More Than the Sum of Their Struggles

Even in 2020, the plight of Black women in higher education saturates the literature. For decades, Black women have been trying to find their place in the academy. This chapter reveals the success factors of five first-generation African American women with Ph.D.s discovered through a narrative inquiry. The theoretical framework used in this study contends that social location and ideas produced by Black women help demystify the orientation of Black women and help illuminate their points of view. This study focused exclusively on capturing the success factors that contributed to the participants successfully navigating their doctoral journey. The findings exposed five success factors and better position the academy to support and replicate mechanisms to foster success and not assumptions of incompetence. This study allowed participants to provide wisdom to future generations and evidence to assist in shaping the trajectory for first-generation African American women doctoral students.

Women’s Experiences with Parenting During Doctoral Education: Impact on Career Trajectory

Aim/Purpose: This study explored the experiences of women doctoral students and their perceptions of the impact of this experience on their academic careers. Background: While more women than men graduate from doctoral programs in all non-STEM fields, women are more likely to take non-tenure positions or positions at less prestigious programs such as community colleges or teaching focused institutions. This creates a lack of diversity at research intensive programs as well as potentially highlighting gender inequities within the pipeline from doctoral education to full professorship. The source of these differences in career outcomes are not fully understood, and it is unclear whether mothers are self-selecting away from research intensive positions, they are less able to obtain the required professional training for these experiences, perhaps in part due to a lack of university based supports, or they experience discrimination based on gender biases around caregiving. Methodology: In this cross-sectional, descriptive study, women doctoral students and graduates (N=777) completed a survey about their experiences as doctoral student mothers. Contribution: Little is known about the availability of supports for doctoral student mothers across fields, or their experiences with parenting during their doctoral programs. This study provides a broader view of doctoral student mothers’ perspectives as well as their understanding of the impact of their doctoral education experience on their career trajectories. Findings: Participants reported informal supports were often available (e.g. flexibility (57.1%), peer support (42.9%)) but identified a need for subsidized childcare (67.7%) and paid leave (53.3%). Many found motherhood decreased productivity (70.1%) and 55.8% said it impacted their career, including a new definition of an “ideal” position, changed career goals, professional development opportunities, being less competitive job candidates, delays in completing their program and entering the job market and a positive impact on career. Recommendations for Practitioners: Implications for doctoral programs are the need for more formal family-friendly policies, including subsidized childcare and conference travel support, improving the quality of mentoring for these students and facilitating access to a diverse array of professional development opportunities. Recommendation for Researchers: These findings suggest that there are multiple, complex factors impacting women’s career trajectory post-graduation once they have children. Researchers should consider multiple pathways to career decisions for women with children. In addition, these findings suggest that researchers exploring this topic should consider both field of study and whether women have a child at the point of program entry. Impact on Society: An underrepresentation of women in prestigious academic positions and leadership positions has a negative impact on young women who desire an academic career. The lack of women with children in these positions creates a problematic lack of diversity in leadership and a dearth of role models for women students with children. The benefits of diversity in leadership are well known. These findings can be used by doctoral programs and academic institutions to increase gender and parental status diversity in these positions, to the benefit of students, faculty, departments, and institutions. Future Research: Future research should explore the impact of supports on measures of doctoral student success (e.g. publications, conference presentations) and the impact of these experiences on students’ careers following graduation.

(Wo)monstrous suturing: Woman doctoral students cutting together/apart

This paper centers the experiences and understandings of women doctoral students during two separate focus groups and collaborative collages. (Re)theorizing “monsters” as “intra- sectional” through Karen Barad’s and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s scholarship, we (re)position the “monstrous” as agentive and self-creative concepts. We explore the concept of (wo)monsters and the (wo)monstrous: empowered women participants who, through their verbal and artistic participations, cut themselves, others, and the group together/apart. In making these cuttings, they worked to (re)suture themselves and their group(s) back together in (re)generative, (wo)monstrous ways. The women’s participations emphasized their (wo)monstrosities as affirmingly fantastical, imagining new ways of being and wreaking havoc on hegemony and hierarchy.

Reflections from Women Doctoral Students Lives Regarding Gender Roles

Engaging in business life actively with industrialization, modernism movements and making a significant improvement in getting higher education degrees, the women’s getting postgraduate degrees –especially seen as a very challenging and demanding pathway by many people- has various effects on their social lives. The aim of this study was to analyze the interaction between doctoral process and women’s gender roles in daily life. The design of the study was qualitative interview-based and to collect the data semi-structured interviews were conducted. Participants were chosen among the volunteer women doctoral students in Cukurova University. The data collected was analyzed with content analysis. The findings revealed there are many advantages and disadvantages reflected on the women doctoral students’ lives through their doctorate regarding gender roles and they had a lot of difficulties through this process. They put forward recommendations related to various points such as providing equality of women and men and having support mechanisms in order to overcome these inequality related problems. Although they got both support and criticism regarding doing doctorate, women doctoral students have many reasons for doing doctorate which engage them into a devoted endeavor in a sense to get higher education and join more actively in business life.

#GhanaTaughtMe: How Graduate Study Abroad Shifted Two Black American Educators’ Perceptions of Teaching, Learning, and Achievement

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this collaborative autoethnographic research study was to explore how a shared Ghanaian study abroad experience would (re)shape how two U.S. first-generation Black women doctoral students understood teaching, learning, and academic achievement. Through our experiences, we reflected on what a reimagining U.S. higher education could look like to facilitate a cultural shift in educational norms. Background: The centrality of whiteness in U.S. education contributes to the learning and unlearning of people of Black students. The promise of Ghana, then, represents a space for revisioning who we are and could be as student affairs and counselor educators through more African ways of knowing. Methodology: Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE) served as the methodology for this study. CAE can be described as a collaborative means of self-engagement (Chang, Ngunjiri, Hernandez, 2013; Chang, 2016) and is an interplay between collaboration, autobiography, and ethnography among researchers (Chang, Ngunjiri, Hernandez, 2013), where researchers’ experiences, memories, and autobiographical materials are gathered, analyzed, and interpreted to gain insight into a particular experience (Chang, Ngunjiri, Hernandez, 2013; Chang, 2016). Contribution: This study nuances ways of knowing and expectations around learning and accomplishment for Black students. This is done through following the journey of two Black women doctoral students in counselor education and student affairs who are deeply aware of the ways their classroom and educative practices contribute to the socialization and learning of Black children. This paper offers strategies for operationalizing more culturally responsive ways of engaging students and of enacting student affairs and counselor educator practices. Findings: The findings from this study have been synthesized into two major themes: (1) The reimagining of professional preparation; and (2) student and teacher socialization. Together, they reveal ways in which inherently Ghanaian practices and techniques of teaching and learning contribute to increased student engagement, educational attainment, and success. Recommendations for Practitioners: Higher education practitioners should consider how to apply Ghanaian principles of success and inclusion to ensure students can participate in campus programs and initiatives with minimal barriers (financial, social, and emotional) through collective commitment to inclusion, centering non-western constructs of time so that students have flexibility with institutional engagement, and design support systems for student leaders where collective rather than individual accomplishments are centered. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers should consider shifting the centrality of positivist notions of scholarship in publication and research pipelines so that inherently African ways of knowing and being are included in the construction of knowledge. Impact on Society: This study has societal implications for the P-20 educational pipeline as it pertains to Black students and Black education. Specifically, there are implications for the many ways that we can affirm Black brilliance in U.S. public school settings, by acknowledging what and how they come to know things about the world around them (e.g., via singing, dancing, poetry, questioning). In terms of higher education in the U.S., this study calls into question how we, as educators and practitioners, position Black students’ ancestral knowledges as being both valid and valuable in the classroom. Future Research: Future researchers may wish to examine: (1) the direct suggestions for what inclusive education can look like from Ghanaians themselves as outsiders looking into U.S. education; (2) exploration of Black American and Ghanaian student perspectives and perceptions on teaching and learning in their respective countries, and (3) exploration of a broader range of Black people's voices including those of Black LGBT people, Black trans women, and non-millennial Black educators, for insight into making educational spaces more inclusive, transformative, and affirming.