Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis study addresses African American students' leadership experiences at predominantly White institutions. Findings indicated participants utilized servant leadership in historically Black organizations and transformational leadership in predominantly White organizations. The differences displayed showed that participants' leadership perceptions and behaviors were influenced by the racial micro-organizational climates experienced. Emergent themes were: 1) Resistant apathy; 2) Blackness as benefit; 3) Positional responsibility; and 4) Leader efficacy enhancement. Ultimately, participants adjusted the ways in which they enacted leadership, mentored followers and defined leading based on the organizational context

Outreach and identity development: New perspectives on college student persistence

pre-printCollege student persistence continues to pose challenges for higher education institutions, despite over 40 years of research. Although persistence is studied from many different angles, the majority of studies examining the causes of and cures for students' departure from college reflect the importance of engagement in the higher education environment. An innovative type of engagement is involving college students in high school outreach. This article reports on a study involving 19 college students who participated in a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project intended to increase the enrollment and persistence of engineering students, specifically examining how engaging in outreach activities developed participants' views of themselves as engineers. We found that outreach activities incorporated several types of engagement and that participants engaged in outreach began to develop a professional engineering identity, both of which are linked to college student persistence. The study's implications for research and practice are discussed

Translanguaging as a Gateway to Black Immigrant Collegians’ Leadership Literacies

Background/Context: Previous research suggested that first- or second-generation African immigrants comprised nearly a third of Black students attending selective U. S. colleges (Massey et al., 2007). While research frames the involvement of Black immigrant collegians as distinctly different from African American peers as it pertains to family goals, relationships, ethnic identity, and academic achievement (Benson, 2006; Rumbaut, 1994; Waters, 1994), little is known about the ways in which Black immigrant collegians experience the perceptions of others about their literacy achievement in the academy. Purpose and Research Design: This qualitative narrative inquiry applies CRiT walking in concert with translanguaging to examine the epistemological perspectives of six second-generation immigrant African male collegians experiencing structural placism (Giles & Hughes, 2009) and using academic literacies as they traverse a Hispanic-serving institution in rural Texas. Conclusion: Structural racism excludes students of color from learning and leadership opportunities at predominantly White institutions. Our findings show that participants who used translanguaging by invoking two specific forms of linguistic repertoires, English standardized and cultural nonstandardized, to proactively respond to structural placism. Furthermore, participants associated being multilingual with race and leadership positionality in academic, organizational and cultural spaces. Moreover, African immigrant male collegians spoke of utilizing racially homogenous academic (e.g., study groups) and historically Black cocurricular organizations as spaces to engage in culturally safe ways that validated their intellectual and ethnic identities