Papers by Stephen Santa-Ramirez, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
Journal of university teaching & learning practice, Feb 29, 2024
Informed by autoethnography, this scholarly personal narrative highlights my pedagogical practice... more Informed by autoethnography, this scholarly personal narrative highlights my pedagogical practices and reflections from students during the 2020-2021 academic year amid the COVID-19 health and racial unjust pandemics. Specifically, by employing a critical theory of love and social sustainability, I share how I engaged in love, care, humanizing, and culturally engaging and sustaining practices that positively affected class discourse and relationship-building among graduate students and myself. The findings highlight some of my personal reflections, thoughts, and feelings while teaching during the 2020-2021 academic year and some email communications received from graduate students that year, condensed into three identified themes: (1) moments of transparency and engaging in critical topics transparent and not asking the students to do anything I wouldn't personally do, (2) offering grace and being flexible, and (3) checking-in with students. Recommendations for instructors are offered to better support students in online formats.
Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 2024
Informed by autoethnography, this scholarly personal narrative highlights my pedagogical practice... more Informed by autoethnography, this scholarly personal narrative highlights my pedagogical practices and reflections from students during the 2020-2021 academic year amid the COVID-19 health and racial unjust pandemics. Specifically, by employing a critical theory of love and social sustainability, I share how I engaged in love, care, humanizing, and culturally engaging and sustaining practices that positively affected class discourse and relationship-building among graduate students and myself. The findings highlight some of my personal reflections, thoughts, and feelings while teaching during the 2020-2021 academic year and some email communications received from graduate students that year, condensed into three identified themes: (1) moments of transparency and engaging in critical topics transparent and not asking the students to do anything I wouldn't personally do, (2) offering grace and being flexible, and (3) checking-in with students. Recommendations for instructors are offered to better support students in online formats.
Journal of Latinos and Education, 2024
While undocu/DACAmented students face many challenges in higher education, their lives demonstrat... more While undocu/DACAmented students face many challenges in higher education, their lives demonstrate a tremendous amount of motivation, resilience, commitment, and perseverance. The literature on undocumented students has indicated that these students bring a vast array of assets to college - assets that can be used to improve the campus and the experiences of undocu/DACAmented individuals. However, undocu/DACAmented student assets are often undervalued. In this critical qualitative study of testimonios with 15 undocu/DACAmented Latinx collegians, we examine how institutions utilize, underutilize, or exploit these students' assets to ask at what point acknowledging and recognizing students' assets turns into exploiting them. Our findings revealed these collegians hold myriad assets and institutions responded to those assets by sometimes acknowledging and rewarding them, failing to acknowledge these assets, or exploiting them. Recommendations for equitable and ethical recognition and collaboration with undocu/DACAmented collegians are provided.
Journal of College Student Development , 2023
Our use of the term undocumented is inclusive of individuals who are undocumented with and withou... more Our use of the term undocumented is inclusive of individuals who are undocumented with and without being Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries, a 2-year renewal of protection from deportation and work permit program enacted via an executive order during the Obama Administration in 2012. This narrative inquiry study examined how Black and non-Black Mexican undocumented collegians use joy as resistance to navigate their lives while in college. A lack of published empirical research explores how these collegians experience and embrace joy despite navigating barriers, such as anti-im/migrant exclusionary policies and racist nativist sociopolitical and campus climates. Our findings revealed their joyful experiences with biological and chosen family and communal and artistic joy. Recommendations for research and practice are provided for higher education actors at all levels. This poem was shared via a YouTube video by Yosimar Reyes (2017, 0:09), a creative artist and poet who is undocumented.1 They expressed love for the undocumented im/migrant
The Journal of Higher Education, 2023
Despite the racial, ethnic, linguistic, geographic, and cultural heterogeneity of LatinXs, extant... more Despite the racial, ethnic, linguistic, geographic, and cultural heterogeneity of LatinXs, extant educational research positions them as a monoracial, and oftentimes monolithic, group. Most research on LatinXs primarily focuses on mestizX-identified individuals. Inadvertently, the presence and experiences AfroLatinXs have largely been invisibilized. The limited research on AfroLatinXs in higher education mostly presents the experiences of students. Minimal published empirical research centers on the lived experiences of AfroLatinXs working in higher education. This study seeks to address this gap by exploring the racialized educational and professional experiences of self-identified AfroLatinX higher education professionals. Findings reveal how they experience an outsider-insider paradox that amounts to (in) visibility, lack of recognition in both Black and LatinX circles, and how language is utilized as a tool of exclusion and inclusion. Collaborators underscore how their racialized experiences motivated them to pursue a career in higher education.
Education Sciences
Guided by sense of belonging and counterspaces, this critical ethnographic study investigates the... more Guided by sense of belonging and counterspaces, this critical ethnographic study investigates the people, places, and spaces collegians that are Latinx and undocu/DACAmented use to persist toward graduation amidst an ongoing anti-im/migrant sociopolitical climate. Findings reveal that (a) connections built with peers who share racial backgrounds and have liminal legal statuses, (b) supportive and affirming faculty, (c) access to culturally-based student organizations and academic programs, and (d) campus departments and programs catered to the holistic support of undocu/DACAmented collegians are salient for these students’ sense of belonging in college, though belongingness is not fully attainable in the United States as a result of racist nativism. Recommendations for research and practice are offered for higher education institutional agents at all levels.
Teaching Education, 2023
In this study, researchers conducted an examination of the conse- quences, both positive and in n... more In this study, researchers conducted an examination of the conse- quences, both positive and in need of improvement, of a large college of education’s student support process (SSP). The SSP was put in place by college of education leaders in order to better support the teacher education students enrolled throughout its teacher education program, through both their coursework and student teaching experiences. Researchers used multiple methods to examine the SSP’s purposes and objectives, the SSP’s strengths and challenges, and the typical students being served via the SSP (e.g. in terms of demographics, also to understand impacts). Researchers collected and analyzed institutional data as well as data derived via the self-reported perspectives of faculty and staff engaged throughout all stages of the SSP. Findings are offered, as are implications for internal as well as external audiences including but not limited to college of education faculty, staff, and leaders, potentially within and well beyond the United States (US).
The Review of Higher Education, 2022
I acknowledge and work to write this article honorably on the ancestral Native territory of the S... more I acknowledge and work to write this article honorably on the ancestral Native territory of the Seneca Nation of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Confederacy. I am respectfully grateful to live and work as a guest on these lands with the Indigenous Peoples who walked here before me and those who still call this home. Further, I thank all the fierce undergraduate student collaborators who openly invited me into their lives and powerful spaces. It was an honor to work and learn alongside you all.
Education Sciences, 2022
Guided by sense of belonging and counterspaces, this critical ethnographic study investigates the... more Guided by sense of belonging and counterspaces, this critical ethnographic study investigates the people, places, and spaces collegians that are Latinx and undocu/DACAmented use to persist toward graduation amidst an ongoing anti-im/migrant sociopolitical climate. Findings reveal that (a) connections built with peers who share racial backgrounds and have liminal legal statuses, (b) supportive and affirming faculty, (c) access to culturally-based student organizations and academic programs, and (d) campus departments and programs catered to the holistic support of undocu/DACAmented collegians are salient for these students’ sense of belonging in college, though belongingness is not fully attainable in the United States as a result of racist nativism. Recommendations for research and practice are offered for higher education institutional agents at all levels.
In R. Johnson, U. Anya, & L. Garces (Eds.), Racial Equity on College Campus: Connecting Research to Practice (pp. 141–165). SUNY Press., 2022
Santa-Ramirez highlights the counter-stories of six undergraduate students at a public Research I... more Santa-Ramirez highlights the counter-stories of six undergraduate students at a public Research I predominantly White institution (PWI) in the Southwest, US. The author applies critical race and sense of belonging theoretical frameworks to investigate the support systems first-generation Latina/x students utilize for persistence while navigating a racially hostile campus climate. Three themes emerged from the data: (1) Culturally-based academic program, (2) Peer and professional staff support, and (3) Ethnic student organization involvement. The findings of this study assist in providing a greater understanding and awareness of the negative impacts hostile racial tensions on college campuses have on many Latina/x students and the importance of institutional support systems and services during these challenging and transitional times.
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2022
This phenomenological study examines the positive and adverse experiences full-time Latinx PhD st... more This phenomenological study examines the positive and adverse experiences full-time Latinx PhD students have in mentoring relationships with faculty of Color at a historically white Research-Intensive University in the Southwest, United States. These scholars are an essential group that faces distinct challenges in graduate education and remain underrepresented, with only 7.2% of all doctorate degrees obtained and constituting merely 4% of all faculty. Faculty mentoring requires a degree of care and commitment rather than a casual or "strictly business" approach, especially for racially minoritized students. Findings reveal the need for faculty mentors to humanize and validate their advisees' individual experiences and goals while simultaneously incorporating the holistic person their doctoral students enter with at their respective academic programs. Recommendations are shared for institutional agents at all levels.
Maybe I Should...: Case Studies on Ethics for Student Affairs Professionals, 2nd edition, 2019
Case Study
Journal of First-generation Student Success, 2021
This critical ethnography highlights how first-generation Latinx undocu/DACAmented collegians who... more This critical ethnography highlights how first-generation Latinx undocu/DACAmented collegians who are members of a social and advocacy student organization at a public, historically white institution in the Southwest, U.S.A develop a scholarship and peer-mentoring program for other students with liminal legal statuses. The theoretical connections that guide this study are social and navigational capital and seek to answer how these collegians use these forms of cultural wealth to develop different campus support services for their peers. The findings from this study reveal how these organizational members use their cultural capital to organize and network with various stake- holders to develop a scholarship for undocu/DACAmented students, in addition to applying for and obtaining grant funding to commence a peer-mentoring program. This study highlights the agency exercised and assets these first-generation collegians bring to college and offer institutional agents recommendations to support them better.
Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 2023
The activism efforts of Latinx students from the 1960s to 1990s at Michigan State University prec... more The activism efforts of Latinx students from the 1960s to 1990s at Michigan State University preceded the current resources available to Latinxs on campus today. Guided by transformational resistance, university library archival sources are used to showcase various activism efforts demonstrated by these collegians. Some include a grape purchasing boycott, a sit-in, and a massive library book check-out protest, which all collectively played salient roles in the development of transformational changes for Latinx students. Recommendations from the findings are provided to advance future research and practice for institutional agents in working for and alongside student activists versus against them.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2022
This qualitative study investigates how first-generation undergraduate students of Color at a his... more This qualitative study investigates how first-generation undergraduate students of Color at a historically white institution in the U.S. make sense and process the university's mission, especially in relation to the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality and post-subjectivity. U.S. universities are often structured on market-driven ideologies. They do not necessarily deeply take into account the experiences of their first-generation students of Color to the extent that could be observed in the institution's mission and goals. In this paper, we interacted with data while thinking with theory, philosophy, and concept as a method. Through these interactions, we gained insights about the lived experiences of first-generation undergraduate students of Color and how they perceive themselves to either be represented or not, within their institution's mission. Studies like this are needed because an institution's mission communicates central philosophies to stakeholders, and a clear mission statement is warranted to ensure that first-generation students of Color feel a sense of belongingness and affinity to their campuses. We also offer implications for future research and practice.
Multicultural Perspectives, 2019
A review by Stephen Santa-Ramirez
Very little is known about the experiences of college students with criminal records (CSCR), an u... more Very little is known about the experiences of college students with criminal records (CSCR), an underrepresented and minoritized student population. This study utilized a constructivist qualitative methodology to understand the experiences of four CSCRs pursuing higher education. The participant perspectives yielded three noteworthy findings that contribute to limited
literature on the experiences of CSCRs. The findings highlight CSCRs’ introduction to higher education, their initial feelings prior to pursuing postsecondary education, and background checks that pose as barriers. Based upon these findings, we are able to understand why supportive networks, specialized resources, and academic assistance are needed for CSCRs.
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Papers by Stephen Santa-Ramirez, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
literature on the experiences of CSCRs. The findings highlight CSCRs’ introduction to higher education, their initial feelings prior to pursuing postsecondary education, and background checks that pose as barriers. Based upon these findings, we are able to understand why supportive networks, specialized resources, and academic assistance are needed for CSCRs.
literature on the experiences of CSCRs. The findings highlight CSCRs’ introduction to higher education, their initial feelings prior to pursuing postsecondary education, and background checks that pose as barriers. Based upon these findings, we are able to understand why supportive networks, specialized resources, and academic assistance are needed for CSCRs.