Black Women Being: Using Black Intellectual Theorizing to Collaboratively Shape the HBCU Effect Research

• In Event: Blackness and Being: How Four Black Women Doctorates Shape Public HBCU Research

Abstract

Presenter 1 earned her master’s degree in Sociology from American University in 2012 and her PhD in Educational Policy Studies from Georgia State University. Her research has focused on Black college student experiences in relation to STEM retention and support, state and federal performance-based funding and financial aid, student financial literacy, and student success using Black Intellectual Traditions and Black Aesthetics as a lens. Presenter is currently a Senior Research Associate for UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute (FDPRI) manages the HBCU Effect research portfolio which aims to provide research on the impact of HBCUs for Black students, alumni, and their communities. Presenter 1 has served in the role of Senior Research Associate for the last three years and during her time managing the HBCU Effect she has conducted empirical research on behalf of the institute as well as partnerships with internal departments and external clients seeking longitudinal studies, technical assistance establishing metrics measuring program impact, and consulting organizations interested in collaborating with HBCUs.

The focus of her dissertation was to identify what and how a university recognized for its success in educating Black students communicates to Black undergraduate students about student success, Blackness and Being by identifying and analyzing the visual discourse of student success policies and practices in this higher education setting (Saarinen, 2008). This presentation will draw the connections across the findings from her dissertation on a competitor with HBCUs (Georgia State University) to her work in shaping the discourse on Black student success via research on HBCUs. Her dissertation was framed theoretically within the Black Intellectual Tradition, using black aesthetics, a theoretical framework that provides the concepts and language (black fungibility, black (in)visibility, Blackness, and Being (Taylor, 2015; White, 2010; Wynter, 2000) to describe Black students’ meaning-making and by extension informs her current approach to understanding HBCU contexts. This study employed two methodologies: Participatory Visual Methods and Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis (CMDA). The data was composed of found images on the Georgia State University website and participatory assignments embedded within a gate-keeping education course (EDUC 2110), taught by the researcher, that produced intertextual student data from selected class assignments. The findings of this Black Aesthetics CMDA demonstrated a role for student voice and the potential usefulness of a Black Aesthetic Policy Analysis in examining the impacts of what policies and practices communicate visually. The methodologies and methods employed in her dissertation have shaped the ways she works with the FDPRI research team to conduct, present, and publish the studies that

This presentation draws the connections between the approaches to research employed in her dissertation and how that has shaped her management of the HBCU Effect portfolio and her advocacy for Black education. Furthermore, her promotion of collaborative methods to simultaneously produce the type of research that we as a team of Black women researchers want to see and that pushes boundaries through the use of Black theory and methods.

Author

• Natasha K. McClendon, Spelman College