Leadership

As an undergraduate, I was viewed as a student leader within my cultural communities and the place in which I worked due to my active involvement on campus. Most of my involvement in leadership centered on my devotion of time and energy to different social justice initiatives. Firstly, I was president of the International Socialist Club on campus and was also granted the opportunity to co-facilitate various programs presented by the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center, such as Change U: A Social Justice Training and their Loud & Queer program. Additionally, I was asked to be a part of a campus-wide campaign entitled Speak Up Against Bias which was aimed at developing an inclusive environment for students on campus.

Currently, my role as a leader has shifted as I have grown as a professional. Many of the opportunities I hold leadership are more facilitation-focused or challenging dialogue rather than trainings and large-scale initiatives. Ultimately, I believe this has to do with the climate as Iowa State not being ready to have mass social justice initiatives actively in place due to the fact much of the campus is still at the beginning stages of what it means to embrace diversity and inclusion efforts. Within this, I have learned what it means to be an effective facilitator of discussion and have been able to identify dynamics of power and marginalization happening within difficult dialogue and challenge these notions. For example, if I notice that a white man is dominating a conversation about race, I will shift focus and attention to hold space for people of color within the room to also have a chance to speak on the issue. Additionally, I am viewed as a leader within my assistantship in that I organize and manage the Connect Four learning community that is meant to help provide mentorship, foster success and community building among first-year students of color which, in turn, correlates to improved retention and graduation rates. In this, most of the students I engage with have also transitioned into leadership roles such as becoming mentors within the program or applying to be a community advisor (CA) within the residence halls.

Although, I will say that most leadership roles I now hold either have nothing to do with social justice and creating change, or it is vaguely implied within the general mission. For instance, I was actively involved within the Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis as their Associate Editor for Outreach. The journal explicitly addresses issues of social justice; though, my role within this editorial board was more focused on brainstorming ideas on how to enhance the publication’s popularity and to build transdisciplinary partnerships across colleges and universities to increase readership and participation. In the same regard, I was voted in as our Director for Communications within our Student Affairs Graduate Association (SAGA). The Student Affairs program at Iowa State possesses an emphasis on social justice praxis, but the role itself, was more centered on planning and managing our annual Interview Days (I-Days) for potential master’s candidates or fundraising efforts.

I use these as examples to exemplify the difference between my leadership roles within undergrad comparatively to my graduate career. Many of the leadership roles I held within undergrad were of my own regard and connected to my own empowerment within my identity. Now, many of the leadership roles I undertake are to further my career within academia and hold little-to-no value on my personal agenda to create transformative change. This is not to say that these avenues for social justice do not exist within these contexts, but to comment on the recycling and insulation of leadership opportunities to create meaningful and accessible change being delegated only within higher educational formats. Meaning: much of the scholarship and initiatives I participate within as a “leader” only provide tangible impact for those within higher education. These leadership roles have connotatively become as a way to pursue my own success and agenda and have lost the original purpose of what it means to be a leader within a community: to empower others.

Thus, I hope that as I continue to explore what leadership means to me (as someone who has had the privilege to become educated and acquire a master’s degree), I intend to use this knowledge and opportunities to potentially bridge the gaps between higher education and the community-at-large. As I develop as a student affairs professional and scholar, I want to begin to make research that is accessible and utilizes rhetoric that is not only exclusive to college students. I want to begin transforming the culture of these problematic campus climates to create inclusive and welcoming experiences to our most marginalized students. As we all continue our leadership journeys, I wish for us to be critical about our position within our roles as leaders and to ask the challenging questions of who and what our work is actually benefitting across a larger context. Fervently, I believe that we can truly be considered leaders and having effective leadership only if we are putting the empowerment of historically disenfranchised populations at the forefront of our work towards educational change.