First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this symposium, we examine the under-addressed and under-studied phenomenon of “first-generation-ness” by centering and analyzing the experiences of first-generation faculty. The symposium highlights the work of a national coalition of first-generation faculty who have come together to theorize our experiences as a growing sub-population of faculty of color. Here we expand upon racialized notions of faculty diversity to better consider how education generational status differently shapes how some faculty of color experience academe. The session will showcase works that rely on the tradition of critical race counterstorytelling to underscore how generational status frames and shapes all facets of faculty life for first-generation academicians, including but not limited to the three pillars of the professoriate – research, teaching, and service.

Sub Unit

• Division J - Postsecondary Education / Division J - Section 4: Faculty, Curriculum, and Teaching

Chair

• Tracy Lachica Buenavista, California State University - Northridge

Papers

• The Hidden Curriculum of the Academic Job Market: From First-Generation Student to First-Generation Professor - Dimpal Jain, California State University Northridge

• What Are We Willing to Sacrifice? Mental Health Among First-Generation Faculty of Color - Omar Ruvalcaba, California State University - Northridge

• Mentorship Pedagogy From the Penitentiary to the Professoriate - Alex Ojeda, Los Angeles Valley College

• Sage and Tissue Boxes: Critical Race Feminista Perspectives on Office Hours - José Manuel Aguilar-Hernández, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona

• Fugitivity Within the University as First-Generation Womxn Faculty of Color: Cultivating an Undercommons - Nini Hayes

Discussant

• María C. Ledesma, San Jose State University