“You are Young, That’s Why We Hired You:” How Hiring Managers Can Increase the Sense of Belonging in Young Administrators

• In Event: Critical Reflections from Equity-Minded Asian/American Education Leaders on What's Next in the Post-2024 World

Abstract

In this paper, I tell my story about being hired as a Department Chair and Endowed Chair at a rural college in the South. I unpack how the interviewing and hiring processes were unique from other higher education positions I have interviewed for and was hired for. I point out the intricacies of Southern College (pseudonym) and how/why the institution and its people made me feel as though I “mattered” as a candidate for the position. Using an Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit) framework (Museus & Iftikar, 2013) to unpack my autoethnographic counterstory, I share a key insight that hiring managers in higher education may be unaware of: that hiring young department chairs is an opportunity for building a sense of belonging because “adultism” is a phenomenon that inhibits belonging and mattering in higher education. Collectively, my chronicle shares how the words that are spoken while on an on-campus interview can either help to make one feel as though they “matter” or signal that they do not. As a teacher educator, I place my interview experiences as a young Department Chair and Endowed Chair within national and field-specific statistics. My counter-narrative draws from the interdisciplinary work of AsianCrit. I conclude my chapter by sharing suggestions for policy and practice, as well as reflection points for hiring managers who claim they want to “diversify” the pool of applicants, yet continue to reproduce the adultist, racist, and non-egalitarian master script that higher education leaders ought to be older, white males.

Author

• Nicholas Daniel Hartlep, Berea College