Higher Education for Social Good
Professor Rebecca Ropers-Huilman focuses on the university as a generator of equity
One of the primary responsibilities of higher education is to empower people to participate in and contribute to their communities. This kind of practical orientation drives Rebecca Ropers-Huilman’s research, teaching, and service.
“In my scholarship, I am looking at ways to make higher education more useful for its diverse participants, and at those change agents who step outside the norm to make it so, whether they are feminist teachers, student activists, or administrators,” explains Ropers-Huilman, who is professor of higher education, chair of the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, and an affiliate in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.
Ropers-Huilman says her own scholarship focuses on three main areas that promote empowerment with the goal of fostering contributions to a common social good. First, she studies change agents in higher education contexts, especially those whose efforts are fueled by equity and diversity.
Second, she is invested in feminist education and has recently challenged mainstream higher education scholarship for failing to engage with feminist methods as much as it should. The essays in Re/constructing Policy in Higher Education: Feminist Poststructural Perspectives and Policy Analysis (2010), which she co-edited, provide examples of how feminist theory can positively affect research methods and influence postsecondary policymakers, analysts, and practitioners. She also edits the journal Feminist Formations.
Ropers-Huilman’s third area of interest—diversity and equity in education—similarly connects research, activism, teaching, and learning.
“I want to know how diverse people on college campuses interact to maximize their learning and working experiences and to positively influence society as a whole. I am also interested in the barriers to those meaningful interactions,” she says.
In 2009 Ropers-Huilman, along with doctoral students Kelly Winters and Kathryn Enke, completed a study of how students at a Catholic women’s college perceive the role of race in their lives. Additionally, she recently collaborated with associate dean Heidi Barajas, Geoff Maruyama (educational psychology), and Karen Miksch (postsecondary teaching and learning) on a grant funding the Interdisciplinary Graduate Group on Educational Access, which facilitates conversations concerning educational equity between graduate students and faculty. She hopes that the group will enhance the University’s capacity to “fulfill its mission of providing national and international leadership and scholarship related to educational equity.”
Story by Brigitt Martin | February 2011
