Racialized Resource Allocation: A Qualitative Case Study of Three Campuses' Leadership Education Programs

• In Event: Race and Place

Abstract

Colleges purport to develop students as leaders. Thus, many institutions offer leadership education programs (LEPs) to develop students’ leadership abilities. However, there is little scholarship about how LEPs are resourced and how campus contexts shape LEPs’ resource access. This case study leveraged the theory of racialized organizations to examine how resource allocation shaped LEP practice and considered how access to resources was racialized. Although all LEPs purportedly supported diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the best-resourced LEPs centered white students’ learning and evaded DEI efforts. In contrast, the LEP most committed to DEI was under-resourced. Findings demonstrate how institutions decouple resource allocation from DEI commitments in ways that inequitably shaped resource access and differentially shaped racial groups’ agency.

Author

• Lauren N. Irwin, University of Tennessee