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Neoliberalism and patriarchal norms have shaped the working conditions for student affairs professionals. This case study collected individual and focus group interviews, leveraging the experiences and situated knowledge of working mothers in student affairs to develop organizational guidelines for more equitable and unified work environments. By applying mamapreneurialism as a conceptual framework, this study sought to understand how working mothers in student affairs realize their personal and professional aspirations. Findings showed that student affairs mothers need centralized access to information and experience marginalization and power differences with supervisors compared to faculty. They also face structural inequality in the higher education workplace. Structural barriers, such as inadequate university infrastructure (e.g., lactation rooms and parking), complicated participants' abilities to navigate working conditions. Findings focus on recalibrating institutions to become more inclusive for all.

In this instrumental case study, we explored the experiences of working mothers in student affairs and how their situated realities are shaped by institutional and professional norms, including commonly understood written and unwritten practices. We conducted interviews and focus groups with 21 mothers working full-time at a research-intensive university in the South. We crafted themes to illustrate how ideal worker norms, inequality regimes, and the maternal wall were persistent concerns for the mothers in our study. Mothers had to make decisions based on inadequate institutional policies while the institution simultaneously benefited from skills they imported from motherhood to student affairs work. Given the condition of federal and state policies, we offer implications for institutional and unit changes to better meet mothers where they are, accommodate their unique needs, and provide pathways for them to continue contributing meaningfully to the field.

This narrative study used individual interviews with seven gay Latinx men to understand how they used emotion regulation to navigate academic and personal obstacles as well as heterosexism and interpreted them using Gross's emotion regulation framework. The study's participants used all four types of emotion regulation described by Gross, including finding gay-affirming communities, modifying gay-adverse spaces, changing the subject, and positive reframing.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how 17 undergraduate Latina students in STEM engaged in behaviors of resistance during college. This qualitative approach allowed us to explore individuals' lived experiences and examine hidden meanings to understand the essence of resistance to educational STEM inequities. Drawing on concepts of transformational resistance and intersectionality, this article highlights how undergraduate Latina students critiqued racist, sexist, and classist structures that influenced their college STEM experiences. To resist these challenges, Latina students engaged in acts of internal and external transformational resistance. They subtly used their persistence as resistance and engaged in community transformation and healing. As more external forms of resistance, they also challenged inequitable STEM environments and the social impact of their disciplines. This study calls for educational stakeholders to better support Latina undergraduate students in STEM by eliminating oppressive forces, creating spaces for student expression, and reimagining the collegiate learning experience.

Predominantly White institutions (PWIs) in creative class cities offer contradictory experiences for Black faculty, who engage in invisible additional labor in response to racial aggressions, termed cultural taxation (CT). With an understanding that equity-minded faculty development is an essential space in which to respond to this reality, our study employed a phenomenological focus group design to investigate how Black faculty at a research-intensive PWI located in a creative class city buffeted by racial tensions navigated their service and community experiences. While finding their work meaningful, the participants shared experiences of the multifaceted nature of CT, their stress from teaching about race, and the burdens of providing extra support to the next generation of scholars of color. Participants viewed the campus and community as interconnected and CT as a wage they were willing to pay. At the same time, participants regretted the lack of recognition for this work in the academy. We proffer recommendations for developers and centers for teaching and learning that endeavor to support Black faculty and faculty from other marginalized identities.

Applying O'Meara, Campbell, and Terosky's (2011) faculty agency framework, this qualitative case study examined full-time, non-tenure-track faculty (FTNTTF) members' perceptions of their agency at an elite public research university. Participants experienced greater agency over time and in the classroom, but felt their agency was constrained by departmental and college leadership's inconsistent interpretation of university policies regarding FTNTTF. Participants experienced feelings of invisibility and exclusion, unclear perceptions and undervaluation by their colleagues, and felt vulnerable to leadership transitions that might affect their roles. This study suggests that overarching power structures--administration, tenured faculty, formal and informal policies--may contribute to experiences of constrained agency and invisibility for key members of the organization. These complex dynamics undermine FTNTTF's capacity to actualize their skills, experience, and expertise to the full extent of their abilities.

In the context of high-stakes accountability, education-related policy efforts have aimed to address the improvement of persistently low-achieving (PLA) schools via turnaround reform strategies. Such strategies provide opportunities for educational leaders to influence the process; however, limited research examining the role of the assistant principal (AP) exists. This study explored the role of social justice identities of 12 APs in schools labeled as PLA in an urban, Midwestern city. Despite the policy pressures associated with turnaround reform strategies, APs leveraged their social justice identities to create innovative changes in culture and practice within schools. Although all APs perceived themselves as an ally, the extent of the orientation, and whether it leads toward emancipatory education, remains a question.

Objective: This study examines masculinity in a manner commensurate with established feminist frameworks to deconstruct a patriarchal system that ill-serves both men and women. Method: We utilized standpoint theory and narrative analysis to examine longitudinal, qualitative data from first-year Black and Latino males as they transition into community college through their second semester. Findings: Positionality is critical to understanding the success of Black and Latino males and their response to institutional structures. In many instances, men leveraged normative constructions of masculinity as aids to their success, and their resilience and confidence were filtered through their perceived development into adults. Conclusion: Implications for practice include the creation of spaces for men to talk about what it means to be a man in college and ways to influence men to make the most of resources when proffered, even if they tend to avoid seeking them out on their own. Further research should seek to understand how men develop and evolve their concepts of masculinity as well as how and to what extent spaces for men actually work to dismantle hegemonic masculinity.

Meaningful community involvement has been linked to enhancements in student achievement and quality of educational experiences. Assistant principals are positioned to build effective partnerships yet remain understudied in the leadership preparation field. This qualitative study investigated how assistant principals (N = 9) serving historically marginalized populations conceptualized and realized community leadership amidst prescriptive measures embedded within the Title I School Improvement Grant. This study highlights how the collective conceptualization of community leadership is complex and deserving of additional consideration. Findings indicate that school leaders desire more effective and sustainable partnerships, yet policies and knowledge gaps present unique challenges to change efforts.

This article examines how tenure and tenure-track Black faculty at a predominantly White institution (UT-Austin) make meaning of their community engagement living and working in the city of Austin, a bellwether creative class city given its demographics and history. Findings indicate that faculty experiences living in other locales greatly affected their Austin experience, and that faculty navigates a Du Boisian double-consciousness interfacing with the community as citizen-scholars. Faculty discussed the notion of welcoming and exclusionary spaces and how parental status greatly affected how they felt welcomed or excluded from opportunities to engage with the community. Participants indicated advantages of living in Austin, but also discussed dissatisfaction with a dearth of Black-centered activities.

This study employs survey data from the Center for Community College Student Engagement to examine the similarities and differences that exist across student-level domains in terms of student engagement in community colleges. In total, the sample used in the analysis pools data from 663 community colleges and includes more than 320,000 students. Using data-mining techniques to discover a parsimonious number of natural clusters and, in turn, a "k"-means cluster analysis as a means of revealing a naturally occurring typology of engagement patterns, our findings reveal that support service utilization is the most distinguishing feature of the similarities and dissimilarities across student groups, suggesting areas for further theory development and testing. (Contains 1 note, 3 tables, and 2 figures.)