By David Miller
The University of Alabama College of Education has forged an innovative research collaborative with Auburn University to address social justice issues in education in Alabama.
The collaborative includes seven research projects that will pair an education researcher from each university to study a range of topics, including trans admissions policies in higher education, racial exclusion of charter schools in rural Alabama, and how disabilities and mental health shape student identities, among others.
The program’s 2019-20 cohort has already begun collaborating.
“The program’s aim is to generate scholarship for purposes such as publication, grant funding, and national and international conference presentations,” said Dr. Stephanie Anne Shelton, assistant professor of qualitative research at UA. “Through this collaborative scholarship, we will support critically engaged research that traverses individual institutions and advances scholarship benefitting the state of Alabama and beyond.”
The collaborative is funded through separate $10,000 awards from each university’s College of Education. Researchers in the 2019-20 cohort will spend time at each university throughout the academic year and will present findings from their respective projects at the Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling research symposium in April 2020. The program also includes a summer writing retreat.
The UA-AU Research Collaborative is modeled after the SEC Faculty Travel Program, which provides funding to SEC researchers to collaborate and share ideas. Dr. Stephanie Anne Shelton, assistant professor of qualitative research at UA, and Dr. Kamden Strunk, associate professor of education research at Auburn, had served on various committees for the American Educational Research Association before each were awarded SEC travel grants to work with one another in 2018-19. Shelton and Strunk aimed to grow their collaboration beyond their one-year funding from the SEC and pitched the idea to Dr. Peter Hlebowitsh, dean of UA’s College of Education, who made the initial investment for the program.
The structure of the program is also influenced by the UA College of Education’s exchange partnership with Shenyang Normal University in China and a UA faculty writing group that Shelton participated in. The face-to-face meetings and feedback of the writing group were “incredibly productive” for UA faculty and a vital component for the UA-AU collaborative, Shelton said.
“We wanted to make to this collaboration in-house and more consistent,” Shelton said. “And, as far as I know, there isn’t a program with an explicit sharing of ideas and scholarly productivity between the two colleges of education.”
Equally important for UA is the program includes researchers from multiple departments across the college and of various ranks, from full professors to first-year faculty, Shelton said.
“Some of these relationships are brand new, which is exciting,” Shelton said. “The scholarship that’s being generated through this collaborative would not happen without this program, and it’s something that will matter to UA, Auburn, the State of Alabama, and hopefully beyond it.”
Participants
- Dr. Steve Mobley, Jr. (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies, Higher Education) and Dr. Antonio Duran (Auburn University, Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Higher Education): “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Bennett, Spelman, and Morehouse’s Trans Admissions Policies.”
- Dr. Claire Major (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies, Higher Education) and Dr. Laura Parsons (Auburn University, Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Higher Education): “Exploring Traditional Higher Education Learning Theories through a Critical Lens.”
- Dr. Krystal Williams (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies, Higher Education) and Dr. Leonard Taylor (Auburn University, Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Higher Education): “HBCUs, STEM, and Student Success Practice: A critical exploration of students’ experiences and institutional environments.”
- Dr. Bryan Mann (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies, Social and Cultural Studies) and Dr. Andrew Pendola and Dr. David Marshall ((Auburn University, Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Educational Leadership): “Using Charter Schools to Alleviate Racial Exclusion in Rural Alabama: An Innovative Idea or a Trojan Horse?”
- Dr. Cindy Ann Kilgo (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies, Higher Education) and Dr. Crystal Garcia (Auburn University, Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Higher Education): “Interrogating Institutional Perpetuation of Oppression toward College Students Experiences.”
- Dr. Stephanie Anne Shelton (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling, Qualitative Research) andDr. Kamden Strunk (Auburn University, Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, Educational Research): “An Examination of Methodological Quality in Critical and Queer Scholarship.”
- Dr. Emily Lund (University of Alabama, Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling, Counselor Education) and Dr. Jill Meyer (Auburn University, Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and Counseling, Clinical Rehabilitative Counseling: “The Association Between Disability Identity Development and Mental Health in Individuals with Chronic Illness and Disability.”