Contested Issues in Troubled Times: Student Affairs Dialogues on Equity, Civility, and Safety

Contested Issues in Troubled Times provides student affairs educators with frameworks to constructively think about and navigate the contentious climate they are increasingly encountering on campus.

The 54 contributors address the book’s overarching question: How do we create an equitable climate conducive to learning in a dynamic environment fraught with complexity and a socio-political context characterized by escalating intolerance, incivility, and overt discrimination?

Rather than attempting to offer readers definitive solutions, this book illustrates the possibilities and promise of acknowledging multiple approaches to addressing contentious issues, articulating a persuasive argument anchored in professional judgment, listening attentively to others for points of connection as well as divergence, and drawing upon new ways of thinking to foster safe and inclusive campuses.

Among the issues this volume addresses are such topics as sexual violence; historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups; transgender and undocumented students; the professional skills, knowledge and/or dispositions needed to thrive and facilitate systemic change in contemporary higher education organizations; the implications of maintaining personal and professional identities via social media; and self-care.

In this companion volume to Contested Issues in Student Affairs (whose issues remain as relevant today as they were upon publication in 2011), a new set of contributors explore new questions which foreground issues of equity, safety, and civility – themes which dominate today’s higher education headlines and campus conversations.

The book concludes with calls to action, encouraging student affairs educators to exhibit the moral courage needed to critically examine routine practices that (un)knowingly perpetuate inequity and enact the foundational values and principles upon which the student affairs profession was founded.

Peter M. Magolda was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University. He focused his scholarship on ethnographic studies of college students, critical issues in qualitative research, and program evaluation. He is author of The Lives of Campus Custodians and co-author of Contested Issues in Student Affairs, Contested Issues in Troubled Times, and It’s All About Jesus!: Faith as an Oppositional Collegiate Subculture, and has served on the editorial boards of Research in Higher Education and the Journal of Educational Research. He was an ACPA Senior Scholar inductee, and in 2013 received the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Mentoring Award. He also received Miami University’s Richard Delp Outstanding Faculty Member award, as well Alumni Award from The Ohio State University and Indiana University.

We deeply mourn the loss of author, teacher, and friend Peter M. Magolda.

Marcia B. Baxter Magolda is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Miami University of Ohio and a nationally recognized author and speaker on student development and learning. She received the American College Personnel Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, and the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Research Achievement Award in 2007, for her outstanding contribution to advancing student learning.

Her scholarship addresses the evolution of learning and development in college and subsequent adult life, and educational practice to promote self-authorship. Her seventh and eighth books respectively are Authoring Your Life and Development and Assessment of Self-Authorship.

Rozana Carducci isthe graduate director of the Master of Arts in Higher Education Program at ElonUniversity.

Shewas previously at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, where sheserved as assistant professor in the Department of Secondary and HigherEducation and coordinator of the Higher Education in Student Affairs graduateprogram. Ahe has dedicated herself for two decades to the practice and study ofhigher education leadership, and brings that wealth of knowledge and experienceto Elon. 

Inher role coordinating the graduate program at Salem State, Carducci managedrecruitment, admissions, curriculum development, faculty selection andevaluation, student professional engagement, program communications and alumnirelations.

Lori D. Patton, Ph.D. is Department Chair of Educational Studies and Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs inthe College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. Patton is known for scholarship on critical race theory, diversity initiatives on college campuses, Black women and girls in educational and social contexts, and college student development. The author of over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and other academic publications, she has received national awards for her scholarship including being ranked among the top 200 educators in the US. She is frequently sought for expertise on education topics.