“I always think about what it is that I can do with them (students) to help them see new career pathways, to see something greater beyond what we have right now. So even in the assignments that I give students, I’m not traditional in every sense that every assignment is not a paper. It’s often that they get to express themselves creatively.

Sometimes they’re doing critical hope mix tapes where they’re putting together songs, matching them against lessons they’re learning in the chorus room and kind of trying to figure out which one had a lasting impact on their thinking and their way of going forward in life. I would hope to see more opportunities to make that pathway more visible for students, so they can see it is also a part of the academic intellectual rigor that we are aspiring to make sure our students obtain while they’re in our programs.

We don’t want everything to be (research) paper driven that everything is not what we deem as formal in terms of their learning. I want to see them walk away from these courses with a different view because I want to inspire students. When we get in the field, we know how to do retention, we know how to do student success or advising, but in the same fashion that when we get doctorates, we’re told to produce new knowledge.

I want them to produce a new practice and not always feel like they have to think about stuff in the same way that we currently think about it today. If we think about where we are in this current moment with higher education, it does require a new way of thinking and a new way of approaching leadership, a new way of reaching our students, especially with restrictions on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).

How do we continue to treat and take care of our humans that are in our system? And see them, because that’s just as important as us getting it right in terms of our foundation. So to me, success is ensuring that students can see new pathways. But it also looks like when they’re taking my courses, and this has happened a lot this year, that they might not have seen a pathway for them in terms of their career that was in their cards.

But this year, several students of mine have had opportunities to pursue professional and educational opportunities they didn’t even embark on. But it was something they were grappling with in my coursework or something they read or watched in my classroom that said, ‘Oh, maybe I can do this.’

I have students who identify as white who are like, ‘No, no, I can do social justice work.’ I’ve helped them to see that they are also a part of this process. You’re not someone who can’t do this work because of how you identify. You can also do this work, but just do it responsibly. I feel that has been the beauty of what I believe is success—helping them to see new pathways in not just their practice, but also their professional endeavors in the future.”

— Jarrel T. Johnson, assistant professor, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy