Stephen John Quaye
What does it mean to center love in this context? What does it mean to center compassion and healing? What does it mean to question analogies that we use, right, so I’m listing off some of the veins right now that actually have implications for how we do our work as educators. And I just wanted to put that out there, because to me, just a reminder of like, it feels like as an association, were constantly ahead of the game a little bit. And that actually really excites me, and gives me hope for the future, gives me hope that we can sit in the messiness to keep moving through it, to make mistakes, to apologize to screw up again, to apologize to get called out and get called in, right to leave certain voices out. But to act with humility, even in the midst of all of that, and that actually gives me lots of hope and joy.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we have a very special episode, a recording of a live panel at ACPA in Chicago, discussing the 100 year history of the association and the implications on the present and the future. You’ll hear from four past presidents of ACPA Harold Cheatham was president in 1995-96 and was the first African or African American man to be a CPA president. Susan Komives, was president in 82/83 Denny Roberts in 85/86. And Stephen John Quaye was president in 2017 18. And this brilliant conversation they informed, share, reflect and make meaning of 100 years of ACPA history. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast an online learning community for 1000s of us work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week. On Wednesdays find details about this episode or browser archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by ACPA and independent 501 C three nonprofit association, which is sponsoring this special 13 episode series was student affairs now to celebrate their 100th anniversary, boldly transforming higher education. Please enjoy this special episode.

Heather
Hello, okay. Tthank you so much for welcoming me into your space to do the land acknowledgement. As I was announced, my name is Heather and I’m honored to be with you today. ACPA college student educators international acknowledges that the ACPA 24 convention is taking place on the traditional unseeded homelands of the Council of three fires, the Ojibwe, the Ottawa, and Potawatomi nations, as well as the Illinois Confederacy, the Peoria Kaskaskia, and many other tribes such as Yamuna, Ho Chunk, Menominee, SAC and false. They also call this area home. This region has long been a center for indigenous people to gather to trade and maintain kinship tribes. Today, one of the largest urban American Indian communities in the United States resides in Chicago. Members of this community continue to contribute to the life and to the city and to celebrate their heritage, practice traditions and care for the land and waterways. We as an association acknowledge that we are an occupied land that was forcibly taken. And we affirm that while we cannot change history, we can work for justice. Beyond acknowledging the land, and in recognition of modern and historical slaughter, settler colonialism included, including that perpetuated by North American institutions of higher education ACPA actively commits to supporting higher education, and decolonizing their practice and scholarship throughout our mission values, and the strategic and strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization.

Keith Edwards
Thank you. Thank you Heather. Hi, there. My name is Keith Edwards, I’ll be hosting this illustrious panel. I want to say as we embark here on thinking about the 100 year history of ACPA, we’re going to also try and get some of the current and maybe even some of the future, all in 60 minutes or less. It’s I think, important to acknowledge beyond the land acknowledgement, the history of native and indigenous peoples and their issues and ACPA. And as we you hear are speak to some of that history. But history isn’t always great. There have been some misses, there has been some erasers, there has been some harm done. There has also been some progress and some steps forward. And although that progress is far from complete, we want to sort of honor the last part of that acknowledgement about, although we can’t change the history, and some of us have been a part of it, we can take responsibility for how we move forward. And I want to invite all of you particularly those of you who will be leading the association of the future responsibility into that responsibility.

Keith Edwards
Thank you, Brian. So that history is complicated, and we’re gonna, I think we’ll hear us speak a bit to that, and what we get to do today so my name is Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his I’m a speaker, author and coach. I also host Student Affairs NOW and this will become a version of that down the road. And I get the honor of sort of hosting, orchestrating and managing time up here this afternoon with these wonderful folks before we get too far into the questions. I would invite you to a brief introduction, Stephen. Maybe we can start with you. And we’ll see if that microphone works.

Stephen John Quaye
Good afternoon, everyone. Stephen John Quaye, I am currently at The Ohio State University. And I served as past president, or actually President sorry, of ACPA from 2017 to 2018. So it’s good to be with all of you this afternoon.

Harold Cheatham
Good afternoon. I’m Harold Cheatham, retired academic dean, Clemson University 1995 96, president of ACPA.

Susan Komives
I’m Susan Komives. She her pronouns. I retired in 2012, from the University of Maryland, and was president of ACPA in 1982 83.

Denny Roberts
Good afternoon, Denny Roberts, he him his and I was president in 1985 86. And I like to call myself semi retired because I can’t deal with retired yet.

Keith Edwards
Well, we’re glad you’re semi retired in here with us today and some of the other things you’ve contributed. We’ve had conversations amongst ourselves. And I’ve learned a lot. And I’m really grateful for that. And, Denny, I want to begin with you, because you’ve really helped me understand why looking at our history is so important. So could you start us off by speaking into that?

Denny Roberts
Thank you, Keith. And thank you for inviting me and this entire panel today. And you know, you’re in trouble when the moderator says this is an illustrious panel. And so notorious, well, notorious works, too. But thank you very much for the compliment of that. And I guess that also causes me to look out on the audience. For those of you that I can see in these bright lights. All of you practically could be on the stage. Giving this history and that I am here is just sheer chance. And the only reason that I think I am here is because I was slightly involved with the generativity project as it began back in the 1980s. So I’m glad to be here. Delighted. You know, and history is critical. And I was a terrible graduate student. I read all of the historical documents when I was in grad school in the 70s. And I didn’t soak in. And that’s really one of the reasons why I got so enthused about generativity, because generativity and understanding our history gives honor to the people that came before us. It adds to the intellectual and personal history that all of us share. And by being generative, and understanding our history and adding to it, then we make it better. Student Affairs has always been imperfect. And it always will be. And we were incremental, we build on each other. And as you will hear, as we go on into our discussion today. The fact of it is we were all trying to do something better. And you are all trying to do something better. And that’s the beauty of this incremental generative field. And my esteemed colleague to the right, Susan was at dinner in 1982. And that’s where this idea came from. And I had the distinct honor of being one of her doctoral students in the 70s. And, you know, Lee was this just incredibly generative person to anybody who ever saw on a podium, knew they were going to be blown away, they were going to cry, they were going to laugh, and they would leave the room with some thoughts to consider as they went out. That’s what we hope happens with generativity. That’s what we hope happens. So a couple of things about generativity to is that generativity comes in actually at least two forms. One is in the personal part of it. So mentoring and protegees. And then it comes in the intellectual history. And in our field of student affairs. It is crazy. And I know Paul Brown is in the audience. But I got fascinated with Paul browns, research on six degrees of separation from Esther Lloyd Jones, and I thought his research was absolutely hilarious. And so I dug into it and I started looking at all of the ACPA presidents. Where did they come from? who mentored them? How did they get on the the roll, you know, to be a part of ACPA and its history? Well, guess what, six degrees of separation from Esther Lloyd Jones, it isn’t six degrees. It’s more like three or four. And in fact, on this stage, we have two in the middle. We have Susan Komives, who was mentored by Mel Hardy, who was mentored by Esther Lloyd Jones. And we also have Harold Cheatham, who was mentored by Anne Pruitt, who was mentored by Esther Lloyd Jones. Okay. And it goes on and on. There are others of you out there right now who know that you’re second third or fourth generation, Esther Lloyd Jones. And isn’t that amazing to be a part of a profession where you can line up your lineage, right back to the people that started it, and gave us these wonderful ideas, and made this all possible for us. So another part of this whole thing for me is, how do we come to improve our practice? How do we push theory? How do we push research, and we do it by fighting with each other? Sometimes we agree, but sometimes we disagree. And when sometimes we disagree vehemently. And a story that I just can’t resist telling you is that as a graduate student in the 1970s, I was in Colorado State University. I came there as a first generation college student, having no idea what was going on, but getting wrapped up in Student Activities. Well, as things emerged, I got acquainted with this guy by the name of burns Crookston, who was one of Esther Lloyd Jones favorite students, just by the way. And I hung out my RA course was with Ursula Dilworth. And Jim Hurst was there to help me with the smoking cessation clinic that I went to, which was awesome. Thank you, Jim. I had all these student development people on one side, but guess what happened. I went to my first conference in 1973. And the Vice President for Student Affairs, and I will not mention his name, took me to a bar and said, Oh, don’t pay any attention to the any of the student development stuff. Really, it’s all about student services and administration. And if you don’t focus on Services Administration, you’re really going to lose out? Well, obviously, I did not pay attention to his advice. And instead, I took a student development role. And I studied with Lee, and the rest of its history, I made the right choice. That’s not to say that administration and services is not important. It is I understand that. But there you have it a graduate student experience, I was reading by Brown, I was reading, I was doing all of this reading about student development, and my vice president was telling me ignore it. That’s not what’s happening. So I just find that really amazing. And I find it amazing in the context of our advancing of the field, almost always comes from contestation. We contest each other, we propose new ideas. And guess what, we still love each other. We know that. So that’s my story about why history is important. And the history that we have as both about the people, and it’s about the ideas and how they evolve together.

Keith Edwards
Thank you. I love this contested. Stephen, I wonder if you could pick up on this notion of contested issues contested histories and the progress.

Stephen John Quaye
Yeah, thank you, Keith. And thank you, Denny, for setting us up really nicely this afternoon. So I do actually want to pick up with where Denny left off around this notion of like the contestation of these pieces. And so one of the things that I think has existed throughout ACPAs history, and I’m still so deeply like, I’m still emotional about the opening session last night, just being on stage with all of those past presidents. I didn’t expect to be as emotional as I was, in the moment. But one of the things that stood out to me as as as, as I was reflecting last night, and even in preparing for this session is the ways in which controversy, disagreement, tension. contestation has always been inter woven throughout ACPs history, right. So the reason that ACP started was because women were not reflected. Right. And so I think that’s an important to remember that our founding is tied to controversy. Right. And that has been interwoven throughout all of our history. And I’ll talk more about the strategic imperative later on today. But I just want to mention one, one point here that is tied to that. Our mission around ACPs around centering student learning, and when we tried to center and think about devoting focus attention to racial justice, again, that was not met without any sort of pushback or controversy. And so just a quick story about our the the history of the imperative. When we originally launched the imperative, it was called the strategic imperative for racial justice. And I think that’s important to name and for folks to remember that we didn’t have that Andy colonization piece initially. And that, again came through pushback through controversy through disagreement. And so I was president at the time, and we got a lot of feedback from our native and indigenous members that they didn’t see themselves reflected in just racial justice, right, because of the ways in which their identities are tied to the history around colonization, the history around like our, our politics in our in our society, right. So we, we went through some reflection to actually add that piece on because of pushback. Right. And I will say personally like that, that impacted me in the sense that, like, I’m somebody who studies racial justice thinks about race and racism a lot. And to see that I had sort of overlooked a specific group in our in our association. That was hard to hear. And yet, I knew that that was those were voices that we had to pay attention to, if we wanted to keep moving forward, just like we had to pay attention to women’s voices, if we wanted the association to be what it is today. So to me, I think that’s an important thread around how, throughout all of our history, it’s not that the controversy that’s not the part that’s that’s important here that to me, that takeaway point is this question, what do we fundamentally do as people and as an association, when we are met with controversy, when we are met with pushback, it’s how we respond, that matters. And I think throughout ACPAs history, we have tried to respond in ways that matter, even when it’s messy, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s frustrating, even when it’s hard, even when you want to give up, right, we keep going because that matters. And to me, that’s the takeaway point is what do you do when you receive that pushback? So I just appreciate Denny raising that because it allows us to really understand I think, how that controversy that contestation, again, has been interwoven throughout our association. And I think that’s one of the beauties of ACPAs history,

Keith Edwards
A powerful connection from the history to the more near present. I love that. And I’m four degrees separated from Jones, because Susan is one of my mentors. And so she’s, I guess, two degrees, we’ll have to figure out the degrees later. But this is a full circle moment, because I was in Susan’s doctoral class as a first year doctoral student. And we had read all of those documents, the and the Student Personnel point of view, we went to ACPA, we went to NASA, we did all those things. I had write papers, and I had to do presentations on it. So Susan, you have 10 minutes and

Susan Komives
knowing he’s flipped the tables. It’s a delight.

Keith Edwards
You have 10 minutes to cover the focus of 100 year history of the association. I’d like you to track two themes, professional development, and the focus on students.

Susan Komives
Yeah, it’s a lot of material to cover it. It seems like it should be I remember that assignment, too. And I loved it, because I asked those students to look at those diet. And here I’m ad libbing, and I have 10 minutes. Anyway, I asked students to look at those documents, how did they reflect their time? How were they visionary for their time? What did they omit or didn’t see? So we’re looking at, we’re trying to look at him with a critical eye too, which is what we our history shows Yes.

Keith Edwards
And I still see those documents and think of you first and then go into them.

Susan Komives
Okay? I do, they did ask me to look, I’m particularly focused on the second half of the 20th century, a lot of the RE formation of student affairs in the work that we do now happened in that era. And I lived during that era with the ACP leadership role. And so it’s very special and important to me to Denny mentioned, Jones is such a primal force for all of us. It’s she’s in our DNA somewhere. And largely, as we all know, because are many of us know, because of the Student Personnel point of view in 1937, that she and others developed to try to capture what this role was for Student Affairs. And that overarching philosophy is a point of view that we bring. So what came forward in that is still with us, and it’s undergirds just about everything ACPA has been shaped by and chosen to do that each student’s unique that we believe in their whole development, developing their capacity to the fullest, and that the whole environments responsible for that learning. And those themes from all that time ago still drive today’s decisions, even if we’re not as conscious that that might have been there or be with us. So I do want to comment on both of those themes that Keith mentioned, particularly in light of the second half of that century. Let me start with professional development. And I’m going to do talk at one and a half speed here. But I want to talk about professional development and professionalism that we tried to contribute to, and there are a number of dimensions of that that I see pa has evolved through. First of all, we’ve always been a collegial Association. Everyone could vote, quote, regardless of title. That’s what that’s in those original documents. And we’ve always sought ways to make that inclusion vibrant. How can we get more inclusive, so there’s more involvement. And every member feels like this is their association. We had regions from early on in the beginning, but in 1955, we added state divisions and then international divisions. In 1961, my mentor Mel Hardy was President Elect, and she and Gordon cloth developed the commission structure. And from then on commission started to be added around largely functional areas, so we could find communities of practice in the association. Just a year later, the standing committees were formed. And the first entity type standing committee was on race later changed to Multicultural Affairs, but it was on race, followed by one on women. So our early emphasis in establishing these entity groups made a place for people as members to talk about their identities, but also the our students who have those identities and what they needed our awareness and attention to in their lived experiences. 10 years later, though, I want to say those, those commissions and standing committees had self perpetuating directorate bodies, there might be 15 people in a Directorate for each one, and they picked their replacements, some in a more democratic way than others, but they picked them 10 years later, we opened up all the Commission’s and all the standing committees to all members, you could join the Commission on residents education, and then they elected their own director of body and people could be involved in the work of that commission. And it’s important to know, that was done as to be a more inclusive association for member involvement. And as Steven has said, Well, it’s important that didn’t see that members have driven the development of how this associations evolved. Standing committees like the LGBT awareness committee came because member said we need attention ourselves and find each other and support the needs that we have as well as what our students need on campus. But that has come out of the membership through the structures that we had in place to address that. We’ve done elaborate reorganizations of the association, always to try to find better ways for everybody to want to be at the table. It’s a big table in a CPA, and we’re always trying to streamline but still give voice to that, that always doesn’t work. And so a few years later, we’ll reorganize again. But we’re looking for ways to have voices, be inclusive, and be an association that could model you can do that, how can you do that, and then it’s worth hard work. So our history is dynamic with multiple ways to involve members. Another dimension of our professional development and professionalism is we’ve always been devoted to scholarship, we’ve been known as a scholarly Association. And the culture of scholarship has been important in ACPA. The as as Heather said, last night, the World War two’s personnel became the Journal of college student personnel in 1959. And a year after that, the association started the student personnel monograph series, which existed through 17 or 18, monographs over a number of years. And then various media boards were established. And they CPAs published in its history, over 50 books and monographs to advance the field often with topics that no publisher would take, because they would have to smaller market but it needed to be out there in the literature. And we would give voice to what the needs were for whatever that topic was, and get that out there. That generativity project in 1982, that Denny’s alluded to that we’re very fond of, there’s a way to keep generatively the voices of elders and people who have contributed to our history are still with us. We established the Euros president the theory and research board, giving grants so we could advance these knowledge bases, and then also establish senior scholars that years later established the Emerging Scholars as we know them in the association. Another dimension in his professional development is expanding the professionalism of members. And one of the very, very important ways that we shouldn’t lose track of read it, again, is the ACPA ethics statement. First passed in 1981. A professional field has standards for itself and its members. And you and I are all obligated to those standards. And that’s important that that pass along in our culture even now. We certainly have had annual conventions Institute’s addressing the needs of from new professionals to senior student affairs officers, and I remember very fondly in 1988, President Marvin Stiles Hughes started a series that we call with others started a series called roadshows on diversity. And we would take things out to members in their state divisions and out to campuses that couldn’t come to conventions. And how would we get the word out there with good teaching and good scholarship bringing out to the people

Susan Komives
We always have had Institute’s then building on that including things like assessment disability, sustainability, or Presidential curriculum, social injustice, social justice. It’s also been important to us as a key dimension that we partnered and collaborated with lots of associations. We have thought of ourselves as an umbrella associations in many ways. When our our he’s Tom rights is here. And then the current president and chair of commission, one at the same time, where we’re bringing together professionals to talk across platforms. And you could get a lot out of ACP because of that, based on our counseling roots in 1952. We joined with five other four other associations, counseling focused like we were, and formed the American personnel and guidance Association. We were Division One of the American guidance Association, and always struggled with that relationship. Finally, disaffiliated 40 years later in 1992. But and so we became an independent association 40 years after having been formed the one that was our umbrella group. Well, so in 1979, with other associations formed the Council for the Advancement of Standards in post secondary education, and ACPA. early presidents of Ted Miller and Phyllis Mabel were key people that served 20 years as the first two presidents of Cass, followed by ACPA President Don creamer. So we wanted to advance standards in the whole field and advance them through cas. And throughout our history, we’ve done lots of collaborative projects and papers, for example, with NASPA with a professional competencies model that’s still out there and being revised even as we talk today. You can breathe now. Yeah. Okay, I can breathe now. Second thing, and I’ll move to very quickly is to think about our students throughout this their development, their learning, their identities have always been central to us. You didn’t always hear students talked about in a lot of higher ed conferences. But at ACPA students were practically on every program title and needed to be we were about students. Up through the 60s, the view of students was very traditional and overly traditional. You know, they were white residential students that lived on campus. And most of our programs were in many, most of our campuses were aligned to that way not true at all. But boy, when I came into the field, and this was an exciting time, I’m a college graduate from Florida State in 1968. And the 60s were an exciting activist, certainly kind of period with civil rights act in the mid 60s We had the Higher Education Act Title Nine came along early 70s, the voting age got lowered to 18. We had to switch to contracts in housing and not in loco parentis kinds of models, the growth of community colleges, tribal colleges, focus on disabilities with section 504. Anyway, all this prompted a sea change what was student affairs gonna look like when our students were changing so dramatically, and we needed to respond to ways of organizing to meet those very diverse needs. We had Piaget and Erickson out there pretty traditional models from psychology. But in 1969, my first year at the University of Tennessee in Residence Life, this guy came out with a book that had vectors in it. And vectors became something we glommed on to as a framework for organizing our work, as well as a model for student development followed very quickly by Lee and others introduction of Perry’s work on cognitive and intellectual development. And these bodies of knowledge meant we were doing theoretically based practices that would, over time, become evidence based practices. But it certainly supported the movement towards student development theory. Therefore, in that era, in the early 70s ACP addressed this and says what is the future of Student Affairs work, and presidents at that time Harold grant and Ted Miller helped gave give leadership to the tomorrow’s higher education project called THG. Not to mean the only one but let’s look at tomorrow’s higher education. Bob’s monograph on return to the academy was a wonderful way to say we should have a curriculum across the university faculty and administrators are responsible for students learning and development. And then the future student affairs book that Ted Miller and Judy prince did, that actually introduced a new model for student development and the concept of student development as a framing device. And they described it as we can master increasingly complex developmental tasks achieve self direction, and become interdependent, not independent, but interdependent. So a good definition. Now ACPA was all in in 1988, we changed the journal name to journal of college student development. And it was not without controversy in 1994 Pablo Lim and did a very provocative little reform in student affairs book saying student development was an ill conceived notion means too many things to too many different people. And the journal with Kearney strange and other people’s wonderful articles fired back and said, This is why it’s good. And here’s the propositions that we operate from. So we were happy to defend that model and what it meant in our field. The 80s was an era of reform ports in the 1980s, there was a reform report every six weeks that came out of some association, some legitimate group not even mentioned Blum and all those terrible people that wrote their own books that blasted higher education. But there was a reform report that was they were pretty good that always said, we need to return to teaching. And they always looked at the experience of minoritized students like black men in mathematics, you know, that would be topics that needed some kind of attention. By the 90s, we were actually coming forward with new models that tried to address those reports, and from teaching to learning, and have to give a lot of credit to President Charles Schroeder along with our friend George Kuh, and others, who then develop the student learning imperative that ACPA gave leadership to in the field that said, Indeed, academic learning and student development are inextricably intertwined. You can’t separate learning and development, they are part of the same thing. And it’s important that we advance them as partners in the students brain and heart in how they learn and how they develop. Lots of collaborative projects then took on this same theme, we partnered with NASPA on principles of good practice, and good practices included active learning, building supportive and inclusive communities. We partnered with NASPA again, and AAAG on powerful partnerships, a shared responsibility of learning that hit the whole environment, kind of piece of that a lot. And then a whole group of his past presidents with NASA, Nancy Evans, and me and Susan Salvador and some other colleagues, we’re on learning reconsidered, which got us to relook at all of that learning. And there’s some good work in that on learning outcomes, and where those outcomes can be developed across the environment, and that we need to be assessing those outcomes. So learning reconsidered, to said, so how do we apply this in practice, and Jeanne Steph has leadership with four other associations got us to look at the assessment of those outcomes. So back to the Student Personnel point of view, we have, we’ve we’ve developed, we’ve evolved ourselves a lot. We have learned a lot about our students, we believe every student’s unique but we’ve also know that individual identities aren’t sufficient. We have we have moved ourselves into looking at commitments to intersectionality, to equality to social justice, and leading to the current strategic imperative that we face and knew we had a lot more to do going into the 21st century. So that’s like 50 years of

Keith Edwards
you all can take a breath to have you ever seen The Matrix, when they just plug that thing in the back of your head? That’s 100 years of history of ACPA. From Susan Komives. Well done, Harold.

Harold Cheatham
Thank you, Susan.

Keith Edwards
Harold, we would like you to speak and if you can hold the microphone close. That’d be great. We would like you to speak having heard all of that history. And an important bridge in that history. What bridges Do you see emerging from that?

Harold Cheatham
By task, as I understood it was to talk about the 60s to now. And I want to start that by talking about how I became a member and ultimately the president of the association, never a goal of mine. As a practicing professional without a doctorate, I became a graduate assistant of an Pruitt, who was the secretary of ACPA. And I knew then that there were a couple of professional organizations, but I was already selected as the guy who carried a wall and sack, reel to reel tape recorder to the Executive Council or committees, meetings and transcribe the minutes and notes for the secretary of the association. Joe joined in 1970. And somewhere around 1990s, I found myself being petitioned to accept nomination to President. And then I found myself as president and I looked around to colleagues, many of whom Susan has mentioned and said, What do I do as president and I shall never forget, Don Kramer said, steer. The rest of us will tell you when you’re off track. And so into that job description, I pitched myself. We had recently finished one of the several as I like to turn them court ships with our fellow organizations. And it always has interested me not amazed but interested me how useful those have become with us to define our If and to refine who we are and what we are doing, as I recall, early in my time in the association, we had a courtship with women Dean’s NADAC. And after lots of scrambled and reports then subcommittee reports. As I recall, NADAC said, it was an interesting courtship interesting date time, but it was not in the best interest of NADAC to affiliate with another association. So out of that, we picked up the pieces and went on to what we were doing. Susan has mentioned the the focus on scholarship. And to me, that is an important point because I’ve, I’ve always experienced the tension, the creative tension, and that focus, and that’s how we got to have about campus. About the time that I was coming into the presidency, there was a lot of tension in the association that we had gotten, in fact, a little too scholarly, and that the needs of practitioners were not being observed and focused on as as they ought to be. And out of that emerge the publication of the about campus which was aimed at ensuring that we included and focused on the needs of the practitioner, wing or membership. What what is valuable to me as a member of the association is that there has always been this focus on fellowship, mutual support into inter dependence and collaboration and respect for emerging opinions. And the ability in this association for me, for me, for people to be called up short on missteps, or out of step, things as they have done and to be lovingly, counseled. Love lovingly counseled and embraced and brought into line, redefining ourselves each time as, as we have gotten out of those things became the strong association that that we experienced today. The disaffiliation, from APGA in the early 90s was pretty much culminated in the establishment of the first national office in DC, the petition that we had for admission to acceptance into the national higher ed Secretariat, and the hiring of the first executive director. I enjoyed a presidency that I was never alone. In fact, I personally don’t consider myself to been vice president of ACPA. Because we’ve functioned very much as a pattern, I see Barbara Anderson, shaking her head, she immediately preceded me as President and the First strategic plan of was born on Barbara’s kitchen table, and her Atlanta home, where we gathered a number of times, as we put that together, each one bringing pieces to the to the discussion. Finally, I wanted to focus on the future. And in my presidential address in 1996. Making our way was the objective. And I finished that piece by proclaiming that there was a bright green sign that marked ACPAs horizon. And here we are, some 30 years later, and I still see the same bright green sign marking our horizon. Thank you.

Keith Edwards
Thank you, Harold. Susan, I wonder you you shared a lot of information and Harold sort of bringing some themes and story I wonder if what he’s sharing conjures anything up for you.

Susan Komives
I think there must be more stories. Oh. I think the establishing of a separate event we were around them but I wasn’t involved in the leadership then but a stab bushing our own separate association with its own identity meant we had to go back and do a whole lot of things from scratch that were done for us by APGA prior to that. And I felt like we were adolescents again, somehow, as an organization was struggling with, with identity and what were we going to be and the foundation started and membership issues, what were some of those struggles in that disaffiliation identity building phase of the association?

Harold Cheatham
I actually don’t share that perspective.

Keith Edwards
Contest contested perfect spot.

Harold Cheatham
Actually, I thought that having gone through the series of, of attempts to marry ourselves with other associations helped us to identify what truly were our specific objectives that needed burnishing. I didn’t feel like an adolescent, I felt that we had all the pieces that we needed to and the leadership and that’s why I think that maybe I take too much credit, put too much emphasis on there. But I think that the collaboration that we had as past presidents and current presidents, and no king of the hill, or queen of the hill, that I just felt a great spirit of collaboration that allowed us to identify what our principles and practices were that needed burnishing.

Susan Komives
That’s a good perspective. I, I think one thing that we we should give voice to and not just assume happens in every association is the President Elect, the President and the past president, those teams of people have been remarkably collaborative about advancing an agenda they agree on. And it usually isn’t one person’s idea or one person’s agenda. There are people with visions that the others readily adopt. And so there might be an initiator of a vision. Charles did a lot of that with things like the learning imperative, but but we’ve had remarkably compatible transitions among those threesomes in the senior leadership over the whole Association.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful, Stephen, you you mark. Most recently, we’re in the past president role. And I wonder what you’re hearing about some of this further distant history reminds you of your presidency and leading with the strategic imperative. And some of the themes the theme that I’m hearing is this contested. And tensions, a colleague reminds me that what keeps most bridges up is actually the tension. But the tension is generative to use Denny’s term, I wondering what what this is all evoking for you.

Stephen John Quaye
So yeah, thanks for the question, Keith. So there’s sort of three broader themes that are really staying with me in this moment. So I’ll just touch briefly on each of them. So one is what we’ve been talking about today is, again, the importance of history. Secondly, is the importance of representation. And then thirdly, is change or like, what change looks like. And so let me just talk about each of these again, briefly. So history. So I think with this strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization, so Donna Lee was president in 2016. And so this came about through retreat that we were having as a governing board. You know, much like many governing boards before us, we were taking time to really reflect on the mission, vision and values of the association. And to what extent are we living out these values? How relevant are these values into today? Right? How do we, how do we put these values into practice? Out of these conversations, we we just kept sharing stories of colleagues on our campuses, who were experiencing a lot of pain, trauma, violence, from continued systemic racism, that was happening. And these were stories upon stories that colleagues were sharing. Over and over at this at this meeting. And so out of these conversations, we decided, you know, we’re in association that says, we are about student learning and moving towards that. How can we not link student learning with a focus on addressing racism, right? The two we saw as intimately linked, we can’t focus on student learning if we aren’t fundamentally also addressing the ways in which racism is impacting student learning, right? How are you supposed to learn as a student? If you are afraid to live in your body, for example, as a black person, right, your learning is fundamentally impacted because of the identities in which you live, we in which you live in. So out of that these conversations is that’s where our focus to again devote some focus attention to racial justice. And ask ourselves what would student what would a student learning look like? If we also pair that student learning lens alongside a focus on racial justice? I mentioned how the decolonization piece came about earlier. So again, I want folks to to remember that history ism is important to understand how this imperative came to be today, and again, like I said, it was not met with it was not met with without controversy, right? There was significant pushback, does this mean that we are moving away from our mission as an association, right? How, how, as a white person, do I fit into this? Like, what does that mean for my work on a day to day basis? What does this look like in practice? I’m not resistant towards this, but I’m, I’m afraid I don’t really have the tools to, to know what this means, right? There was a lot of angst around around this. I mean, I mean, naturally, right, the all these movements towards justice doesn’t come with some uncertainty, some hesitancy. And so that’s what motivated me to bring some colleagues together to craft a bold vision forward, which provided some guideposts for how we might live this out in practice. So again, the first piece here is around history. Secondly, I mentioned the importance of representation. It’s no coincidence. Donna Lee, myself, Jamie Washington, we were the three presidents at the time I was vice I was President 2017 18. Donnelly was past president and then Jamie Washington was was a vice president. It’s no coincidence that three presidents who identify as black, right, were the ones who pushed the association towards this imperative, right? Again, representation matters, my time as ACPA president was enriching, because of my relationship with both Donna and Jamie, having folks who looked like me. And those leadership roles was instrumental, it was instrumental for our membership as well. Right? We often had folks, black folks, specifically, who said, Seeing you makes me believe that I am part of ACPA, that if this is something that I aspire to do, it’s something that I can do as well. So the importance of representation matters, right? In these leadership roles. So that’s number two. And then again, I’ll end with just the importance of change. So what does change look like? And I think this is what the imperative asks asks us to think about, I was really moved by the opening speaker last night, who demonstrated for us the ways in which story sharing the ways in which we can actually dismantle our institutions through a decolonization lens. And so often, when we think of issues of racial justice, of decolonization, these are massive, big, big issues, big concepts, how do we exist along land that was stolen and still move towards decolonization? Right? That’s a massive question. How do we can move towards racial justice, while they’re still pleased violence happening towards black and brown people? Right? So these are big questions. We’re not going to solve right racism in my lifetime. But what I often tell folks to think about are some key questions. And the primary one here is, what can you do within your sphere of influence, to make a difference. So that means if you are a faculty member, you have students who you teach on a weekly basis, that is your sphere of influence. If you’re a VPSA, Vice President for Student Affairs on campus, you have staff who are relying upon you to advocate for them, to show up for them, to support them, right, that is your sphere of influence. So if all of us focused on those spheres, we can make that change. And to me, that gives me some agency in the midst of feeling like these issues are so big, that it’s hard to figure out how to even make any sort of sustainable change. So to me, I think that’s important. And I think that, again, is what ACPA I think has reminded me time and time again, that we can shift attention, we can strategize, we can focus on certain issues, all towards again, the idea of what can I do within my circles or my spheres of influence? To make it a little bit better than it was yesterday?

Keith Edwards
Thank you, Stephen. And, Denny, I know you’ve been engaged with a strategic imperative and with Stephen on this, and what do you want to share here before we move to concluding thoughts?

Denny Roberts
Oh, what’s fascinating is that I was working abroad. I was in Qatar at the time that the racial justice imperative was emerging and I believe I I attended a session that you and others facilitated when it was still just racial justice. And I was sitting there as an internationalist thinking, like, that’s not really working for me, because racism looks very, very different in the context of another culture, specifically in the Middle East. And so I left the meeting kind of feeling left out of the picture. And, to your credit, Stephen, later on, you invited people to be in conversation with you about it. And so I suspended my, my hesitation, said, I’ll try this again. Well, guess what, at that point, decolonization was starting back into the picture. And guess what I hugely connected with at that point, because part of the problem in international higher education is the fact that we are in a NEO colonial era. Now, as US education’s go abroad. And it’s dangerous. It’s disrespectful. And we need to take this on. And we need to start asking questions. And so the amazing revelation was that this works for me as an internationalist, and, you know, I think, again, to ACPAs credit, and if you’ve not viewed it yet, there’s a very cool video that came out just last week, where there are several of us talking about history and so forth. So everything that Susan didn’t get to say today is in that video, it’s an hour and 50 minutes long. And but the video is just awesome. And Dre Dominga basically said, well, Denny, I’m not sure I buy this internationalization thing, because I don’t think that ACPA has any business going there. She said, We need to be more humble. She used that specific word. That is a word I love. I love humility. I love curiosity. I love people who are eager listeners. And decolonization says to me, we are deep learners, deep listeners, and people who want to understand the world from a different perspective. That is awesome. And kudos to ACPA, for staying humble on that, and giving us an opportunity. And I think actually, there’s some very cool opportunities in the future here to begin to talk about that as a part of ACPA is kind of plank to internationalization is really cool.

Keith Edwards
Denny, I know that affected you professionally, and you’re thinking about the profession. Could you speak to how it affected you personally?

Denny Roberts
Well, I mean, why did you ask? You know, I think that our work is about humility, and listening and care. And so when that’s in your face, then it is kind of like a revelatory moment. So yeah, I better not say anything more than Stephen. Go.

Stephen John Quaye
Yeah. So just building from from, from there, Denny, the the other thing that I think is also not lost on me in this session, and today is so that strategic imperative is seven, eight years old at this point, almost 10 years, which is hard to believe, actually. 2017 is when we sort of fleshed out this strategic imperative. How prescient were we as an association, right? When we think of our current context, and anti DEI, right, this is happening on our campuses, University of Florida, right? Firing, it’s dia professionals, right? This is, this is something seven years ago, that we didn’t even know what what this was going to be like seven years later. And how prescient now was the imperative seven years ago, and giving us language and and something to coalesce around, in pushing back against these anti CRT anti dei bills that are happening that are threatening many of us in this room, right in very real material ways. And that to me, again, is a reminder about what ACPA means to me why even through some of that frustration, the anger the sadness the the humility to that word that that you know, Denny brought up the the pushback the having to own my own stuff and sitting my own guilt and shame and still find my way through it and keep moving and keep talking and not give up and wallow in that right even through all of that The reason fundamentally that we did that is because the imperative is not just fancy words, right? It’s not just a bold vision for it. And we have these, you know, the the veins and the principles, and the sense that centering love like it’s actually tools to address fundamentally what’s happening on our campuses right now. When we one of the veins is when we embrace dialogue and suspend deficiency, like when we suspend efficiency and embrace dialogue, we actually spend time actively listening to, to people. We’re not just trying to, to react immediately. But we have to actually understand what’s happening, right, gauging dialogue. Right? What does it mean to center love in this context? What does it mean to center compassion and healing? What does it mean to question analogies that we use, right, so I’m listing off some of the veins right now that actually have implications for how we do our work as educators. And I just wanted to put that out there, because to me, just a reminder of like, it feels like as an association, were constantly ahead of the game a little bit. And that actually really excites me, and gives me hope for the future, gives me hope that we can sit in the messiness to keep moving through it, to make mistakes, to apologize to screw up again, to apologize to get called out and get called in, right to leave certain voices out. But to act with humility, even in the midst of all of that, and that actually gives me lots of hope and joy.

Denny Roberts
I come out again, and now that I’ve regained my composure? Esther would be so proud of us today. And Lee would be very proud of us today. That is the coolest part of this. And it really is the generative nature of our field, that we can struggle with these ideas, we can try to figure out how to make it better. And we compare contrast argue, do whatever we need to do to get through it. But I believe that our values, as Susan has very clearly indicated, are very much the same. We may re define it a bit, we may put more detail to it. But this is it’s a journey that we’re all on. And I know that there are people that are sitting there today that are dreaming up the next direction, you know, and dreaming up the next big questions that need to be addressed. But we’re in a, we’re in a very interesting place right now. And Steven, the attack that we are experiencing in terms of diversity and critical thinking is, is frightening. And we got to hold together got to be big with each other, you know, get each other’s back.

Keith Edwards
Thank you. I want to give Susan and Harold a chance to get a very quick voice in here. As you both have been thinking about this history of this panel. And we’ve spent more time in conversations about this panel than we’ve been on this panel. Anything new emerging for you, Susan, any new themes that you want to give voice to?

Susan Komives
Well, I’ll try to be brief, I will be brief. Although I have to start off by saying I live in Florida. And the day to day of that is heart wrenching, it makes me anxious. Tension all the time, quality professionals won’t come to work maybe in the state now because of what the lived experience would be. It makes me sick think of all of us if your state’s not experiencing that personally, don’t just gloss over and think and what doesn’t affect the field are all of us in this profession. And look for new allies on campus. Sociology, departments need allies, because as in the state of Florida, sociology can no longer be counted as a general education meet a general education requirement, because there’s too woke sociology is too woke for the state of Florida. So look for allies that also need to join with us as we do them in support of these values behind why we do what we do. The other is to remember some of our history and I will bring up women here. Remember the arrow being proudly certainly a feminist and having friends say, Well, I believe in this, this, this and this, but I’m not a feminist. While you certainly are. That’s what that sounded like to me. So I think what we got to look for new languaging we need to look for new framing or new approaches that languaging things becomes very important. The languaging we’re now using is distancing people from us that might even say they believe some of the same things, but they’re not going with that language. So how can the association help us re language some of these important objectives?

Keith Edwards
And Harold, it’s been about 20 years since you’ve been at ACPA convention. Is that right? Yeah. What? In your experience here this week, what strikes you is remaining the same and evergreen about this association, as you’ve experienced being here?

Harold Cheatham
That we’re doing everything all All at once. Actually, I personally and professionally, I’m comforted by the work that that I have seen these things that we’re struggling with on the national scene. We’ve been struggling with the Association. And we have evolved ways to make our way through the complexity. We actually have documents. And we’ve spoken to them that have emerged in 100 years of ACPA. And so the hustle and bustle that has gone on with the association with the meetings, I mean, have been comforting to me that fruition. This is what fruition feels like to me.

Keith Edwards
Beautiful. If you haven’t looked this up on the PDF, be sure to if you haven’t ordered a copy to flip through. It is beautiful. It is stunning. It includes a lot of what was covered here, and a lot more. I’m grateful for all of you for being here for the folks who have worked for decades on generativity in the history of the association, so we have it. I’m grateful for the folks who are telling these stories. I’m specifically grateful for the four of you, and how you have joined in community with each other, to agree to contest to disagree and tell the story of the association’s history and why it is important in the current moment. And for the future. Join me in thanking them, please.

Keith Edwards
Thanks to our sponsor of today’s episode ACPA. ACPA college student educators international celebrating its 100th anniversary is boldly transforming higher education by creating and sharing influential scholarship, shaping critically reflexive practice and advocating for equitable and inclusive learning environments. ACPA aspires to be higher education and student affairs most inclusive and community driven Association by leading our our profession in centering social justice, racial justice and decolonization as defining concepts of our time and the foreseeable future. Visit myacpa.org or connect with them on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to learn more about ACPA. A huge shout out to Nat Ambrosey our producer who did all the behind the scenes work to make this look and sound good. And thanks to ACPA for recording this conversation and sharing it with all of you. We love the support of these important conversations from our community. That’s you. You can help us reach more folks by subscribing to the podcast and YouTube and our weekly newsletter that announces each new episode, and more. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review to help even more folks benefit from these conversations. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks to ACPA and these fabulous guests it was a treat to host and moderate this conversation. I’m glad we were able to share it with all of you. To all of you watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thanks all.

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