History in a Time of Forgetting
September 22, 2026
Still Shaking the Table: Activism, Coalition-Building, and Supporting Students in a Changing Higher Education Landscape
September 24, 2026Details
Wednesday, October 7
1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Zoom webinar
Identity-center practitioners play a critical role in fostering belonging, advocacy, and support for students with marginalized identities. Yet these professionals often navigate complex and challenging environments, particularly amid increased scrutiny of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across higher education.
Drawing from Shaking the Table: Survival and Healing Amongst Identity Center Practitioners, this webinar will uplift the voices of current and former identity-center practitioners as they share personal stories of leadership, resilience, survival, and healing. Panelists will reflect on their experiences leading and working within identity-based centers while offering practical insights, lessons learned, and strategies for sustaining themselves and their work.
Rather than a series of formal presentations, the program will feature a facilitated conversation among the book’s co-editors and contributing authors. Together, they will examine the visible and invisible labor of identity-center work, the tension involved in creating belonging within institutions that do not always care for practitioners, and the people, practices, communities, and boundaries that make healing possible.
Join us for a conversation about the challenges and possibilities of identity-center work—and the roles that community, mentorship, and healing-centered practices can play in sustaining professionals committed to creating more inclusive campus communities.
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
Nikita Haynie, MEd
Nikita Haynie (she/her) is the director of family engagement for student affairs at the University of Kansas. With more than 12 years of progressive experience in higher education, she has dedicated her career to supporting students’ developmental journeys, fostering self-discovery, and cultivating safe and inclusive campus communities.
Haynie holds a BA in English literature from Clayton State University, a master of education in higher education from Georgia Southern University, and an MFA in writing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Throughout her career, she has worked in women’s and gender services, sorority and fraternity life, career services, and academic advising.
Outside her professional role, Haynie founded Write On, Black Girl, an initiative that raises awareness about the historical disenfranchisement and silencing of Black women’s voices in the literary canon. She is deeply committed to enriching the holistic student experience through an intersectional approach responsive to students’ diverse identities and needs.
Julian Ignacio
Julian Ignacio (he/any) is the associate director for student development and evaluation at the Asian American Resource and Cultural Center at the University of Illinois Chicago. He leads the Asian American Mentor Program and its credit-bearing course, GLAS 105: “Asian American Identities, Cultures, and Communities.”
Ignacio holds a master of arts in teaching history from the University of Illinois Chicago and a master of accounting science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Before returning to UIC professionally, he worked as a high school social studies teacher in Chicago Public Schools. Outside UIC, Ignacio organizes with the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns. Before becoming an educator, he worked as a certified public accountant for seven years.
A. Pierre Sherrill II, EdD
Pierre Sherrill II, EdD (he/they/friend), is an agent of positive change with more than 15 years of experience working with college students and serving as a nonprofit executive. His passion for helping people engage in their own paths toward liberation has shaped a professional journey grounded in learning, fulfillment, and community.
Sherrill makes critical conversations about social justice issues accessible for foundational understanding. He has facilitated equity-focused learning at California State University, Northridge; Fresno State; and the University of San Francisco. He earned his doctor of education from San Diego State University, where he studied the influence of race on Black men’s engagement with authority figures.