Still Shaking the Table: Activism, Coalition-Building, and Supporting Students in a Changing Higher Education Landscape

Wednesday, October 21

Details

Wednesday, October 21
1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Zoom webinar

Identity-center professionals work at the intersection of student support, advocacy, education, and institutional change. As higher education becomes increasingly politicized and constrained, these practitioners must navigate evolving student needs, institutional pressures, and challenges to diversity, equity, and inclusion while sustaining their own well-being.

Drawing from Still Shaking the Table: Activism, Unity, and Supporting Students, this webinar explores the changing role of identity-center practitioners as advocates, coalition-builders, educators, and institutional leaders. Co-editors Jonathan A. McElderry and Stephanie Hernandez Rivera will join contributing authors Susan Harper, Heather D. Shea, and Brandi Wells-Stone to consider how practitioners build cross-campus partnerships, respond to political and organizational challenges, and support students with diverse and intersecting identities.

The conversation will examine strategies for sustaining justice-oriented leadership through critical hope, collective care, and intentional reflection. Panelists will also discuss what colleges and universities must do to move beyond performative or symbolic commitments toward meaningful institutional support for identity centers, their staff, and the students they serve.

Join us for a timely conversation about activism, coalition-building, institutional responsibility, and the future of identity-center work in higher education.

Moderators & Co-Editors

Jonathan A. McElderry, PhD

Jonathan A. McElderry, PhD (he/him), is a nationally recognized scholar, speaker, and higher education leader whose work centers on advancing student success, inclusive excellence, and organizational transformation. He serves as dean of student inclusive excellence, assistant professor of education, and acting director of the master of higher education program at Elon University. Most recently, he completed his term as the 86th president of ACPA–College Student Educators International.

A first-generation college graduate, McElderry’s scholarship and professional practice focus on the experiences of historically marginalized students, leadership in higher education, mentoring, and belonging. He has authored more than 20 scholarly publications and co-edited two books examining antiracism and the experiences of identity-center practitioners. Through his scholarship, national leadership, and commitment to mentoring the next generation of higher education professionals, McElderry continues to influence policy, practice, and the future of the profession.

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, PhD

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, PhD (she/ella), is a Puerto Rican woman and race-gender higher education scholar and educator. She is an assistant professor in Elon University’s Master of Arts in Higher Education Program and the endowed Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education Emerging Professor. Hernandez Rivera has experience as a higher education practitioner and administrator working to advance equity and inclusion in various capacities.

Using critical cultural methodologies, her research examines how equity and inclusion work is operationalized in higher education, the resistance strategies of students, faculty, and staff, and how oppressive systems of power emerge at the micro and meso levels to affect the psychological well-being of communities of Color. Her scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, and The Journal of Negro Education, among other publications.

Contributing Authors

Susan Harper, PhD

Susan Harper, PhD, serves as co-curricular student development director in Multicultural Student Affairs at Iowa State University, where she designs curricula and developmental experiences for students in the George Washington Carver Scholastic Leadership Scholarship and First Cyclone Scholarship learning communities.

Harper previously served as director of the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success at Iowa State until the center’s closure in 2024. As a scholar-practitioner, her work focuses on support for historically excluded student populations, leadership, controversy with civility, spiritual wellness, and dialogue across religious difference.

She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and an MA in anthropology from Southern Methodist University, as well as an MA in multicultural women’s and gender studies from Texas Woman’s University. Her recent publications include Feminist Witchcraft and Doing Ethnography, co-authored with Jessica Smartt Gullion.

Heather D. Shea, PhD

Heather D. Shea, PhD (she/her), is the director of Pathways Persistence Programs in Undergraduate Education at Michigan State University, where she leads a unit of five academic cohort programs focused on student persistence, high-impact practices, and first-generation student success.

With more than 25 years of experience as a practitioner-scholar, Shea advances student success, equity, and belonging through cohort-based programs and holistic support. She previously served for more than a decade as director of two campus-based women’s and gender equity centers, where she led initiatives designed to foster inclusive campus climates and intersectional coalitions.

Her scholarship and practice focus on cultivating critical hope for the future of higher education through communities of mattering. She is a host and co-founder of the Student Affairs NOW podcast and a past president of ACPA–College Student Educators International.

Brandi Wells-Stone, PhD

Brandi Wells-Stone, PhD (she/her), is director of African American Student Services and special advisor to the president on African American Affairs at the University of New Mexico, where she also serves as an adjunct faculty member in Africana Studies.

A scholar-practitioner with more than a decade of experience in Black Cultural Center work, Wells-Stone’s research and practice examine Black Cultural Center leadership and space through decolonial and Black feminist lenses. Her work considers how institutional structures, care practices, and spatial politics shape both cultural-center staff and students’ experiences of belonging in higher education.