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What’s Your Superpower? Creating a Culture of Care and Accompliceship to Transform the Underrepresented Student Experience
Underrepresented groups and first-generation students not only face challenges within the classroom but an entire educational ecosystem that has an inherent inequality of opportunity, or ‘education debt’. Systems are often difficult to navigate, and access to resources or building connection come with unique challenges including lack of belonging, overcoming stereotypes and imposter syndrome. We will first discuss what it means to be underrepresented and underserved in STEM. What assumptions do we make about who students are, what students struggle with and what may be interfering with success in the classroom? Systemic change is difficult, complex and often too slow to provide the ‘just-in-time’ help students need. Rather than focusing on policies and processes, I will suggest ways we can leverage a superpower we already have: the capacity to build authentic relationships and harness community cultural wealth. We will discuss simple steps we can take to create a community of care to support underrepresented students both as faculty and staff, but also as students supporting other students. Participants will leave with ideas for actions we can take that use relationships as a foundation to learning and success, shift advising to a strengths-based approach and demystify the hidden college curriculum.
Dr. Aleya Dhanji is Physics faculty and co-chair of the Learning and Teaching Center at Highline College. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Physics from Stanford University, and PhD in Physics from the Ohio State University. As a first-generation college student raised in East Africa, she is keenly aware of the power education has to transform people’s lives. In addition to teaching and faculty development, Dr. Dhanji conducts research in culturally responsive team learning and transfer student success. Her other projects include designing first year experience courses to better support new students in the STEM pathway, systemic change for inclusive advising and antiracist STEM pedagogy.
Dr. Dhanji considers it a privilege to be able to teach at Highline where her students are a constant source of inspiration. She loves working with students to build a community of learning where students feel like they can achieve anything! is Physics faculty and co-chair of the Learning and Teaching Center at Highline College. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Physics from Stanford University, and PhD in Physics from the Ohio State University. As a first-generation college student raised in East Africa, she is keenly aware of the power education has to transform people’s lives. In addition to teaching and faculty development, Dr. Dhanji conducts research in culturally responsive team learning and transfer student success. Her other projects include designing first year experience courses to better support new students in the STEM pathway, systemic change for inclusive advising and antiracist STEM pedagogy.
Dr. Dhanji considers it a privilege to be able to teach at Highline where her students are a constant source of inspiration. She loves working with students to build a community of learning where students feel like they can achieve anything!
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