Education Commons^™

Exiting The Pandemic: A Leadership Approach To Critical Engagement And Change, J Kevin Fisher, Joan Seamster

The Vermont Connection

Navigating in uncertain times is an understatement for leaders in higher education. There is no playbook for today’s institutional challenges. Student needs, administrative requirements, faculty demands, and community relations all warrant to fresh look into how institutions address the risks that threaten business as usual. COVID-19 has challenged the status quo – shaking established methods of conducting and promoting higher education to its core. Do the higher education community and all it constitutes realize it? Will leadership in higher education take the necessary steps to bring all stakeholders together to shape the path to the future? To answer these questions, …

Toxic Rhetoric: Unpacking Discussions Of Self-Care, Dana K. Prisloe

The Vermont Connection

Self-care is a principle of the student affairs profession that has constantly been praised and espoused as necessary for effective work. Countless literature describes the benefits of self care, but little has been written about the demanding nature of student affairs that requires self-care in the first place. Rather than examining the system that overworks its professionals, scholars tend to accept this culture and tout self-care as a coping strategy to prevent burnout. However, self-care rhetoric often comes from a place of ableism and privilege and ignores marginalized identities. Additionally, using self-care as a tool to be better role models …

Community Colleges Meeting Students’ Basic Needs, Annamaria Cavaleri, Gabi Cuna, Kaia Palm-Leis, Robyn Suchy

The Vermont Connection

https://sites.google.com/view/dsp-community-college/home

Of the students currently enrolled in post-secondary education institutions, more than 50% of college students are attending community colleges. Of these students, 36% are nontraditional students who are between the ages of 22 and 39, 29% first-generation students, and 20% are disabled students. Community colleges and their students are transforming what it means to participate in higher education by providing resources for students with diverse identities, overcoming exclusionary practices that sacrifice students’ physical, mental, and financial wellbeing. As part of a digital storytelling project, we aimed to think critically about injustice in higher education by focusing on a special …

Dear Student Affairs: Reflections From A First-Generation Hesa Graduate Student, Tatiana L. Havens

The Vermont Connection

This letter is an invitation for first-generation and economically minoritized student affairs practitioners to reflect on the multiple identities they hold within the U.S. higher education system. The Critical Cultural Wealth Model is a theoretical framework that explicitly examines first-generation and economically minoritized (FGEM) college students’ academic and career development. This framework is used as a guide to explore how the dominance of Whiteness informs the historic and present construction of social and financial support structures for FGCS students in higher education, and how these structures ultimately fail to support FGCS on an individual and systemic level.