Current Campus Context: Campus Voting Data, Federal Funding & Loan Caps

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:03:35 — 43.7MB)

Subscribe to #SAnow RSS | Subscribe to #SAnow Podcast

From scrutiny of student voting data and new SAVE Act proposals to proposed graduate loan caps, higher education may be breathing a slight sigh of relief as congressional appropriations rejected the administration’s deepest cuts. Yet this moment of funding stability comes alongside tighter regulation and expanding federal scrutiny. What happens when civic engagement feels politically charged and access to graduate education becomes more constrained? In conversation with Dr. Felecia Commodore and Dr. Crystal Garcia, we explore what these developments signal about institutional autonomy, belonging, and the posture higher education is adopting in 2026.

Continue reading →

Here’s the Story: “Reflecting on the Pictures on the Wall”

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:24 — 26.4MB)

Subscribe to #SAnow RSS | Subscribe to #SAnow Podcast

In this episode, a retired housing director reflects on a career spent shaping residential communities—and the people who led them. She speaks candidly about encouraging resident assistants to stay in the field, even as the role has grown more complex, more visible, and more demanding than when she first started. Rather than offering nostalgia, she offers perspective. She acknowledges the challenges today’s professionals face while affirming that the work still matters—and that the field still needs people willing to lead with empathy and steadiness.

Continue reading →

Cultivating Equitable & Inclusive Conversations in Higher Education

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:24 — 38.7MB)

Subscribe to #SAnow RSS | Subscribe to #SAnow Podcast

Contributors to the book, Cultivating Equitable and Inclusive Conversations in Higher Education, discuss why inclusion is central to the success of students, institutions, higher education, and society, and how we can do so well at all levels, from the organizational to the individual. They focus on contribution, conversation, holistic perspectives, thriving, sacredness, and habits of mind as we move forward.

Continue reading →

Here’s the Story: “Belonging”

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:48 — 25.3MB)

Subscribe to #SAnow RSS | Subscribe to #SAnow Podcast

This episode features a vice president for student affairs who came of age under legal segregation and invites us into a reflective journey shaped by classrooms divided by law, doors opened—or closed—by race, and a quiet resilience that learned how to endure, adapt, and lead. She carries those early lessons forward into the present moment, where the vocabulary has shifted and the statutes look different, but the terrain is still familiar. The names have changed. The debates sound new. Yet the enduring questions remain: who belongs?

Continue reading →

The Hottest Seat on Campus: A Roadmap for Mastering Leadership in College Admissions

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:50 — 36.3MB)

Subscribe to #SAnow RSS | Subscribe to #SAnow Podcast

Dr. Angel Pérez’s The Hottest Seat on Campus is both a leadership manual and a call to action for higher education professionals navigating the volatile worlds of admissions and enrollment. In this conversation, we discuss the challenges and pressure as well as the rewards and joys of this role. He focuses on leadership capacities in politics, crisis, storytelling, and self-management, applicable to admissions leadership and beyond.

Continue reading →

Healing from the Wounds of Racism

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:50 — 37.0MB)

Subscribe to #SAnow RSS | Subscribe to #SAnow Podcast

Dr. Stacey Pearson-Wharton discusses not only the harms of racism but also the ways those who experience racism can heal from the interpersonal, organizational, and systemic experiences. Dr. Stacey offers suggestions for finding stability and safety, soothing, mourning the loss, cultivating counternarratives, and finding power and control toward thriving.

Continue reading →