Journey to DEI & Higher Ed

When thinking about my why, I have to first talk about my mother. Knowing that she experienced discrimination and prejudice that kept her from getting into the dream schools she applied to, or thinking how she could not find an affordable and accessible higher education institution that could accommodate her disability and her being a mother, inspires me every day to continue pursuing Higher Education Administration so that people like her and others who are non-traditional students can obtain their future.

As many Higher Education students have written before, the field of student affairs was something that I was not aware of when I entered my first year of college. I came into college thinking that I wanted to be a Secondary Social Studies teacher. I planned to graduate and work at a Title I[1] high school where I could impact and change the lives of youth that society seems to forget about and write off as having no sense of a future. This changed however when I began to learn about non-positional leadership and the Social Change Model. When I learned about these two different student development theories, I became engulfed in wanting to learn more about what other theories and practices could be applied to students, and about how I could become someone who would one day develop a theory focused on student inclusion. This led me to apply to NC State to become a future Student Affairs Practitioner. 

Throughout my undergraduate and first part of my graduate degree, my interests in higher education have shifted more toward pursuing a job in social justice and equity. One thing I have noticed is that while there are plenty of programs and events centered around diverse cultural exposure and education, I have not seen many programs based on empowering our students to educate their fellow peers on how to create an inclusive campus community. One of my future goals is to create an Inclusive Peer Educator (IPE) program for different colleges and universities to implement. This model would mirror many of the peer educator programs that already exist at most higher education institutions, but instead, the IPE would focus on how to educate students to empower other peers on how to create inclusive spaces for all. 

[1] US Department of Education. (2018, November 7). Title I, Part A Program. Title I. Retrieved September 17, 2021,  from https://www2.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/index.html.