I’m honored and thrilled to announce that, effective today, I have earned tenure and promotion at Davidson College. My new title will be Associate Professor of Educational Studies and Public Policy. I will continue to direct the College Crisis Initiative (C2i). It is an honor and a privilege to continue to do great work with the fantastic faculty and students of Davidson College. I’m happy to be able to continue to contribute to my alma mater in new and exciting ways.

So, what’s next?

I’ll go on Sabbatical for the Fall 2024 semester. I plan to travel, write, think, take on a couple of home and family projects, spend some quality time with my little one, and attempt (but fail) to rest. Even in my sabbatical year, I won’t be able to sit still: 

• First, I have been named the Cornelson Faculty Innovator in Residence at the Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Davidson College for the 2024-2025 academic year. I’m excited to spend the year working with the incredible team at the Hub. 
• Second, C2i is about to experience some major changes. We’re going to make some staffing changes that are equal parts bittersweet and thrilling. We will reinvent ourselves a bit while also remaining true to our mission and heritage. I look forward to sharing those updates with you in the coming weeks. 
• Third, I will also be a part of some new initiatives at Davidson College to be announced in a few months. I’m particularly excited about these new challenges and look forward to talking more about these big ideas when appropriate. 
• Fourth, in January, I’ll start a term as Chair of the Educational Studies department at Davidson. Special thanks are in order to Rick Gay for being a leadership rock in our department for decades. Today he says goodbye to the Chair role for likely the last time. Shireen Campbell will serve as interim chair until I take the reins in January. I’m thankful to Shireen for enabling me to have a sabbatical. I know the department is in incredible hands.

Thanks to all of the incredible people who got me tenure. My department, my C2i team, and my great mentors and leaders at Davidson. I am thankful to all of you. Most of all, I’m thankful to my wife Michele without whom I never would have made it out of graduate school, let alone tenure. 

On to the next adventures! 

Given that tomorrow is Election Day, I’m sure many of us are thinking about what it means to be civically engaged. Well, I’d like to add to that conversation. I’m very excited to announce that a paper I wrote on the topic of civic engagement on college campuses with Brent Evans from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College and Courtney Lennartz from the University of Maryland has finally gone live online at Educational Researcher. The paper shows that residential colleges have greater civic engagement outcomes than commuter campuses. That’s a problem because around 75 percent of all college students are commuters. If all colleges are supposed to be creating civic-minded leaders, we need to figure out what is going on at residential colleges and export those practices to commuter colleges. You can find the paper here and in the Research section of my website.

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I grew up in North Carolina where the state religion is College Basketball. I have vivid memories of my teachers wheeling in the A/V Cart and putting a paper clip in the cable jack the back of a huge CRT TV just to get the signal to put on whatever ACC or other March Madness game was happening at the time. March was a month of “worksheets” and very little instruction. It was horrible for my education, but wonderful for the soul.

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As many of y’all know, most of my research focuses on political action in higher education, and specifically postsecondary institution lobbyists. As part of my dissertation, I’ve gotten the chance to interview some of the best in the business. In honor of presenting some of this qualitative work at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association this week, I thought I’d share five of the most interesting quotes given to me by higher education lobbyists.  Continue reading →