Putting the Doctorate to Work: Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities (Poster 14)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 3:05 pm

Abstract

This study examines how post-doctoral graduates leverage their graduate work and dissertations to construct educational possibilities for our communities. Our scholarship employed the social capital framework (Salazar, 2011) to underscore how we use our work, status, and capital to dismantle systems of racial and social injustice. We used narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2008) to explore and make meaning of our overarching question: How has the Ph.D. process helped us evolve into empowerment agents’? The reflections shared here exemplify how we put our doctorates to work by becoming empowerment agents. Our work frames the Ph.D. as more than an educational credential, and it allows doctoral students to understand how social capital can come from obtaining a doctoral degree.

Authors

• Tristta M. Kuykendall, Cleveland State University

• Mitch Lieberth, Cleveland State University

• BM Towns, Cleveland State University

• Carol Lockhart, Cleveland Metropolitan School District