Dr. Dafina-Lazarus Stewart, chair on the Council of Ethnic Participation (CEP) for the Association of the Study of Higher Education, describes the inspiration for the JCTP Special Issue and highlights the critical submissions published in the Special Issue that were first presented the CEP Pre-Conference forum in St. Louis, MO in November 2013.

In this paper we grapple with the question of how healthy community and university partnerships can be formed in order to support migrant students’ access to higher education. Employing autoethnographic and narrative research, and drawing from our work within the context of the migrant family conference at California State University, Fullerton from 2011 to 2013, we outline a conceptual model for building healthy partnerships. The first section of this paper offers a general overview of the literature on community-university engagement and collaboration as well as provides background information about the migrant farmworker community. The next section puts forward a new conceptualization of community-university partnerships encompassing the dimensions of trust, validation, reciprocity, and interdependence. These dimensions are framed within the notion of respeto. Finally, the third section of this paper discusses challenges that surface in creating new collaborations as well as addresses practical implications in response to obstacles faced by migrant families. Ultimately, the problems, questions, and proposed frameworks are designed to open a dialogue on the language and lenses we use to characterize the quality of partnerships we seed with historically underserved communities.

In this autoethnographic study, the authors use Critical Race Theory to examine their racialized experiences teaching a course on Critical Race Theory. Data were derived from multiple sources, including reflective interviews, journals, and course evaluations. The three authors present narratives and reflections of salient classroom experiences that relate to their roles within the classroom as facilitators, teachers, and race scholars.

In order to explore the social realities and centrality of race for African American students at a predominantly white institution, this inquiry applied case study methodology to the multidimensional model of racial identity (MMRI). Rather than following quantitative methodology which operationalizes racial identity through surveys, the study utilized in-depth interviews to capture students' racial realities. Directly utilizing survey items from the multidimensional inventory of black identity (MIBI) in the interview protocol, this methodology allowed participants to be reflective of the influence of the institutional environment. Findings revealed insight regarding how African American students exhibit their understandings of race through involvement in student organizations. Challenges to overcoming stereotypes and barriers to black group connectivity gave evidence to the need for a heterogeneous approach to the involvement and identity development of African American students.

This paper critically analyzes the racial positioning of Black immigrant collegians and faculty within race-based policies, practices, and discourse in U.S. higher education; illustrates how traditional constructs of race are complicated by globalization, migration, and the growing population of Black immigrants in the United States; and extends discourse on Black heterogeneity in higher education. I utilize the dual purposes of affirmative action – 1) redressing past wrongs and 2) diversity and inclusion – as frameworks to analyze the racial positioning of Black immigrants in higher education. Using this framework I compare two positions: 1) Black immigrants wrongly benefit from higher education initiatives created to redress past wrongs against Blacks who are the descendants of U.S. slaves (Graham, 2002); and 2) Campus racial diversity and multiculturalism are enhanced by the presence of Black immigrant collegians (Wilcher, 2011). Detailed analysis of the literature illustrate that the race of Black immigrants is often positioned the same as that of African Americans in higher education due to lack of disaggregation of Black student/faculty data by ethnicity, nativity, and generational status and lack of acknowledgement of Black within-group diversity. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of recognizing the complexities around definitions and perceptions of Blackness that exists on today’s college campuses.