Diversity Matters

Race, Ethnicity, and the Future of Christian Higher Education

Karen A. Longman

• Publisher: Abilene Christian University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781684269990
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Today, no institution can ignore the need for deep conversations about race and ethnicity. But colleges and universities face a unique set of challenges as they explore these topics. Diversity Matters offers leaders a roadmap as they think through how their campuses can serve all students well. Five Key Sections Campus Case Studies: Transforming Institutions with a Commitment to Diversity Why We Stayed: Lessons in Resiliency and Leadership from Long-Term CCCU Diversity Professionals Voices of Our Friends: Speaking for Themselves Curricular/Cocurricular Initiatives to Enhance Diversity Awareness and Action Autoethnographies: Emerging Leaders and Career StagesEach chapter in Diversity Matters includes important discussion questions for administration, faculty, and staff.

SECTION FIVE


AUTOETHNOGRAPHIES


EMERGING LEADERS AND CAREER STAGES

Introduction


THE FACES BEHIND THE NUMBERS

KATHY-ANN C. HERNANDEZ, PHD

Eastern University, Professor, College of Business and Leadership

As a research methodologist trained in positivistic paradigms, I was taught about the credibility of numbers. In fact, in conversations relating to the status of minorities in terms of leadership, and in particular black women in higher education, I am well versed in data, especially as it relates to someone like me who faces a triple threat of being immigrant, black, and female.¹ However, as compelling as numbers are, they do not tell the full story. They cannot show faces—faces like mine and the seven other contributing authors to this section. Each of us has committed to stepping out from behind the data to make ourselves visible. We seek to give readers of this volume a close-up view of our lived experiences as minorities positioned in predominantly white institutional contexts. Stories like ours are part of a growing anthology of experiences of people of color in higher education who are choosing to lend our voices and break the silence—choosing to make known the challenges we face as outsiders within the academy.^2,3

At the same time, we recognize that our stories represent a somewhat privileged perspective. Unlike many other minorities in higher education, each of us has benefitted from the rich nurturing of attending a leadership development institute, with ongoing connections throughout the following year. Yet by virtue of where we are positioned at this stage of our individual careers, this input continues to affect us in different ways. In the chapters that follow, we reflect on how our status as minorities in the academy, as well as the supports that we have received or not received along the way, have both challenged and inspired our leadership strivings. We also offer suggestions for colleges and universities to take proactive steps to create institutional contexts that support the leadership development of people like us.

Our collective story began in June 2015 when we first met for the four-day Multi-Ethnic Leadership Development Institute (M-E LDI) in a picturesque retreat setting near the Canadian border of Washington State. Each of us found ourselves there, in some cases through our own efforts and/or the recommendation or advocacy of others, as a participant in this institute sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). Through this experience, we benefitted from time set aside to intentionally strategize for our personal leadership development. The institute began a yearlong experience of working through a self-constructed professional development plan under the guidance of the LDI resource leaders and conference organizer. Two required elements of our plans were further immersion in the leadership literature and participation in a shadowing experience with a self-selected senior-level leader at another CCCU campus.

In addition to being a part of the larger Multi-Ethnic Leadership Development Institute cohort, the authors in this section are also among the seventeen participants who elected to be involved in a nine-month collaborative research project focused on the influence of mentorship^4,5 and sponsorship⁶ as potentially salient elements in leadership development.⁷ Specifically, each participant identified and worked with at least one sponsor during the 2015–16 academic year. For this research project, we employed the qualitative research methodology known as collaborative autoethnography (CAE). CAE involves researchers “[working] in community to collect their autobiographical materials and to analyze and interpret their data collectively to gain a meaningful understanding of social phenomenon.”⁸

This anthology is a product of such reflections and provides intimate accounts of the challenges and opportunities we face at the intersection of our different identities. In combination, our stories resonate with the theoretical contributions of legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw,^9,10 who argues that individuals differently positioned by virtue of the combination of their various socio-identities—for example, race, gender, and immigrant status—can find themselves prey to marginalization. In actuality, it is the intersection of these various socio-identities and not any one element alone that presents significant challenges to our leadership aspirations. Moreover, drawing on the work of critical race theorist Patricia Hill Collins,¹¹ these stories highlight the challenges we face as we occupy the liminal space of being outsiders within the academy. We are part of the higher education landscape but are often outsiders to the predominant organizational culture within these spaces that can provide the “constellation” of developmental relationships to support our leadership strivings.¹² These eight individual stories organized into four groups illustrate that we each experience our context differently, yet the stories taken together suggest some commonalities that can be useful in centering our voices around areas to be targeted by individuals seeking to support the leadership development of people like us.

The first two chapters feature the work of Leah Fulton and Kevin Williams. Both Leah and Kevin are in the early career stages of juggling work and family while entertaining the option of further graduate studies. Until recently, Leah has served as the associate dean of intercultural programs and services at Bethel University in Minnesota. She is also the mother of three young children. In a piece entitled “A New Rite of Passage: Integration, Agency, and the StrongBlackWoman,” Leah reflects on the hard lessons she has had to learn to achieve leadership success. She writes candidly about her struggles to overcome the prevalent archetype of the strong black woman, while travelling a path to leadership without much professional support. Likewise, Kevin Williams, who—until a recent transition to another Christian college—served as the assistant director of residence life at Messiah College, is the father of three young children. In his chapter, entitled “Potholes on the Professional Journey of a Developing Leader,” Kevin adds his perspective as a black male and reflects on how the stereotypical expectations of this identity colors his leadership experiences and motivations.

The next two chapters by Aisha N. Lowe, Associate Professor of Education and Associate Dean of the Office of Academic Research at William Jessup University, and me (Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez), a professor in the College of Business and Leadership at Eastern University, reflect on our midcareer aspirations as black women in Christian higher education. We independently retrace the path we have travelled to this destination and consider the ways in which our statuses continue to shape our experiences and perspectives. Whereas Aisha is native born and has occupied predominantly white spaces for most of her life, I am an immigrant who is still coming to terms with what it means to be a black person in the United States. Having once occupied the status of majority in my home country of Trinidad and Tobago, I make a case for positioning oneself in the place of others of difference as a useful step for understanding and addressing the nuances of diversity. My chapter is entitled “Embracing the Perspective of the Other.” Offering another perspective, Aisha discusses how she has learned to turn a perceived position of disadvantage as a minority into one of advantage by harnessing “The Power of the Only.”

Chapters Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three feature the work of Gladys Robalino and Rukshan Fernando. Gladys is currently serving as the chair of the Modern Language Department at Messiah College, and Rukshan is the associate dean of the School of Behavioral and Applied Sciences at Azusa Pacific University. Both Rukshan and Gladys are in a transitional phase of their career, having recently stepped up to new responsibilities. Gladys never envisioned holding a professional position other than serving as a faculty member and scholar in the academy. However, when she was asked to serve as interim chair of her department shortly after attending the Multi-Ethnic Leadership Development Institute in 2015, she found herself engaged in deep intrapersonal reflection on her reluctance to lead. She shares this internal dialogue in her chapter entitled “Navigating the Transition to Administrative Leadership.” In contrast, as the second of only two males contributing to this section, Rukshan discusses how the combination of his statuses as immigrant and male has uniquely positioned him at the intersection of cultural ethnicity and gender to view his experiences through a distinct cross-cultural lens. In the chapter entitled “I Don’t Belong Here: A Circle Leader in a Square University,” Rukshan describes some of the systemic institutional challenges people like him face in their leadership aspirations.

The final two chapters feature the work of Rebecca Torres Valdovinos, director of the English Language Institute at George Fox University, and Roberta Wilburn, associate dean for graduate studies in education and diversity initiatives at Whitworth University. Both women have invested their careers in higher education. Rebecca, in a moving chapter entitled “A Lifetime in Search of a Sponsor,” describes the challenges she experienced as a fourth generation Mexican American and later as a single mother raising four children. With refreshing honesty, she vividly recounts the arduous path along which she limped without clearly identified support networks to ultimately develop leadership strivings. Likewise, Roberta, an African American woman who has spent more than thirty-five years in higher education—with ten of those being in Christian higher education—shares the lessons she has learned along the way. Drawing from these past experiences, Roberta describes how she has utilized these lessons to propel her forward in her leadership aspirations. Moreover, she writes with a view to inspiring the next generation of black women to continue to more courageously step into broader leadership in her chapter entitled “Going to the Next Level: Opportunities and Challenges Facing African American Women Leaders in the Academy.”

What we hope these chapters communicate beyond numbers is a vivid account of our collective positioning in the landscape of higher education. We hope to convey a sense of who we are, our faces, and our lived experiences so that readers of this volume may come to see us and know our collective struggles and victories. In doing so, we hold up our stories as testimonies that can inspire others in their leadership aspirations and development. But more importantly, we hope that these stories can lead the way to difficult conversations, to door-opening encounters, and to informed actions that more fully enable people like us to survive and thrive in the context of predominantly white institutional spaces.

NOTES

1 Kathy C. Hernandez, Faith W. Ngunjiri, and Heewon Chang, “Exploiting the Margins in Higher Education: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Three Foreign-Born Female Faculty of Color,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 28 (2015): 533–51, doi: 10.1080/09518398.2014.933910.

2 Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Angela P. Harris, eds., Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2013).

3 Christine A. Stanley, “Coloring the Academic Landscape: Faculty of Color Breaking the Silence in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities,” American Educational Research Journal 43 (2006): 701–36, doi:10.3102/00028312043004701.

4 Kathy E. Kram, Mentoring at Work (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1985).

5 Paul B. Lester, Sean T. Hannah, Peter D. Harms, Gretchen R. Vogelgesang, and Bruce J. Avolio, “Mentoring Impact on Leader Efficacy Development: A Field Experiment,” Academy of Management Learning & Education 10 (2011): 409–29.

6 Sylvia A. Hewlett, Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career (Boston: Harvard Business Review, 2013).

7 Lynn M. Gangone and Tiffani Lennon, “Benchmarking Women’s Leadership in Academia and Beyond,” in Women and Leadership in Higher Education, eds. Karen A. Longman and Susan R. Madsen (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2014), 3–22. See also Barbara Kellerman and Deborah L. Rhode, “Women at the Top: The Pipeline Reconsidered,” in Women and Leadership in Higher Education, eds. Longman and Madsen, 23–40.

8 Heewon Chang, Faith W. Ngunjiri, and Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez, Collaborative Autoethnography (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013), 24.

9 Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1989): 139–67.

10 Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43 (1991): 1241–99.

11 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2008).

12 See, for example, Monica C. Higgins and Kathy E. Kram, "Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective," The Academy of Management Review, 26.2 (2001): 264–88, http://www.jstor.org/stable/259122.

Chapter Eighteen


A NEW RITE OF PASSAGE: AGENCY, INTEGRATION, AND THE STRONGBLACKWOMAN

LEAH FULTON, MA

Bethel University, Interim Director of the Bethel Experience, Common Ground Consortium Fellow

Proving myself capable of taking care of everything and everyone in my sphere of existence was, I thought, a rite of passage into full Black woman hood. . . . The StrongBlackWoman is a legendary figure, typified by extraordinary capacities for caregiving and suffering without complaint. . . . Strong is a racial-gender codeword. It is verbal and mental shorthand for the three core features of the StrongBlackWoman—caregiving, independence, and emotional strength/regulation.

—Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Too Heavy a Yoke

I began to emulate the StrongBlackWoman as a nine-year-old girl. Relatives had moved into our home, which meant that I was no longer the youngest in the household. By the time I started college, four cousins, my grandmot...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD | A Fierce Resolve toward Unifying Grace
• INTRODUCTION | Diversity in the CCCU: The Current State and Implications for the Future
• SECTION ONE | Campus Case Studies: Transforming Institutions with a Commitment to Diversity
• SECTION TWO | Why We Stayed: Lessons in Resiliency and Leadership from Long-Term CCCU Diversity Professionals
• SECTION THREE | Voices of Our Friends: Speaking for Themselves
• SECTION FOUR | Curricular/Cocurricular Initiatives to Enhance Diversity Awareness and Action
• SECTION FIVE | Autoethnographies: Emerging Leaders and Career Stages
• FOR FURTHER READING
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS