Student affairs work--like higher education--is fundamentally about change. Principally, the change work performed by student affairs practitioners is about supporting the growth and development of individual students and student groups. Increasingly, that work has called for practitioners to become more active in working to change higher education so that it lives up to its radically democratic, inclusive ideals. This means adopting new strategies to transform student affairs staff, students, and institutions, and drawing on insights from critical, liberatory theories. This text represents an effort to describe and document these practices of intentionally centering critical theories.The first section of this text examines the ways that critically-minded practitioners lead through equitable, liberatory frameworks, offering important models for reimagining the future of higher education. In the second section, the editors take up thinking and acting to support the development of critical consciousness in students, providing examples of programs, initiatives, and student support offices that center social justice in their work, and foster a critical lens through their interactions with students. In their conclusion, the editors provide a model for critical praxis, offering enduring strategies for practitioners seeking to incorporate critical, socially just praxis into their everyday work, and defining areas for future research and praxis, including identifying strategies for effective assessment of critical praxis, and modalities for "scaling up" the work for maximal impact.
Gilbert, Chelsea: - Chelsea Gilbert (she/her) is a scholar-activist who centers her work in higher education in liberatory learning and intersectional praxis. She is currently a doctoral student in the Educational Studies Department at The Ohio State University where she focuses her scholarship on critical approaches to trauma in higher education and student affairs. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a full-time student affairs practitioner for 8 years; most recently, she served as the Director of Lehigh University's Pride Center, where she led her team in the daily work of education, empowerment, and coalition-building. With additional expertise in curriculum development, leadership learning, and medical education, she has been privileged to work with organizations both nationally and internationally in the pursuit of a more just, equitable world.
Marine, Susan B.: - Susan B. Marine (she/her) is Associate Professor and Program Director in the Higher Education Master's Program at Merrimack College. She has 25 years' experience leading in higher education with specific expertise in sexual violence prevention and response, feminist praxis, and advocacy for the LGBTQ community. Susan teaches courses in higher education history, theory, and practice, and her research interests include feminist praxis in higher education, trans* student inclusion and agency, and ending campus sexual violence. Seeing the classroom as a mutually transformative enterprise, she is deeply committed to preparing future leaders in higher education to transform campus cultures and to continually advance social justice in higher education. She is the author of the ASHE monograph, Stonewall's Legacy: Bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender students in higher education, and recently co-edited (with Ruth Lewis) Collaborating for change: Transforming cultures to end gender-based violence in higher education (Oxford).
