Shaking the Table: Centering the Voices of Identity Center Practitioners

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The purpose of this symposium is to highlight the survival, healing, and activism of identity center staff/administrators in higher education. Although identity center staff working in colleges and universities experience a myriad of challenges in navigating their work, how they maneuver these challenges remains obscure. Within this symposium, scholar-practitioners present individual works that highlight different theoretical and/or methodological approaches to self-inquiry. Furthermore, they share insights from their self-inquiry focused on (1) what it means to lead an identity center as someone with a marginalized identity, (2) the institutional and interpersonal challenges of working within an identity center, and (3) how they supported students, while also tending to their own well-being.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

Chair

• Jonathan A. McElderry, Elon University

Papers

• Telling My Truth: A Black Woman Scholar’s Journey Through Self-Inquiry and Storytelling in the Academy - Dana Murray Patterson, Wingate University

• My Ethnic Studies Kuwento: Healing and Liberation through Student Resource Centers - Michael R. Manalo-Pedro, Pomona College

• Partners in Justice: The Origin Story of a MENA Cultural Center - Marcela Ramirez-Stapleton, University of California

• (Re)Imagining the Work: Counter-Storytelling in a Time of Organizational Change - Kandi Bauman, The Brotherhood Initiative/University of Washington

• Leading from the Middle: Reflections of a Nepantlera Navigating Identity and Supporting Students at La Casa - Adele Lozano, University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse

Session Organizer

• Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, Elon University

Discussant

• Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, Elon University