k-12 settings, particularly Anthrop-Gonzalez & De

Jesus’s (2006) Critical Care theory, carries great semblance to the emergent Care-Based Process for Student Leader Development I present. And the definitions of care presented in both studies are similar. One similarity is the centrality of high-quality, interpersonal relationships to the positive development of students. The Care-Based Process represents those relationships with the tenant of holistic support. It is the holistic support provided by caring relationships with peers and staff members that help anchor the student leaders in community and provide necessary feedback to help student leaders grow. The emergent Care-Based Process makes a significant contribution to the idea of Critical Care because it better details the importance of the relationships between peers. Keeping in mind the different settings, Anthrop-Gonzalez & De

Jesus (2006) does not spend much time detailing the relationships between the students and the impact of those relationships on student success. Valenzuela (1999) falls into the same trap. Both

153 studies treat those relationships as a place for violence and harm reduction when the school takes care to prohibit the wearing of gang colors, etc. Valenzuela (1999) at least details how students worked together to hold a teacher accountable for the unfair punishment of one of their peers.

But I am sure the relationships between peers provide much more than sources of bonding in resistance and harm reduction opportunities. In this study, peers provided just as much robust support and care for each other that they sometimes served as a substitute for the holistic support rendered by staff.

Another similarity between the two theories of care posited is the need for culturally relevant curricula. Now, in the higher education setting outside of the classroom, curricular is certainly viewed differently. But the role of culturally relevant curricular in the k-12 setting is that it serves as another entry point to engagement for students while honoring and even taking on some of the characteristics of ways of being students experience in their respective cultures.

This notion is relevant to the student leaders’ experiences in this study. Students used the agentic nature of their student leadership experiences to immerse themselves in opportunities that either allowed them to further serve their chosen communities and identities or advocate for their communities, identities, and other passions. Thus, because they could impact the work that was being done in these departmentally advised student organizations with the imprint of their passions, they dove deeper and chose to be involved and engaged in these experiences. In. both the higher education and the k-12 contexts, providing a space for students to be able to work on things they cared about led them to being much more engaged in their work. Also, the caring relationships student leaders fostered with their staff advisors also resembled relationships they had in their homes, which perhaps is what allowed the student leaders to build a deeper, more meaningful relationship with those staff members. This point is perfectly depicted in the

154 relationship between Steffon and his adviser shared earlier. Steffon shared that because his advisor treated him with the tough love he was used to receiving at home, he knew that advisor actually cared about him personally, and he leaned into that relationship much more, which lead to greater personal growth for him. The same is true for the students in the high school study.

Because teachers and facilitators in the high school pulled students in and indicated the agency students had in the learning process, students became more engaged in their own learning and formed deeper bounds with teachers whom they didn’t view as distant and above them, but as friends or even family in the struggle with them.

The two major divergences in the K-12 Critical Care theory and the Care-Based Process I offer here is the role of students and the nature of safety. Now, I must admit that these differences could simply be resultant from the different settings (high school versus college) in which these studies take place. But a major tenant of the Care Based Process I present is the agency students have in every facet. Students chose which experiences to engage in. Students direct a lot of the activities in those activities that they engage in. And students even to a certain extent choose which staff members they wish to connect. This Care Based Process is defined by how agentic it is to the student leader navigating it. Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) and other critical scholars often besmirched the white, feminist origins of care in education that focused on soft, aesthetic care where teachers would take pity on students and lower their expectations. They also deplored this top-down approach to care often found in schools. And though it’s plausible that students have less agency in the k-12 setting than collegiate setting, I still feel Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) may overlook the true agency students have and the role that agency plays in creating this caring environment. McKamey (2011) begins to fill the gap of the role students play in creating caring environments. McKamey (2011) argues that

155 typically the caring is attributed to people in power or with authority in much of the K-12 care literature but that her narrative analysis of two cases highlight the complex ways students engaged in the multiple care processes including the need for students to be cared for by peers, teachers, and administrators and the ways in which the things students cared about drove change at the school. Similarly, in the Care-Based Process, students are equal partners if not more powerful in creating the caring environments and caring relationships they desired.

Also, safety shows up in different ways between the two studies. Students in this study mentioned the welcoming environments created resulting from the caring relationships as safe spaces affording them the chance to experiment and try new things. Both the Valenzuela (1999) and the Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) studies mainly detail physical safety both personally for student and on the high school campus. This study only lightly touched on physical safety and showed how the actions of staff showing concern for their safety helped to foster a caring environment. This is the same sentiment in Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006).

But Valenzuela (1999) and Anthrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus (2006) did not give a lot of focus to mental safety and creating safe spaces to explore new concepts and ideas. Overall, the differences in these two theories of care, and more importantly, the meaning of these two theories of care are minimal and thus warrant further review in potential new research.

Finally, for decades scholars have critiqued student development theorists for having non-inclusive samples on which they based theories. From a CRT perspective, basing praxis and practice on majorly white, privileged people further extends the permanence of whiteness and and white ownership over the curriculum of the university experience. This study answers that critique and the call for more diverse samples on which to base theory and it disrupts the centering of whiteness in student development theory and practice. Only one study participant

156 identified as white in the study. 65 percent of study participants identified as a woman or non- binary. 55 percent of study participants identified as a sexual orientation that was not heterosexual. 45 percent of students were first-generation students. And 60 percent of study participants reported being Pell-grant eligible. This study and the emergent Care-Based Process of Student Leader development is rooted in a study sample that centers the experiences and stories of students with historically marginalized identities thus rendering it more applicable the widest range of students and vastly improving the body of student development theory of which it follows.

Implications for Practice

Currently, there is not very much research on student leaders on executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations. And very few student development theories feature diverse samples of students. They also don’t often well account for students’ identities, especially their marginalized identities. Most existing student development theory is either colorblind or focuses on development for a very specific subset of students. Centering the voices and experiences of student leaders with historically marginalized identities in an inductive analysis sensitized with a critical race theory framework to create a student development theory that accounts for the role of historically marginalized identities has yielded salient implications for the practice and research. I outline the main implications below.

False Dichotomy of On and Off Campus. Scholars and practitioners of higher education have erected both theoretical and even physical boundaries between off and on campus. Employing a CRT lens, these boundaries or barriers seem to be the vestiges of the racist origins of higher education institutions, intending to allow only those deemed acceptable to access the campus and their resources because increasingly, these boundaries are not supported

157 or found in the lived experiences of today’s students. It is a false dichotomy not grounded in students’ experiences. I imagine that in the mid to late part of the last century when the number of students enrolling in colleges boomed and scholars became more focused on the impact college has on students, students perhaps actually entered the physical bounds of campus and left their lives behind. But as we continue to move into a more integrated society with smart phones and other forms of technology making easier to travel and stay connected in every facet of life, student lives are much more interconnected and boundless. This study along with many others referenced here continues to highlight the fact that students’ lives are happening on and off campus. Students are coming to campus for classes, leaving to work, and returning to campus after work for leadership and service experiences, social bonding, and studying. Furthermore, it is the simultaneous on and off campus experiences students have that lead to their growth and development. And, when given the chance, students will highlight experiences in both spaces when talking about their most impactful experiences during their collegiate years. And the aforementioned studies on the experiences of historically marginalized student populations also showcase how students with these historically marginalized identities often move between campus and the community to find community and discover opportunities to lead within their chosen groups.

Campuses have often espoused values of being a part of the communities they are in, but that is often couched in a framing of what the college campuses give to the communities in which they are situated including jobs, other forms of economic support and activity, and services drawn from student volunteerism and experiential learning. But the lived experiences of these students suggest that campuses and scholars of higher education would be better served by evaluating what it would mean for campuses to have at minimum porous bounds and potentially,

158 no bounds at all. Students lived experiences are not separated by the fake boundaries scholars and practitioners have created over the years. Thus, to truly support students with historically marginalized identities, it is incumbent on scholars and practitioners to discover where students are finding support and development both on and off campus, and it is incumbent upon us to continue to bolster and support those chosen spaces will creating a more inclusive campus for these student populations.

Agentic Nature of Student Leadership. When employing the Critical Race Theory lens of marginality and power, a major theme and finding of this study that emerged is just how intentional and self-directed the process of connecting to and engaging in these experiences.

Students chose the experiences they were called to and even the staff members with whom they chose to build caring relationships. Oftentimes, they chose staff members who were willing to showcase their authentic selves instead of hiding beneath veneers of professionalism ladened with whiteness students deemed unapproachable. This embrace of caring relationships with staff members who present themselves in ways that resonate with the relationships students have at home and in their communities perfectly aligns with the tenants of critical care in K-12. Also, the students chose to lean into relationships with staff once the staff demonstrated to the students that they care for them, which was typically conveyed at minimum by staff showing interests in students’ lives by asking deeper level questions and at maximum by staff being “all in our business” as some students shared. This further aligns with Critical Care theory and further demonstrates the agency students exercised in their leadership journeys. Students shared examples of staff and faculty members that they did not connect with because of the lack of care those professionals exhibited. Even when students chose to continue to be in relationship with the institutional actors who demonstrated less care, the students shared that these relationships

159 were fundamentally less impactful for them, and they often found another staff member to provide the impactful, holistic care.

Furthermore, students were drawn to these experiences because of their agentic nature.

In these roles, students executed agendas they have that serves and helps to build their chosen communities. They shared how they worked to further their values of inclusion of people with historically marginalized identities, they advocated for their shared values and visions, and used whatever power and access they had in these roles to help other students who shared their identities. Also, they used their power in these roles to enact both overt and covert forms of resistance, spanning from working to create counterspaces on campus for community building and leadership after their presupposed safe spaces were found unsafe to leading other students in taking on the administration when they felt community values were violated by peers. In fact, even when institutional factors like the student body racial and ethnic composition and the allocation of resources to support various historically marginalized student populations created less satisfactory experiences for students, those students then worked to find and create their own pathways for community, support, and success. I contend that the students should not have been forced to seek community out on their own. But the fact that they were able to find and even build their own courses and communities showcase the agency they have in their student experiences and individual student journeys.

One critique I levied against the notions of Care in the K-12 setting is that the body of work has yet to fully develop the role of students in creating and maintaining these caring relationships needed for the critical care theory. Theorists tend to focus on the actions of teachers and staff in positions of power and authority than on students. Though student development theory tends to recognize student agency in the experience, it rarely treats students as equal

160 partners with the institution in creating environments that lead to their success. Yes, institutions have a duty to provide access and supportive environments to help students thrive. But what would it look like to treat students as partners in creating these experiences and not impotent simpletons in need of benevolence from we sage benefactors? This study, and the literature cited within, showcase the deep levels of agency and discernment students have used in their leadership journeys. The studies also showcase how students work in and outside of traditional leadership roles to create supportive communities throughout the physical communities in which they live. It is imperative on scholars and practitioners to gain a better understanding of what students need and where they have those needs met. And it is imperative for practitioners to institutionalize partnering with students to create new and expand existing avenues students find conducive to and for their learning and success.

Recognize Student Leadership as a High Impact Practice. Another implication resulting from the findings of this study is that high impact engagement must formally recognize student leadership in departmentally advised student organizations as a high impact practice. Too often scholars such Kuh and his associates have winked and nodded at student leadership in student organizations as a high impact practice. As stated before, Kuh (2008) explicitly stated that high impact engagement certainly happens in these student organizations, but that he did not study it because he did not think it to be a large enough pipeline to engage students. What this wink and nod (as I term it) toward student organization leadership has done is to actually turn student organization leadership into a marginalized high impact practice, receiving attention and theoretical “pats on the head” when it suits those in authority but then being regulated to the sidelines when the ‘real academics” come to the table. Though Kuh does not describe high impact engagement as a theory, its promulgation through instruments like the National Survey of

161

Student Engagement and Kuh’s own voluminous body of work has led institutions of higher education across the globe to embrace its tenants as engagement dogma of which the allocation of increasingly scarce university resources often rests. The academy’s marginalization of student leadership as a high impact practice, has even led student affairs units to invest more in flashier experiences named as HIPs in the literature such as living learning communities, summer reading experiences, and even events supporting research with faculty at the expense of this more natural student affairs role in order to claim better centrality to the academic mission of the institution.

The realization that even these more recognized high impact practices have not always turned into large pipelines to engage students make the marginalization of student leader as a HIP even more preposterous. Though they are rich experiences that empirically lead to better persistence outcomes for students fortunate enough to be able to engage in them, just how many students do summer bridge programs actually engage in a given year? One could argue more students are engaged just as deeply in their student leadership roles than in summer bridge programs.

Furthermore, it is evident in this study that student leaders with historically marginalized identities are choosing these student leader roles over some of the other, more recognized HIPs because of the connections they form in these roles and funding issues. Thus, the marginalization of student organization leadership as a HIP arguably compounds the marginalization these students face by the institution. All of the eight keys of high impact engagement fit into this emergent Care-Based Process of Student Leader Development. It is past time to fully recognize student organization leadership for the high impact practice it has always been. And, utilizing

CRT as a lens, to truly create an antiracist praxis as it relates to High Impact Practices, instead of enshrining a handful of experiences we deem impactful based off of studies of privileged individuals, we must continue to find the experiences students with historically marginalized

162 identities choose and are positively impacted by, figure out what works in those experiences, and center those elements in the creation and expansion of other opportunities.

Recognize Non-Academic Professionals. Another implication of practice from this study is the need for high impact engagement literature to fully and formally recognize the contributions of non-academic professionals in high impact engagement. Every student leader in this study named their relationship with a non-academic staff member has the most impactful and most consequential relationship they made with a representative at the institution. And when I further explored that theme, I found this to be resultant of the amount of time those staff members were able to give students including their open access, the ability of students to connect with those staff members easier because they either shared similar identities and interests or came across more authentically making them more approachable, and the ability of those staff members to provide holistic care to those students. Furthermore, only one student leader shared that they had a truly caring relationship with a faculty member though about half of the student leaders has some form of meaningful exchanges with their faculty. Yet in spite of those meaningful exchanges with faculty, the student leaders still credited non-academic staff for their growth and persistence. This should not be surprising to anyone who studies higher education, though perhaps I would have expected some small number of students to name their relationship with a faculty member as most impactful. But faculty members are inundated with demands of their time. They have to teach and grade. They have to engage in cutting-edge research. Some have to seek out funding for that cutting-edge research. We ask them to be public scholars and philosophers. And they must raise up the next generation of scholars through mentorship. It’s no wonder they can’t also provide intense support and care to large swathes undergraduate students.

In fact, that is the very reason student services moved from academic professionals to a crop of

163 non-academic professionals trained to support and help develop students. Yet all of the high impact engagement literature explicitly names faculty and leaves out non-academic staff at the peril of these students already contending with historically marginalized identities. Imagine what would happen if the academy fully recognized the importance of non-academic staff? Once again, high impact engagement literature has driven budget allocations for units all across campuses. Student Affairs units have funded research by faculty. Student Affairs units fund, through free apartments and other budget allocations, faculty to live on campus in hopes of creating more engagement with students. Now, I am not downplaying the importance of faculty engagement. But what if some of those funds went to ensuring deep staff experiences for every student? To truly scale HIPs to the level they have to be at to ensure mass student success, high impact engagement literature must recognize non-academic staff as equal to faculty in creating high impact engagement experiences for students.

Provide More Paid HIPs. A final implication of this study’s findings is the need for more paid deep engagement experiences for students complete with a more institutionalized call in to those experiences. First, one of the greatest ways an institution can reduce barriers to students with historically marginalized identities is removing some of the financial barriers that exist for students trying to engage in the university in a meaningful way. An interesting finding of this study is that even many of the students in this study from higher socio-economic backgrounds still experienced financial hardship that forced them to work 30+ hours a week.

And all but one student in this study participated in experiences that paid them in some way.

Students shared that at minimum, this funding afforded them the opportunity to actually engage in the social and community aspects of the university, which at some point comes with unforeseen costs such as transportation and food. Thus, if more of the experiences like research

164 with a faculty member, study abroad, and service learning was stipend in some way, they too could help offset costs for students. But the other factor important to the students in this study was the call in. I was struck by the notion that sometimes random encounters and institutional events like the student organization fair ultimately led to deep involvement for students when they were matched with persistent follow up which students viewed as an act of care. What would a research involvement fair look like where faculty and their student researchers worked to draw in new students to their opportunities? In fact, what would a general high impact engagement opportunities fair look like on campus? And how do we pair an opportunity like this with more institutionalized call ins for students?

Limitations

One of the main goals of qualitative research is generalization – the ability to extend the results of your study to other individuals in other settings (Maxwell, 2013). One main limitation of this study is that it takes place in a very specific context with students performing a somewhat specific set of duties. The university setting for this study is not the most common type of higher education institution. And each student leader’s experience on executive boards will differ based on the respective university settings and the praxis of the managerial professional serving as their advisor. Each managerial professional is able to decide their own terms of advisement and set unique forms of support for each student leader which will alter that student leader’s experience.

Though these differences do exist, this study drew students from different organizations and who have been advised or supervised by different managerial professionals, which I argue accounted for the difference of experiences student leaders could have. Also, though there is difference in individual student leaders’ experiences, I use a relatively narrow definition for study participants,

165 but one that exists on every campus of every higher education institution, which helps make the findings of this study generalizable to a much wider group of individuals.

Another limitation to this study is found in the sampling for study participants. Though I emailed a listserv of past and present student leaders, I also relied on the managerial professionals advising these departmentally advised student groups to email out the information to recruit students for the study. The students were then able to confidentially complete the intake form online to indicate their interest in participating. This could result in students who have only had positive experiences with the managerial professionals being referred. But having multiple student leaders from each group and having multiple groups represented should neutralize any effect this might have on the sample. Also, in sampling students already engaged in on-campus leadership experiences, this study only reflects the experiences of students who chose to connect and engage on campus. And though their engagement also served as sites of covert and overt resistance, these students cannot speak to the lived experiences of students who may have chosen to solely engage in leadership experiences off campus.

A final limitation of the sample is that when students conceptualize their growth and development in college, often they reflect on their entire experience in all of their engagement experiences. This study is only a snapshot of that journey. Depending on the age of the student leader, the study could miss a significant moment in their student leadership experience and thus miss an important part of their leadership growth. But to do a study that factors in their entire leadership journey, I would have to commit to a four-year longitudinal study, perhaps even an ethnography, to capture observations and other means of data. This would be a great path for future research. To contend with this study, I interviewed students who had completed one full leadership cycle. So though there were a few younger students, by large the study consists of

166 upperclassmen and a few recent graduates. Because I have a relatively large sample for a qualitative study, with 20 student leaders, I contend the sample offers rich data about pivotal moments, interactions, and elements of student leaders’ experiences, and was able to still provide the core concepts in a deep enough way to accurately represent these core experiences in this emergent Care-Based Process.

Future Research

This study leaves many threads for researchers to follow up on and expand. In my search,

I have not seen studies on how students actually get involved in engagement opportunities represented in this study’s theme of a Call In. Scholars have studied peer mentorship groups and their abilities to have students serve as vital sources of information for other students. But it has not been done in a complete way. If higher education institutions ever hope to scale deep engagement experiencers so that every student has access, it will be vital to explore how these students get connected to these opportunities. Furthermore, this study consisted of 20 participants from the same institution. Now, I contend that this particular institution type most closely resemble the dynamics of institutions in the future – more racial diversity, less of a residential experience, and more students with compounding historically marginalized identities. But a great expansion of this research would be to do this same study at other institution types with larger numbers of study participants to see if the nuances of any of the themes change. Also, more student development studies need to account for the intersections of marginalized identities.

Scholars have called for this expansion of the literature for years. But too often studies either are colorblind or focus on certain combination of identities and the development of those students. If new studies further explore the role of identity in student development, the literature will be able

167 to better account for the nuances the interplay of identities create in students’ experiences on campus.

Also, the old notions of focusing on specific outcomes and parceling out minute factors that contribute to those specific outcomes has not worked. The findings from this study showcase that academic integration is social integration and vice versus – students do not separate integration from one space to the other. Students don’t separate academic spaces from social spaces entirely, either. Nor do students spend much time distinguishing between various forms of development. In their experience, when institutions work, they work holistically, and they work together. Higher education scholars and theorists must work to create an even comprehensive model that removes the faux barrier between academic and social experiences on campuses.

Only a model that evaluates institutions’ impacts on students as a whole will be robust enough to truly serve as a model to base policies on that actually work for the lived experiences of today’ students. This study is a step in the right direction. But higher education researchers should embrace this study as a road map for a much larger study that centers the lived experiences of students with historically marginalized identities and draws a sample of students from the major higher education institution types to induce a comprehensive model of student development on campus. That model should then be tested quantitatively. I believe this larger study would confirm the findings of this study and will help practitioners better understand the scope of services needed to help the largest amount of students access and harness the power of their higher education experiences.

Finally, the Care-Based Process for Student Leader Development emergent from this study does bare semblance to some of the literature on care in the K-12 setting, particularly

Antrop‐González & De Jesús’s (2006) theory of critical care. The Caring Relationships central to

168 the Care-Based Process are also central to the tenants of critical care. And I believe Antrop‐

González & De Jesús’s (2006) notions of culturally relevant curricula are well encapsulated by the agentic nature of student leadership in departmentally advised student organizations, which is a critical element of the Care-Based Process. This Care-Based Process emerged from an inductive analysis of the lived experiences of students on campus. But an interesting future study could easily include testing the tenants of Critical Care in the college environment. Based on the findings of this current study, I believe such a study would provide great data on the lived experiences of students with historically marginalized identities on campuses of higher education and could greatly expand the bounds of critical care in the K-12 setting.

Conclusion

This study sought to discern the process occurring on the executive boards of departmentally advised student organizations that led to the development of student leaders with historically marginalized identities among several outcomes including persistence, matriculation, personal development and the attainment of transferable job skills. Also, many student affairs practitioners, including myself, have noticed an increase of students with historically marginalized identities choosing to participate in departmentally advised student organizations over some of the other engagement opportunities on campus. This study secondarily sought to ascertain both the driving force behind that choice and how cognizant students were in choosing what they engaged in on campus. For decades, researchers have sought to detail what leads students to grow inside and outside of the classroom. But oftentimes those theories involved population samples that were too homogenous or focused on a subset of identities. It is still rare for a model on student development to account for the role of students’ intersectional historically marginalized identities. To be able to truly answer the questions posed in the survey, I knew I

169 would have to employ a methodology that both provided a means to generate a theory of how students are developed on campus and that in some way accounted role to explicit role of historically marginalized identities in the students’ journeys to and through engagement opportunities. With this goal in mind, I utilized constructivist grounded theory, which provides researchers with a set of tools to inductively analysis data to come up with a theory grounded in the experiences of study participants. Constructivist grounded theory also allows for sensitizing concepts and seeks to situate study participants’ experiences in the relevant contexts in which they take place. This allowed me to pair the grounded theory methods with a Critical Race

Theory framing to both account for how marginalized identities manifested in the students’ experiences and for how they enacted power and agency and how the institution may have afforded them power and agency in the face of marginalization they may have experienced.

From this analysis came the emergent Care-Based Process for Student Leader Development.

The Care-Based Process for Student Leader Development has four main tenants. First, students are called in to engagement experiences through various means including a random invitation followed by persistent follow up, an invitation or shoulder tap by a trusted friend or advisor, and sometimes an invocation from an authority figure on campus. In all cases, students perceive the call ins to be personal, targeted to them, and is often the first act of care they perceive from their potential deep engagement opportunity. After accepting the call in, students are met with activities and expectations that causes them to stretch, providing the best space for growth. These activities come in the form of students doing work with real-world implications that is well-resourced, work that affords them agency to advocate for and enact services, policies, and programming centered around their communities, which is often the first act of covert resistance students undertake, and it is work that almost always take place on teams providing

170 students with a chance to work in complex systems and encounter people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Once faced with what I have termed stretch work, student leaders also find holistic support through caring relationships they build with advisors and their peers.

Hallmarks of these caring relationships are the permeance of these relationships throughout students’ entire lives, the significant amount of time these students spend with their advisors and peers, and the candor these peers and advisors provide for the student leader resulting in an open and welcoming environment, and honest feedback. The final tenant of this process is the barriers and bridges students’ identities form in their experience. Their identities become barriers when they are sources of marginalization and bridges when they are met with care and afford the student leaders opportunities for agency and power. Though students’ marginalized identities provided additional barriers they had to overcome such as role expectations, financial burden, and marginalization in some campus spaces, student leaders’ marginalized identities also led them in determining what they wanted to get involved in, who they connected with, and served as the basis for some of their covert resistance in these roles.

This study is a small step in answering the clarion call from scholars over the past decades for student development theory that centers the voices and experiences of students with historically marginalized identities. When general theory centers the experiences of marginalized people, we are able to create a praxis inclusive of the largest amount of people instead of the elite few with means. The emergent Care-Based Process of Student Leader Development provides the opportunity to do just that. It expands the preeminent models of student development by providing a realistic view of how students with marginalized identities experience them and provides context for the role identity plays in general student development. This study finds that ultimately, it is the culmination of specific acts of care that lead to student development on

171 campus. Institutions of higher education can and must do more to provide every student access to deep levels of care. Some initial steps include reducing financial barriers to deep engagement by funding more deep engagement opportunities attached to the classroom and recognized in the existing body of high impact engagement literature, fully recognize the role of non-academic staff in high impact engagement and invest more in those roles, and finally, fully recognize the high impact experiences students with marginalized identities are choosing in the literature so that those experiences can be invested in more heavily as well. If we anchor high impact engagement not on the existing list of practices, but on the tenants of this emergent Care-Based

Process and the keys of high impact engagement (Kuh & O’Donnell, 2013), more practices will arise that are more central to the experiences of students on the margins. And we can begin the process of extricating higher education praxis from its white hegemonic roots.

172

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

Understanding the Process of Growth through Student Leadership within Departmentally-Advised Student Organizations

Principal Investigator

Allen A. Womble, MA Director High Impact Student Engagement University of Illinois at Chicago [email protected] Ph: 312-355-5975

Questions for a Semi-Structured Interview

1. How did you come to be involved on campus? 2. What was life like for you before you were involved? 3. Describe some seminal moments in your student leadership experience. 4. What factors contributed to your growth in your student leadership position? 5. How did these factors contribute to your growth? 6. What were some key takeaways from your experience that has shaped who you are today? 7. Can you think about a new idea or initiative that you implemented during your student leadership roles? Tell me about that process and what you learned from it. 8. What were some key things you learned from your student leadership position? 9. What were the biggest challenges you faced as a student leader? a. How did you overcome these challenges? 10. Do you feel your experience leading a departmentally-advised group was different that leading a normal student group? a. How was it different? b. How did this difference benefit you and your experience? 11. What would you have changed in your student leadership experience? 12. Do you feel your student leadership experience impacted you academically? a. How so? 13. What were the top lessons you had to learn to be successful as a student leader? 14. What role does finance play in your involvement? 15. What was the first time you had a major disagreement in your role? How did you solve it? What did you learn? 16. When if ever did you feel like you didn’t belong during your leadership journey? 17. What role, if any, did race play in your leadership journey? 18. Did you experience any racism in your student leadership role? 19. In what ways do you think your experience might have been different because of your race?

173

APPENDIX B: EMAIL INVITATION

University of Illinois at Chicago Research Information for Participation in Social Behavioral Research DATE: 10/10/2018 Understanding the Process of Growth through Student Leadership within Departmentally-Advised Student Organizations Principal Investigator Allen A. Womble, MA Doctoral Student Educational Psychology College of Education University of Illinois at Chicago [email protected] Ph: 312-355-5975

Dear Student Leader:

I am conducting research on the process of growth through student leadership within departmentally-advised student organizations. I am looking for research subjects who are:

18 Years or older Have served in a student leadership role on the executive board of a departmentally- advised student organization. Currently serves in a student leadership role on the executive board of a departmentally-advised student organization.

I am reaching out to you because your student organization advisor submitted your name as someone who has served as a student leader on the executive board of a departmentally- advised student organization. I would like to interview you for approximately one hour, and audio-record your interview, to learn how your involvement on the executive board of the aforementioned group type impacted you. I would also like to collect some of your demographic information via an online form.

This research will help student affairs practitioners better understand and foster the process of student leaders’ growth and development while serving under our advisement. Please let me know if you are willing to participate in this research study.

Thanks,

Allen A. Womble, Doctoral Student University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) [email protected] | 312-355-5975 750 S. Halsted Street, Ste 340 Chicago, IL 60607

Protocol 2018-1133 Recruitment Email Student version 1, 9/22/2018

174

APPENDIX C: LETTER OF CONSENT

176

10/10/2018 10/9/2021

University of Illinois at Chicago Research Information and Consent for Participation in Social Behavioral Research

Understanding the Process of Growth through Student Leadership within Departmentally- Advised Student Organizations You are being asked to participate in a research study. Researchers are required to provide a consent form such as this one to tell you about the research, to explain that taking part is voluntary, to describe the risks and benefits of participation, and to help you to make an informed decision. You should feel free to ask the researchers any questions you may have. Principle Investigator Name and Title: Allen A. Womble, Doctoral Student Department and Institution: Educational Psychology, College of Education Address and Contact information: 750 S. Halsted, STE 340 / [email protected] / (312) 355-5975

Why am I being asked? You are being asked to be a subject in a research study that explore the elements of student leader growth as a result of the student leadership experiences of departmentally advised student organization leaders in student affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to substantiate student organization leadership as a high-impact engagement activity. Your participation in the research voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your current or future dealings with the University of Illinois at Chicago. If you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw at any time without affecting that relationship. Approximately 25 subjects may be involved in this research at UIC. You are being asked to participate because you have been identified as a student leader who is serving or have served on an executive board of a departmentally-advised student organization/ What procedures are involved? This research will be performed at UIC in the Student Center East building at 750 S. Halsted, Chicago, IL 60607. The research will involve a single interview about your experiences as a student leader serving on an executive board of a departmentally-advised student organization. The interview will last for about one hour and will be audio-recorded. Research participants will be asked to complete an online form asking for general demographic information. In addition, once this research has been completed, you may be asked to comment on the final report. What are the potential risks and discomforts? The anticipated risks may be that participants may feel uncomfortable discussing their experiences in student leadership. To the best of our knowledge, the things that you will be

Protocol 2018-1133 Informed Consent Version 2 Page 1 of 3 9/22/2018 discussing in the sessions will have no more risk of harm than you would typically experience in your daily life and work. Demographic data will be collected using an online survey tool Qualtrics. Though the tool is secure and access to the data will be limited to the principal investigator, it is hard to completely eliminate all risk of data breaches that could result in breaches of confidentiality. All efforts are being made to ensure your data is secured. Are there benefits to taking part in this research? There are no anticipated benefits from participating in this research. What other options are there? You will have the option not to participate in this study. If you decide not to participate in the study, this will not affect you in any way. What about privacy and confidentiality? The people who know that you are a research subject are members of the research team. Otherwise, information about you will only be disclosed to others with your written permission, or if necessary to protect your rights or welfare or if required by law. Study information which identifies you and the consent form signed by you will be looked at and/or copied for checking up on the research by UIC’s Office for the Protection of Research Services. The State of Illinois auditors may monitor the research. When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no information will be included that would reveal your identity. All personal identifying information, like names, will be removed from all data. Data will be coded with study identification numbers to prevent access to your information by unauthorized personnel. Interviews will be transcribed and participants will only be identified in the text transcriptions with codes. Audio recordings will be destroyed after the data analysis portion of the research is completed. What are the costs for participating in this research? There are no costs to you for participating in this research. Will I be reimbursed for any of my expenses or paid for my participation in this research? You will not be reimbursed for participating in this study. Can I withdraw or be removed from the study? If you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw your consent and discontinue participation at any time without penalty. If you decide to withdraw from the study you are to contact the project PI Allen A. Womble at [email protected] or (312) 355-5975. The

Protocol 2018-1133 Informed Consent Version 2 Page 2 of 3 9/22/2018 researchers also have the right to stop your participation in the study without your consent if we believe it is in your best interests Who should I ask if I have questions? If you have any questions about this study or your part in it or if you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about the research, contact the principal investigator Allen A. Womble at [email protected] or (312) 355-5975 or the Faculty Advisor Michael Thomas at [email protected] or 312-413-74513. What are my rights as a research subject? If you feel you have not been treated according to the descriptions in this form, or if you have any questions about your rights as a research subject, including questions, concerns, complaints, or to offer input, you may call the Office for the Protection of Research Subjects (OPRS) 312-996-1711 OR 1-866-789-6215 (TOLL-FREE) OR EMAIL OPRS AT [email protected]. Remember: Your participation in this project is voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your current or future relations with the University. If you decide to participate, you are fee to withdraw at any time without affecting your relationship with the University.

Signature of Subject I have read (or someone has read to me) the above questions and my questions have been answered to my satisfaction. I agree to participate in this research, I will be given a copy of this signed and dated form.

□ Check this box if you are willing to be audio recorded.

______Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date

______Printed Name of Person Obtaining Consent

Protocol 2018-1133 Informed Consent Version 2 Page 3 of 3 9/22/2018 References

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