Navigating Neoliberal Pressures and Program Coordination to Construct an Equity-Centric Program

• In Event: 34.066 - Program Directors for Social Equity: Eliminating Barriers to Opportunities and Success

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to revisit the experiences of a first-year program coordinator attempting to navigate neoliberalism, capitalism, and more encapsulating--White supremacy in order to construct a program that envisions education for social equity.
Methodology
Through multiple reflections, I construct imagery to contextualize key synthetical moments where forces collided using a layered, critical autoethnographic account (Boylorn & Orbe, 2014; Ronai, 1995).
Theoretical Perspective
I intentionally employ critical autoethnography as a method to create space for discourse and performance for radical social and programmatic transformation (Jones, 2005).
Significance
I describe the process of my personal initial review of an Elementary Education Master’s program prior to describing the pressures and negotiation of surveillance throughout the academic year before transitioning to the intentional processes of leveraging love, care, hope, and labor for the development of a program that attempts to disrupt persistent domination (Matias, Montoya, & Nishi, 2015).

Author

• Brandon L Fox, Stephen F. Austin State University