Fall 2023 Research @ the Beach

July 1, 2022 - June 30th, 2023

ORED 2023 Year End Report

Image

By Paul Buonora, PhD 
Professor
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics 

Supporting CSULB's Ongoing Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

How did you get interested in your research area?

As a child of the 1960s, the space race made me a scientist and instilled an interest in the long-term future.  The tumult of the time gave me an interest in understanding the roots of civil strife and a desire to positively impact others who sought to identify and achieve their dreams.  In college, I was surprised to find only a few women and no one of color in my Chemistry Majors General Chemistry class of almost thirty.  I realized that people’s choices are the products of the opportunities they see as open to them and the support systems that make them real.  Becoming a college faculty member provided the ability to address both issues in an environment designed to think long-term and support achieving one’s dreams.

What research came from your interest?

In my early years at CSULB, I began to help with the recently funded NIH Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) grant.  This research training grant focuses on diversifying the pool of biomedical researchers at the Ph.D. level.  The program aims to encourage and train students uncertain of their ability to achieve their dream of discovering or developing the next generation of health breakthroughs.  Working with other Co-PI’s, we grew the CSULB program into one of the country’s largest RISE programs, with eighty percent of the trainees earning Ph.D. or MD/Ph.D. degrees.  We also expanded the program to our graduate population before NIH separated MS training into the NIH Bridges to the Doctorate program, which CSULB has today.

To support non-Ph.D.-bound students, a team of faculty from Earth Science, Mathematics, and Physics and I got funding through the NSF S-STEM mechanism to support mentoring and training students with financial need from our departments.  The program was initially known as the Physical Science and Mathematics Scholarship (PSMS) on campus and now as the Mentored Excellence Toward Research and Industry Careers (METRIC) program.

Effective smaller-scale programs need to bring their success to the larger student body.  Recognizing this, the NIH initiated a program to explore ways to change the research training culture and resources available at the campus level.  I was part of a team of Co-PIs who got a pilot grant (AHORA) to collect the data that earned funding for the Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) grant CSULB has had for the last ten years.  CSULB is one of only ten funded BUILD programs in the nation.  A crucial part of my work in BUILD was leading the team that created a seven-course campus-wide research training curriculum.

How will your research impact the CSULB campus and/or wider community?

As a member of the 2013 Taskforce Study on the Historical Commitment to the Development and Success of Underrepresented, Low-Income, and First-Generation University Students, I know CSULB’s commitment to DEI was strong long before my arrival on campus.  All I have accomplished is possible because of a campus culture that values all its students’ aspirations.  The culture personified by the many university administrators, faculty research mentors, and program Co-PIs I wish I had the space to name.  

Between the S-STEM, BUILD, and RISE programs, hundreds of CSULB students have received financial support, mentoring, and training designed to build career skills and prepare for post-baccalaureate study.  As first-generation scientists and members of communities underrepresented in their chosen fields, they will diversify perspectives and act as role models in their chosen fields.  They are role models, not just scientists, but people who made their aspirations real through partnerships with many mentors in institutions dedicated to the futures of individuals, communities, and society. Most importantly, they know that looking for potential and helping the next generation achieve their dreams is the path to making under-representation in their fields a thing of the past.  

Image

M. Keith Claybrook, Jr., PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Africana Studies
College of Liberal Arts

Contributing to Diversifying Knowledge, Knowledge Production, and Approaches to Understanding the World

Dr. M. Keith Claybrook, Jr. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies. Born and raised in Compton, CA, Claybrook was exposed to the diversity of Los Angeles early in life. Glaring segregation based on race/ ethnicity, economic disparities, and inconsistent police practices in communities throughout Los Angeles city and county confused him at an early age. Raised to believe education was the key to the vehicle of success, Claybrook was often disinterested in course content as he saw little to no relevance. In addition, growing up in the post-Civil Rights and Black Power eras, Claybrook was empowered and inspired by the legacy of these movements while also recognizing that much more work needed to be done to enhance the human respect and dignity of African people and their descendants while increasing their quality of life and material conditions.

While an undergraduate at Loyola Marymount University, Claybrook began researching and writing about the Black Power and the Black Student Movement culminating in the publication of “Black Power, Black Students, and the Institutionalizing of Change: Loyola Marymount University, 1968- 1978” later as a graduate student. This interest became a passion leading to Claybrook’s dissertation entitled “Student Engagement, Cultural Politics, and the Black Students Movement: A Case Study in Los Angeles, 1965-1975.” In fact, while reading in preparation for the dissertation, Claybrook found his grandfather mentioned by name in Gerald Horne’s Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s. Not knowing that his grandfather was interviewed by the McCone Commission in the study of the factors leading to the Watts Rebellion in 1965, Claybrook concluded that the study of the history and experiences of Black people in Los Angeles must include “everyday people” not simply high-profile figures. The study of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Students Movement in Los Angeles has remained a central area of interest for Claybrook.

For example, Claybrook has advanced his dissertation thesis that activism is an intellectually and academically enriching activity in his articles entitled “Africana Studies, 21st Century Black Student Activism, and High Impact Educational Practices: A Biographical Sketch of David C. Turner, III,” and “Becoming an Africana Activist Scholar- David C. Turner, III and Black Graduate Student Activism as Professional Development, A Case Study,” both of which Claybrook worked with UROP and OURS students as research assistants. Claybrook also advanced his dissertations thesis in his article “Re‑Conceptualizing the Black Student Movement in the Black Activist Intellectual Tradition.” Claybrook wants students specifically and society at large to value and respect the intellectual-work that socio-political activism requires.

Along with working with students as research assistants, Claybrook is also interested in doing more to increase student success. Claybrook has over ten years of experience mentoring and preparing undergraduate and graduate students to present at the National Council of Black Studies National Conference as well as serving as advisor for several students who have participated in the CSU’s Student Research Competition each spring. In addition, understanding that college acceptance does not necessarily equate to college readiness, Claybrook published Building the Basics: A Handbook for Pursing Academic Excellence in Africana Studies. Intended for students transitioning from high school to college, Claybrook offers tips, tidbits, and suggestions for pursuing academic excellence where learning is centered, not grades. Although the focus is Africana Studies, the content is applicable across multiple disciplines.

Claybrook has also re-conceptualized Jacob Carruthers’ “African Deep Thought” as an African-centered approach to critical thinking. Understanding the role of culture in the critical thinking process, Claybrook centers African and African Diasporic cultures in efforts to 1) decenter Eurocentric approaches to critical thinking, and 2) offer an alternative approach to critical thinking. Here, Claybrook has published “Putting Some Soul into Critical Thinking: Toward an African-Centered Approach to Critical Thinking in Africana Studies,” and “African Proverbs, Riddles, and Narratives as Pedagogy- African Deep Thought in Africana Studies” which an OURS student served as a research assistant as well. Claybrook views his work as contributing to diversifying knowledge, knowledge production, and approaches to understanding the world. And in these pursuits, he lives by the motto of the Black Women’s Club Movement, “Lift as We Climb!”

Image

Image

By Seung-hoon Jeong
Assistant Professor
Department of Film & Electronic Arts
College of the Arts

Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema

Since my first book, Cinematic Interfaces: Film Theory after New Media (Routledge, 2013), I have increasingly worked on global cinema. Among many changes that redirected my focus was my experience living in the United Arab Emirates to teach at New York University Abu Dhabi. The oil-rich Gulf state was the epitome of globalization, displaying an ultra-urban cosmopolitan landscape of cultural liberalism and economic neoliberalism yet betraying layered shadows cast from the state-driven capitalist system and external threats such as terrorism and refugee crises. People enjoyed networks of multicultural hospitality, nomadic mobility, and borderless opportunities but also encountered uncontrollable catastrophes triggered by this system’s structural contradictions and violent byproducts. These two conflicting facets of globalization motivated me to explore their various implications primarily through the lens of today’s soft and hard ethics—inclusive tolerance and exclusive justice. At the same time, I started to examine even local films’ reflections of such global phenomena by formulating global cinema beyond popular but vague usages of the term and exceeding the conventional world cinema studies of ghettoized national cinemas and their transnational interactions.

In this direction, I have co-edited The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in 21^st Century Cinema(Bloomsbury, 2016), guest-edited the Global East Asian Cinema issue of Studies in the Humanities (2019), and written Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2023). This last book marks the comprehensive culmination of my work to thematically characterize global cinema in the frame of globalism and its antinomies. Many films indeed stage the unresolvable antagonism between the inclusive global system and its excluded remnants, variants of catastrophe and nihilism, allegorizing the impossibility of political change for an alternative system. A global community often appears as a totalized network of sovereign violence and (counter)terror stuck in the impasse of utopian imagination. Nonetheless, some films open room for a new ethical potential irreducible to politics by shedding light on abject figures who, though deprived of social subjectivity and legal rights, turn into agents of existential gift-giving by fostering commonality without community, solidarity without unity. I here retheorize the psychoanalytic notion of abjection in postpolitical but biopolitical contexts, while also recharging it with the ethical agency that enables atopian, if not utopian, networking around the edge of the global regime and beyond the soft/hard ethics of problematic tolerance and justice. Highlighting this precarious yet precious abject agency, I affirm that it is immanent in cinema as an ethical art.

Throughout the book, I map a vast net of post-1990s films circulating globally in both the mainstream market and the festival circuit. They range from commercial genre films to independent art films beyond the biased dichotomy of Hollywood as global and world cinema as an alternative. I navigate them as compatibly embodying today’s universal human conditions, especially illuminating the narrative of double death: the abject, symbolically dead, struggle to regain lost subjectivity or activate new agency until physical death. The book is also multimethodological, delving into critical discourses on crucial topics such as multiculturalism, terrorism, sovereignty, abjection, violence, catastrophe, community, network, nihilism, and the gift.

Image

Grants and Impacts

Before joining CSULB, my research was supported through the visiting fellowship of the Asia Culture Center in Korea and NYU Abu Dhabi’s Global Network University Fellowship. At CSULB, the COTA’s Faculty Small Grant for RSCA (2022-23) helped me hire a proofreader-indexer for my book and take a few conference trips to present my work. I also received the Ethics Across the Curriculum Award from the Ukleja Center (2023) to conduct a module on ethics in my “East Asian Cinemas” and other relevant courses. The module aims to give students a critical perspective on the biopolitical system and ethical dilemmas of our globalized world. It also explores potential alternative ethics that can help embrace the Other as an existential gift beyond the dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion and become a civic agent of existential gift-giving. The module focuses on Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) and related films as local examples of global cinema in this regard and will apply to future courses with other films.

By extension, in academia, it is my hope that the chemical interplay of film and theory I have pursued in this research will open new access points to film narratives, motifs, and genres, as well as political, ethical, and philosophical concerns, notably reinventing subjectivity as abject agency and community as gift-giving atopia. I couldn’t desire more if my book thereby brings to readers fresh insights into global life through cinema and contributes to today’s critical humanities, including film studies.

Image

By Leilani Madrigal, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Kinesiology, Sport Psychology 
College of Health and Human Services

Creating a Campus Climate that Welcomes Students and Works to Address Concerns and Challenges so Students can Achieve Success

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) continues to be an important topic among higher education institutions to support the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. I initially became involved in this research following the COVID-19 pandemic when I conducted a study looking at students’ experiences in the 2020-2021 academic year. Due to the political climate, I included open-ended questions on what students felt they wanted the university to know about their experience as a student based on their race and other identities, and what changes they wanted the university to make to improve their experiences. The responses included a call for more discussions around racism, platforms for students to voice experiences, and more representation among faculty, staff, and students for people of color, specifically Black and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). 

This led me to start doing research and community work to help address these concerns. In research, I conducted a pilot intervention to address racism in athletics, as well as wrote an NSF grant to address racial equity for student success in Kinesiology. Additionally, I helped sport and exercise psychology students host the 2023 AASP Diversity in Sport Regional Conference at CSULB. The conference had a variety of workshops, lectures, and keynotes that centered around the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion in sports spaces, as well as discussions on how to implement strategies to foster safe spaces in sport and exercise psychology practice. 

I also was involved more in the University, specifically serving from 2020-2023 on the President’s Commission for Equity and Change in which I chaired a sub-committee that focused on student success initiatives. One issue that was identified was the need for more training around DEI for faculty, staff and students. To further investigate the current training that existed, I applied for and was awarded with the 2021-2022 President-Provost Equity, Diversity and Inclusion funding that focused on EDI campus programming. My work led to several recommendations to CSULB to coordinate different DEI related trainings that were being implemented or developed on campus, as well as highlighted the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion training that existed for students on campus. 

In my current work addressing student success, I am currently the lead of the assessment team that is evaluating the University’s new Beach XP program which focuses on incoming first-time, first year students that aims to establish peer networks, enhance learning, build career connections, and cultivate community through cohort-based programming. An outcome of this project is to foster a sense of belonging and inclusion on campus for students so that they establish a connection during this pivotal first year of college, which is an indicator for successfully graduating.

The impact of this work for CSULB’s campus is to create a climate that is welcoming to students, supportive, and consistently works to address the concerns and challenges that students face so that they can be successful in their academic pursuits.

Image

By Suzanne Perlitsh, PhD
Professor
Department of Geography
College of Liberal Arts

Creating a Campus Climate that Welcomes Students and Works to Address Concerns and Challenges so Students can Achieve Success

Dr. Perlitsh is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography and Director of the CSULB Master of Science in Geographic Information Science (MSGISci). Her expertise falls in the areas of geospatial science with academic training in both geographic information science and environmental sciences. 

How did you get interested in your research area?

As a Master of Science student in the 1990’s studying watershed hydrology at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) Dr. Perlitsh’s research involved a first implementation of watershed models using geospatial datasets. She noticed that although hydrologists evaluate the potential error in many model input parameters, error associated with elevation data and propagation to derived parameters was not considered. This evolved into her dissertation and has continued as a central focus of her research in studying, analyzing and understanding the varied complexities of terrain datasets. 

Geographers study relationships between space and place, including the landscape. Spatial analyses of all landscapes require digital elevation data. Such datasets are accessed, analyzed and visualized using a geographic information system (GIS), a combination of computer hardware, software and data that enables complex analyses of geographic data. Data representing elevation in a GIS are referred to as digital elevation models (DEMs) and provide the basis for digital characterization of landforms. 

Digital elevation is arguably one of the most important spatial datasets for understanding landscapes. For example, elevation determines terrain position, drives hydrologic flow, determines the amount of incoming solar radiation on a slope which in turn impacts the type of vegetation and soils that develop on a landscape and thus suitability for studying current and historical human activities. 

Representing the landscape before significant urbanization is important because elevation represents how indigenous populations may have experienced the landscape. This includes how they might have traversed the region and made connections with other local inhabitants, as well as the natural resources that might have been available due to the type of vegetation and access to coastal resources. 

Can you provide an example of your recent research? 

This was the subject of our recent collaborative research project - Mapping Los Angeles Landscape History: The Indigenous Landscape - funded by funded by the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation  and featured in the LA Times on October 9, 2023. 

The project was led by Principal Investigators Dr. Phil Ethington (USC) and Dr. Travis Longcore (UCLA) and was a unique collaboration among researchers from USC, UCLA, CSU Northridge, CSU Los Angeles and Native leaders and scholars from regional indigenous tribes. Each team provided a unique contribution to the project. Dr. Perlitsh and her team of graduate students created the topographic reconstruction of the landscape. 

One would think that historical maps are readily available in a digital format. This is not the case. This project required a novel application of techniques used in digital image processing and remote sensing to extract topographic lines from historical maps. Derived features were assigned co-located elevation data and combined to generate a DEM that represents the historical landscape. 

How will this research impact the CSULB campus and/or wider community?

The collaborative’s unique contributions are collected in a story map providing a tangible interactive platform using spatial technology. The deliverable enhances understanding of the history of the land, the peoples out of which the greater LA community has emerged and raises awareness of the historical context of our community. The topographic reconstruction increases our understanding of the complexity of our world, our place in it and the place those who came before us experienced. 

Dr. Perlitsh and her team will continue to refine and explore the methodology developed for this research. Further research will explore landscape changes wrought by urbanization. The historic DEM will be used to further model and visualize the foundations upon which our landscape and society emerged.

Image

Image

By Devery Rodgers, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Education Leadership
College of Education

Creating a Community of Belonging

During my first days at CSULB, I participated in the New Faculty Orientation, where students’ demographic data was presented. The data reflected that only 2% of the student population was Black/African American, in a city where the Black/African American population is 12%. I knew that something had to be done.

While I was mulling over what impact I could have on this despairing statistic, the President’s/Provost’s inaugural Equity-Diversity-Inclusion Grant was announced. I recalled Provost Scissum-Gunn saying at a College of Education (CED) address in 2021, “the ultimate goal of EDI is belonging” (Scissum-Gunn, 2021). She repeated this sentiment in her 2023 Convocation address, “What are we, in higher education, doing to make our systems and institutions worth belonging to?”

With this in mind, I immediately spoke with my Chair about my plan to collect data and discover the level of support we offered to our Black graduate student population, and how this impacted their sense of belonging.

Blessedly, I won the $15,000 grant in Fall 2021, and spent the 2022 year collecting data within CED. I spoke with CED leadership, students, alumni, faculty and staff to encapsulate what CED was doing in terms of programs, services, pedagogies, and practices to support the success of Black graduate students. I listened to the perceptions and experiences of Black graduate students and alumni related to recruitment, enrollment, persistence, engagement, and graduation in the College of Education.

Each data collection cycle impacted my purpose. Hearing a greater need to be seen, heard, and have a sense of belonging, I approached the College of Education leadership about sponsoring a connectedness event, the CED Black Graduate Student Meet & Greet. This is now an annual event hosted for incoming, present, and recently graduated Black grads. These efforts can be seen in the 2022 and 2023 Black Graduate Student Meet & Greet video summaries. The event has produced new enrollees in the doctoral program and secured job opportunities for its attendees. Recent focus group data shows students would like to see this social network continue and develop mentoring opportunities.

Realizing the transformational changes that were occurring by immediately acting on the data, I then partnered with our Black grads to create the university-wide Black/Pan African Graduate Student Association. Since 2022, we have been recruiting Black graduate student participation at the bi-monthly meetings; hosted an annual Black Grad Game Night; and will host a Black Grad Student Panel for undergraduate inquiry, to continue to build the academic pipeline. These efforts have been rewarded by CSULB’s Student Affairs, awarding the organization and me, as its co-advisor (along with Dr. Stephen Glass), with three awards: Outstanding New Organization of 2022-2023 school year, Event of the Year for our Black Grad Game Night, and Outstanding Advisor of the Year.

Image

I’ve had the pleasure to present our data and actions of support at the 2023 National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Conference (NASPA), and have also submitted to the 2024 National Conference for Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE). Other transformational steps have been to mentor Black graduate students to publication, co-authoring a piece on the need for Black male mentorship with a first-year doctoral student. Academic articles to express continuing efforts deriving from this study are being prepared for submission.

Image

From a simple inquiry of why there are a low number of Black students enrolled, we have created sustaining belongingness in CED with social networks emanating from the Black Grad Meet & Greet; sustaining belongingness in the university with the Black/Pan African Graduate Student Association; and continue contributing to the Chancellor’s call-to-action on Black Student Success.

Image

Image

By Stephen Adams Ph.D.
Professor & Coordinator 
Educational Technology and Media Leadership 
College of Education

Advancing Digital Technologies in Education

Dr. Stephen Adams is a Professor and coordinator of the Educational Technology and Media Leadership program in the College of Education. He develops and conducts research regarding educational strategies to help educators use digital technologies in ways that are socially constructive and support equity.  His work has three main strands.

STEM education

Dr. Adams' doctorate, from the University of California Berkeley, is in Education in Mathematics Science and Technology. He published numerous papers concerning high school students’ understanding of climate change and the application of digital technology to their learning in this area. He also developed a service learning model for teachers to learn about using technology in engineering education. In this approach, teachers in a graduate course in educational technology collaborate to develop workshops for youth at a local Boys and Girls Club. In this way, the teachers gain experience trying out new techniques and the youth, who come from diverse populations, benefit from the educational activities. He led a co-authored research study regarding the service learning model and its impacts on participating youth at the Boys & Girls Club. This work was supported with over $100,000 in grant funding and has served hundreds of youth in the Long Beach community. He was also co-investigator of Developing Effective and Engaging Practice in STEM, which developed and studied three models for university-community collaboration in STEM. In this work, Dr. Adams collaborated with faculty in Science Education, Dr. Jim Kisiel (Principal Investigator) and Dr. Lisa Martin (co-Investigator). This work was supported with $200,000 in funding from the Keck Foundation, serving an estimated 1,000 youth in Southern California.

Collaborations with Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica

Dr. Adams’ interests in international education began as an undergraduate, when he was a participant in a semester long study abroad program. He has traveled extensively in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. His scholarly international projects have focused on Costa Rica, where he has developed professional and personal relationships over the past two decades. He has developed Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects, working with faculty at CSULB and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia en Educación (CIDE) of Universidad Nacional. He has also developed a study abroad course to Costa Rica concerning social and cultural aspects of digital technologies. This work has given participating students enduring international perspectives regarding technology and education. It has also led to published research about the pedagogical models and learning outcomes. His work to develop this partnership with Universidad Nacional is also having broader impacts by engaging further faculty at both institutions in their own collaborations.  In March of 2023, he led a group of faculty from the CSULB College of Education to visit CIDE and give presentations emphasizing social justice and culturally inclusive education.

Preparing educators to use digital technologies and understand their social impacts

Dr. Adams has first-hand experience working with a variety of digital technologies over the years. In the 1980s, he worked at an artificial intelligence startup company in Silicon Valley, and in the 1990s, he served as a consultant for Apple Computer. He now works on issues related to teacher preparation and technology. He has published extensively regarding pedagogical models for teacher preparation to use digital technologies, and he received an “Outstanding Paper” Award from the Society for Teacher Education and Technology. He also has a longstanding interest in the social impacts of digital technologies. He has given presentations and published papers concerning strategies for teaching educators about the social impacts of digital technologies and artificial intelligence.  In June of 2023, he will be presenting at a conference in Norway on his work to use digital platforms to support educators’ learning about the societal impact of artificial intelligence algorithms. This is a timely topic, as artificial intelligence and large language models are proliferating and are poised to have significant impacts to educational institutions and society.

Image

By Lindsay Perez Huber, PhD
Professor 
Advanced Studies in Education and Counseling
College of Education

Image

By Oscar Navarro, PhD
Associate Professor 
Teacher Education & Liberal Studies
College of Education

Examining Racial Microaggressions and Racial Microaffirmations Among Faculty, Staff, and Students of Color

If I (Lindsay) think about where my interests in studying race and education began, I would have to go back to my undergraduate years at UC Irvine. There, I began a major in Political Science, as a college student interested in the law and politics. However, as I began taking courses, I felt a disconnect. That disconnect was between my experiences and those that I studied in my classes, between the conflicting demands of college expectations and first-generation college student status, between my world and the world of higher education. Then, I found ethnic studies. This discipline was my entry way to study race, and has directly influenced my development as a critical race scholar in education. I have been studying racial microaggressions from a Critical Race Theory perspective for over a decade now. In particular, my work has sought to theorize the systemic functions of everyday racism that can be easily dismissed without this type of analysis, and, the negative cumulative effects they have on the mind, bodies, and spirts of People of Color over time.

Like Lindsay, during my undergraduate years, I (Oscar) sought frameworks, pedagogies, and theories that could provide a deeper understanding of race and education. I was motivated and driven to address the K-12 schooling disparities that my peers and I undeservingly experienced and become the teacher I never had. At UCLA, I was exposed to Critical Pedagogy, Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, and Critical Race Theory from prominent scholars, educators, and organizers. This formative experience led me to draw from these frameworks, first as a high school teacher and teacher activist, then as a scholar. My scholarship examines the pedagogy, practice, & process of educators of Color committed to racial & social justice. 

The purpose of this study, “Examining Racial Microaggressions and Racial Microaffirmations Among Faculty, Staff, and Students of Color Amid Institutional Moves Toward Inclusive Excellence,” examines the experiences of faculty, staff, and students of Color with everyday racism, or, racial microaggressions at CSULB with a particular focus on the College of Education (CED). Pérez Huber and Solórzano (2015) defined racial microaggressions as “(1) verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color, often carried out in subtle, automatic or unconscious forms; (2) layered assaults, based on a Person of Color’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and (3) cumulative assaults that take a psychological, physiological, and academic toll on People of Color” (p. 302). Racial microaggressions can be experienced as risk factors that increase the likelihood of inequitable outcomes for People of Color. In this study, inequitable outcomes may be seen in educational outcomes and attainment, and faculty and staff promotion and retention. However, racial microaggressions can only happen if there are structures in place that enable them to occur, or, institutional racism (Pérez Huber and Solórzano, 2015; 2020). This study explores the everyday and systemic ways racial microaggressions are experienced by faculty, staff, and students of Color. 

It also examines the ways faculty, staff, and students of Color encounter moments of everyday forms of racial microaffirmations; moments where their identities and respective work are validated and recognized. We define racial microaffirmations as the subtle verbal or non-verbal strategies People of Color engage that affirm each other’s dignity, integrity, and shared humanity. These moments of shared cultural intimacy, as Gates once described, allow People of Color to feel acknowledged, respected, and valued (Solórzano & Pérez, 2020; Solórzano, Pérez Huber, & Huber-Verjan, 2020). Racial microaffirmations allow for an opportunity to repair and heal from microaggressions through everyday acts of acknowledgement, support, and recognition. Data has shown that they can protect from the cumulative negative effects racial microaggressions can cause Students of Color (Pérez Huber, Robles, Gonzalez, & Solorzano, 2022). Pérez Huber etc al. (2022) explain that examples of racial microaffirmations can be seen in everyday interactions, ethnic studies, music, art, texts, and in counterspaces.

This study will not only uncover the experiences of everyday racism, but the policies, processes, practices, norms and cultures that reproduce them, providing insight into everyday interpersonal forms of microaggressions, but also institutionalized forms of racism. This study also takes place during a significant context. That is, within an institution that has an explicit agenda of creating greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. This context is significant as the data in this study will be telling of whether and/or how institutional efforts of anti-racism are impacting the experiences of students, faculty and staff of Color at this particular institution and within the CED.

Image

By Ariane Mica Segismundo
Earning her MS in Speech-Language Pathology - College of Health and Human Services
22-23 Graduate Equity Fellow
Thesis: Undergraduates in CSD: Pre-Professional Experiences and Barriers to Higher Education
Faculty Thesis Advisor: Dr. Belinda Daughrity

Highlighting Graduate Student Research: Ariane Mica Segismundo

Graduate Research Summary

The speech-language pathology and audiology fields are two of the least diverse professions in America. Over 90% of certified speech-language pathology and audiology clinicians identify as White, and 95% identify as female (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [ASHA], 2020). The impact of this lack diversity is felt among the families and children seeking services from the many clinicians who lack an understanding of, or do not practice, cultural competence, humility, and responsiveness. These families and children receive disparate and inadequate health and educational services and care (Attrill et al., 2017; Stewart & Gonzalez, 2002).

The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) has engaged in established and continuous efforts to diversify the field, effectively drawing students from diverse backgrounds into their undergraduate and graduate programs. However, these programs have not be able to retain and graduate their diverse students, which has resulted in preserving the fields’ Whiteness and gender homogeneity. 

As a first-generation, Filipino-American studying speech-language pathology at a Hispanic-Serving and Asian American Pacific Islander-designated institution, I sought to understand the experiences of underrepresented undergraduate students of this discipline. My master’s thesis on this topic sought to answer the following three research questions: (1) What experiences of undergraduate students studying communication sciences and disorders (CSD) affect their pursuit of higher education? (2) What barriers do these students face in pursuing higher education? (3) How can barriers be mitigated?

Using phenomenology and grounded theory, I created an online survey via Qualtrics to ask about perceived barriers to higher education and their thoughts on potential mitigations to those barriers. To obtain my sample, I recruited underrepresented undergraduate students using a flyer with a link to the survey via CSULB SLP faculty, social media (i.e., Instagram), and the CSD professional network. In total, 27 undergraduate students participated in my research.

The responses to the survey identified three main barriers: (1) financial, (2) identity, (3) external barriers. Participants shared that personal finances, such as living costs (e.g., gas, rent, food), school fees, GRE preparations, and providing for families, were financial barriers to higher education as well as access to resume-building opportunities that open doors to higher ed. The participants also stressed that their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, age, gender identity, sexual identity, and being caregivers made succeeding in CSD a challenge. They felt excluded and disconnected from their peers and faculty. Finally, juggling work and family responsibilities with their CSD studies without overall support (external barriers) were additional obstacles, particularly to their academic performance, which can lead to burnout.

To address these barriers, universities and CSD programs should (1) expand financial aid, (2) offer equity-minded programs, and (3) provide external support. Grants, scholarships, and student loan forgiveness were three ways students who struggled financially suggested can remove barriers.  Universities, in general, and CSD programs, in particular, should implement equity-minded programs that champion diversity, provide program and class flexibility (e.g., full-time versus part-time; online, in-person, hybrid), and implement holistic admissions. Mentorship, culturally responsive academic advising, and more accessible resources for academic and career development (i.e., application processes, career pathways) for the students could alleviate external barriers.

As the United States’ population demography shifts to majority of people of color, speech-language pathologists and audiologists will need to both better represent the communities they serve and have the cultural competence to effectively connect with and care for their diverse clients.  It will be in the hands of the CSD university programs to enroll, retain, and graduate its diverse students to meet this need, and the findings from this study can inform these programs to effectively do so.

References

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2020). Profile of ASHA members and affiliates, year-end 2019. https://www.asha.org/siteassets/uploadedFiles/2019-Member-Counts.pdf

Attrill, S., Lincoln, M., & McAllister, S. (2017). Culturally and linguistically diverse students in speech-language pathology courses: A platform for culturally responsive services. International journal of speech-language pathology, 19(3), 309–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2017.1292548

Stewart, S., & Gonzalez, L. (2002). Serving a diverse population: The role of speech-language pathology professional preparation programs. Journal of Allied Health, 31(4), 204–216