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Humans care about things. The truth of this claim is obvious, yet scholars who have evaluated student interventions and outcomes in higher education have largely neglected how student values might inform their experience with those interventions and outcomes. This chapter will rely on a philosophical conceptualization of a particular type of value known as “caring” to explore what students value as they weigh various collegiate decisions. Elaborating on findings from a qualitative study of 143 college students from eight American universities, I will summarize previous findings related to what students cared about, how those cares were structured, and what the cares and structures meant for students' pathways through college. The categorical and theoretical patterns I share demonstrate how students approached values in ways that have not typically been considered by scholars or institutional administrators. After summarizing my previous findings, I offer a conceptual argument for a “dialectical” approach that considers the mutually formative interaction between student and institutional values. The practical result of naming and understanding the dialectic realities of values in higher education is the opportunity for institutions to use their relatively greater agency to help individual students pursue what is worth pursuing without reducing the agency of those students. Thus, the dialectic places necessary boundary lines on both the institution and the student while also clarifying the opportunity to help students develop moral expertise and navigate their collegiate pathways successfully.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

The legalization of same-sex marriage changed the parenting landscape for LGBTQ parents in a variety of ways. Parenthood is presumably different now that same-sex marriage is officially legal. Experiences among LGBTQ couples in the post-legalization of same-sex marriage era raise questions about the context of growing recognition and cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships. I conducted in-depth interviews with LGBTQ parents to learn how they navigate parenting and the construction of parenting roles in the context of a society that has legalized same-sex marriage, yet still is rooted in heteronormative notions of family and parenthood. Specifically, I ask: How do LGBTQ couples construct and make sense of their roles as parents, particularly within the contemporary context of the legalization of same-sex marriage? Understanding the contexts that shape LGBTQ parents’ experiences aids in not only understanding the lives of LGBTQ parents and their families better, but also developing a deeper understanding of contemporary parenting identities and experiences more broadly.

Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.

This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.

This chapter examines the concepts of race and racism, critically reviewing their historical and contemporary applications in everyday life as well as in academic and policy debates. Racism has been extensively researched, with various theories and conceptualisations developed across social science. However, there is a great deal of disagreement regarding its nature, contemporary significance and empirical validation. This chapter examines these and attempts to synthesise some of the common definitions of racism provided in the literature. It explores related concepts and underlying themes pertaining to expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, it unpacks current knowledge about racial issues and discusses recent advances in the conceptual understanding of various forms of racism. It also elucidates the social, political and analytical applications of racism as a concept and the significance of racism in contemporary societies. The chapter concludes by highlighting how racism is a dynamic phenomenon, continuously evolving with the social, political and technological transformations in contemporary societies.