Higher education institutions can often serve as sites of growth and possibility. At the same time, trauma in varying forms permeates higher education across institutional types. The authors define trauma as the short- and long-term direct and indirect response to deeply distressing events. Students, faculty, and staff all experience various…

Often, experiences of trauma challenge a person's ability to cope. Although many students on college campuses carry around trauma, the COVID-19 pandemic placed a magnifying glass on student mental health that made it clear universities cannot be passive when it comes to supporting students through their trauma. In this article, the authors argue…

Through the lens of resilience-based student success frameworks, this article aims to illustrate how small-scale individual actions such as early outreach and student advocacy work, can bolster student outcomes and surround first-generation, low income, and underrepresented college students with a community of support.

Designing first-year experiences for first-time in college students (FTICs) is challenging and the COVID-19 pandemic created additional issues for university professionals striving to support them. This article describes a unique interdisciplinary response that one Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) engaged in for creating an intervention plan to…

It would be unjust to claim that trauma response is a shared and equal responsibility of all educators without also acknowledging that the unequal share of emotional labor currently falls to the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ colleagues. The authors recognize and condemn this dynamic and aim to provide all educators with the awareness and tools to respond to…

Educational leaders face immense challenges each day. Currently, such challenges include, but are not limited to, reckoning with the United States' ongoing legacy of persistent and pervasive racism, supporting students' health and wellness in the aftermath of a global pandemic, and facilitating difficult intercultural dialogs during a time of deep…

Students who are the first in their families to attend college and have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, question whether they will be welcomed, accepted, and safe in their relationships and on campus. Setting the stage for this paper, the authors provide definitional overviews of DACA, first-generation to college status, and…

One heavily discussed and researched group throughout the literature on student engagement is Men of Color. Co-curricular efforts supporting this population are highlighted in the literature about Men of Color achievement (Brooms,2018); however, little is known about the impact of student affairs-led curricular experiences designed to center the…

Issues of race and racism in U.S. higher education often neglect the experiences of international students (Yao et al., 2019). In this article, the author advocates for more intentional institutional attention to and support for international students' development of critical consciousness and agency regarding issues of race and racism, as they…

Scholars such as Howard Zinn (1998) and James Loewen (2008) note that educators have too often failed to realize the potential power of history. They assert that US history classes often focus on the memorization of historical facts, figures, and events while creating few opportunities for students to learn how to leverage history to critically…

White Christian supremacy, by definition an intersectional system of oppression, has influenced all aspects of American society since the time before the country's founding, as it was used to justify the stealing of native lands through colonization and the enslavement of African peoples. White Christian supremacist influences persist today, even…

Issues of sustainability, plus how to both prepare students and lead organizations in working for sustainability, often remain a curricular afterthought for higher education administration. While recent research on sustainability education has advocated for embedding sustainability in all coursework across curricula, Higher Education and Student…

To improve student success outcomes and close equity gaps, Boise State University has been testing a variety of ways to embed design thinking methodologies into the rhythm of student affairs work and serves as a case study for other university leaders looking to accelerate innovation on behalf of students. Design thinking can be effective in…

Promoted by initiatives such as Shared Futures by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) or by the American Council on Education's Internationalization Collaborative, global learning has become an important feature of undergraduate higher education as colleges and universities have sought to enhance and align their…

Student affairs professionals have often relied on the professional development of staff rather than innovative design approaches to fulfill the challenge of creating programs, services, and activities that serve today's global and multicultural students. In this article, Jordan Harper and Adrianna Kezar introduce Liberatory Design Thinking (LDT)…