HIGHER EDUCATION RACIAL JUSTICE AND DECOLONIZATION CONCENTRATION

OUR MISSION

The Higher Education concentration offers students opportunities to engage in critical reflexivity and praxis related to racial justice and decolonization. As the globe continues to grapple with its colonial and anti-Blackness past and present, we believe that this concentration will expose graduate students to the necessary academic and professional learning they need to be critical, anti-racist, and equity-minded scholar-practitioners. Students who graduate with this degree may work in the following areas to name a few: academic/ faculty career (professoriate), policy, consulting, and administrative positions within and outside of higher education.

Higher Education, Racial Justice, and Decolonization faculty [Links to http://llep.education.uconn.edu/higher-ed-faculty/]

OUR GOALS

The Higher Education Racial Justice and Decolonization concentration will develop critical-reflexive scholar-activist that understand and can advance:

  1. Critical sociocultural and organization theories that exposes how organizations and individuals who work in them reproduce structural inequities;
  2. Abolitionist theory that counter oppressive power structures, public and institutional policies, and procedures in order to transform higher education;
  3. Decolonizing approaches to higher education teaching and learning, leadership, administration, and research;
  4. Global/ comparative higher education from multiple intersecting lens of decoloniality, indigeneity, neoliberalism, inclusion and equity;
  5. Student-development with a critical/ anticolonial/ post-structural lens;

Implementation of public policies and institutional practices that are equity-focused.

SAMPLE PLAN OF STUDY

LLEP Core Courses

(15 credits)

  • EDLR 5201 — Influences on Adult Learning
  • EDLR 5204 — Organizational Learning
  • EDLR 6050 — Proposal/Prospectus Development I
  • EDLR 6313 — Educational Policy and Politics
  • EDLR 6467 — Social Justice Leadership, Equity, and Change

Higher Education Racial Justice and Decolonization Concentration Courses

(12 credits minimum)

  • EDLR 5114. Access to Higher Education or its equivalent or higher in the HESA program, or its equivalent or higher in the HESA program
  • EDLR 5119: Legal Issues and Decision Making in Higher Education and Student Affairs, or its equivalent or higher in the higher education program
  • EDLR 5126: Inclusion and Equity in Higher Education and Student Affairs, or its equivalent or higher in the higher education program
  • EDLR 6468: Critical Race Theory in Higher Education, or its equivalent
  • EDLR 6469: Decolonizing International and Comparative Higher Education, or its equivalent
  • EDLR 6470: Racial Justice and Decoloniality in Higher Education Teaching
  • EDLR 6471: The Faculty Career, or its equivalent

    Research Courses

    (9 credits minimum; can be used to meet Graduate School 6-credit minimum Related Area requirement)

    • EPSY 5605 — Quantitative Methods in Research I
    • EPSY 5607 — Quantitative Methods in Research II
    • EDCI 6000 — Qualitative Methods of Educational Research
    • EDCI 6005 — Advanced Methods of Qualitative Research
    • EDLR 6052 — Qualitative Methods of Educational Research II
    • Other research courses as approved by advisor/ program coordinator, such as EPSY 5610, EPSY 5613, EPSY 5621

      Graduate School Required Doctoral Dissertation Research credits

      (15 credits minimum)

      • GRAD 6950 — Doctoral Dissertation Research

      In addition to the above-mentioned courses, the higher education faculty will continue to develop courses for this concentration, for example, Critical Race Theory in Education, International Higher Education and Decolonization, Anti-Blackness Racism in Higher Education, Antiracist Pedagogy, to name a few. Lastly, for students enrolled in a Higher Education, Racial Justice and Decolonization concentration, they will be required to do a minimum of 9 or more credits of research courses.