The Public Scholarship of Student Affairs Now

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• The Public Scholarship of Student Affairs Now
• Keith E. Edwards (bio), Heather Shea (bio), Glenn DeGuzman (bio), Raechele L. Pope (bio), Mamta Accapadi (bio), and Susana Muñoz (bio)

Public scholarship refers to making scholarship more accessible to a wider, nonacademic population or the public. It can take many forms, including publishing opinion pieces in major news outlets; writing a blog; drafting a policy brief; writing a book for a nonacademic audience; offering a public talk that is recorded and shared widely; fostering a presence on social media; or leading community-engaged service, research, and engagement efforts.

As a form of public scholarship, the Student Affairs Now (studentaffairsnow.com) podcast is one of many online learning communities and podcasts related to higher education. The audience for our podcast and video series is primarily student affairs and higher education professionals who work within the academy and those working adjacent to or beyond higher education institutions. We provide an unconventional route to sharing and learning beyond classroom instruction, peer-reviewed publications, and conference presentations. In this brief, we will discuss the benefits of public scholarship beyond its response to the limitations of more traditional scholarship. We will also share some of what we learned during the first three years of Student Affairs Now with an eye toward helping contributors and consumers inform public scholarship into the next 100 years of ACPA.

BENEFITS OF PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Considering our increasingly busy lives, fewer resources, unconventional work arrangements, and more distractions, nontraditional forms of scholarship allow professionals and scholars to contribute to and consume in a greater variety of ways that may also be more accessible. Busy administrative leaders might read a research or policy brief directly applicable to their next project while eating lunch or listen to a pod-cast related to a particular emerging student issue on their evening commute. These forms of public scholarship can offer consumable and low-cost forms of professional development that help educators stay informed about the latest research, better practices, and challenges affecting the field. They can also help administrators be more strategic in improving institutional practices. Public scholarship can make [End Page 217] complex issues more accessible, engage a wider audience in solving problems, and leverage limited resources more efficiently.

STUDENT AFFAIRS NOW AS PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Established during the fall of 2020 at the height of the pandemic, the online learning community and podcast Student Affairs Now began as and remains a passion project. During one of our earliest planning conversations, Susana Muñoz articulated a yearning to "make a contribution to the field while being restorative to the profession." This has become our vision for the project. Since we launched, we have seen our podcast conversations contribute to student affairs by offering new ways for access and engagement that reach more people than traditional forms of scholarship generally do. In our first three years, we released 172 episodes that have been downloaded 120,000 times and viewed 50,000 times on YouTube. Thanks to support from industry sponsors, we can remove the cost barrier to learning by making the pod-cast free to our audience. We provide an edited transcript and citation for accessibility and to enable referencing and sharing in more traditional scholarly modalities. The episodes are also easy to share.

Timely and Timeless

Without peer-review processes, publication delays, and conference proposals due nine months before the event, we can be nimble and responsive in recording relevant conversations. For instance, we recorded and shared a discussion unpacking the complexities of the film Barbie when it was released in the summer of 2023. We also have an extensive catalog so our audience can access past episodes when the conversation is timely for them with respect to their coursework, institutional issues, new scholarship, and emerging issues. As such, we can be timely and timeless simultaneously. As ACPA celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, we are proud to feature new and innovative contributors to higher education while also adding to the archives by interviewing legends of the profession who look back through decades of history and offer wisdom and insights.

Audience Engagement Matters

The format allows direct and indirect engagement from the audience. Student affairs educators...