Academic leaders respond to and influence laws and policies designed to create learning environments and workplaces free of discrimination, bias, and threat of harm. This session highlights administrators’ responsibilities for policy enactment, situating today’s campus policies and decision-making challenges and opportunities in historical and legal perspective. Applying intersectional perspectives on power, authority, and the law, the session supports the development of critical conscious legal literacy to advance socially just campus policies.

This session highlights the importance of incorporating attention to students’ sense of belonging into institutional reforms to address inequities in college experience and outcomes. In addition to defining the concept of sense of belonging, the session opens space to identify institutional policies, practices, and processes that can be adapted and adopted to facilitate students’ connectedness to campus.

Daily news viewers in and outside of higher education today are aware that critical race theory (CRT), ‘DEIB’, and ‘wokeness’ are under a concerted attack by legislators in many states, with some calling these perspectives ‘divisive.’ Yet even an initial introduction reveals that the underlying tenets of CRT offer common sense and compassionate strategies for addressing racial injustice. The many branches of critical theories recognize the harms of racism and intersectional oppression (such as gendered racism) and offer realistic appraisals of opportunities for transformative change in colleges and universities. In this session, Alicia Dowd discusses the ways that principles such as historicism, racial realism, interdisciplinarity, and the importance of counter-narratives inform her leadership, research, and teaching. Joined by CSHE faculty colleagues, she opens the conversation for participants to share how they are affected by and responding to the politicization of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging to carry out their commitments.

Expanding on topics presented in the first of these two sessions, build a career advancement approach and plan that you can implement at your institution. Through guided reflection and structured prompts, draft an initial career advancement plan that you would like to carry out in your areas of leadership. You will be asked to take this plan back to colleagues in your department, unit, and functional areas, engaging them in a conversation to further refine the plan prior to implementation.

We will conclude in a whole group with appreciation and acknowledgements.