Engaging with Scholarship: Featuring Dr. Joy Gaston Gayles

Joy Gaston Gayles, Ph.D., ELPHD Department Head & Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professor, North Carolina State University

My name is Joy Gaston Gayles, and I’m excited to share a little about myself, the scholarship I regularly read and re-read, and how scholarship informs my work in this issue’s Engaging Scholarship column.

My Story and Background

I am the Department Head of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development and Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor at NC State University. I started my career as an assistant professor of higher education at Florida State University 23 years ago (it still feels like yesterday). I moved to NC State University in 2007 and was promoted to professor in 2018. An important part of my story is that I am a first-generation college student and a former college athlete. I was the kid who loved to go to school, learn new things, and play outside. I was also athletically talented and grew up playing outdoor games with my brother and friends in our neighborhood. In high school, I played volleyball, softball, and ran track. With the help of my high school softball coach, Carol Konrad, I was recruited to play softball at Shaw University (the first HBCU in the south), receiving a full four-year scholarship. My college Coach, Dianthia Ford-Kee, helped me apply for a post-graduate scholarship from the NCAA, which launched my higher education career. The NCAA scholarship helped fund my master’s degree at Auburn University, where I opted to write a thesis for degree completion. I firmly believe that one of the hallmarks of a good study is that you have more questions than answers at the end. My curiosity led me to pursue my doctorate at The Ohio State University. While pursuing my doctorate, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work in athletic administration on a college campus or pursue the professoriate. I applied for both. It’s safe to say that fate decided I should become a professor. :-)

Humanizing Higher Education

In 2020, in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others, many institutions responded by creating task forces and appointing leaders to roles to help institutions know better and do better. I accepted a role in my college as Senior Advisor for Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. My charge was to figure out, with the help of my colleagues, what it meant and how to become an anti-racist college. In hindsight, I realized this was an impossible task without resources or the power to make decisions at a high level. I’m not convinced that external attempts to train or teach people to humanize minoritized individuals actually work to achieve equity, inclusion, and opportunity. Engaging in performative, check-the-box, tokenizing initiatives does not get at the root of the problem – the systemic structures, policies, and practices in place that limit equity, belonging, and opportunity for minoritized populations. During this time, I was also elected as the 2022 Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) President.

As a result of taking on these two major roles during the height of the COVID-19 era, I found myself reading a lot more as a way to inform the work I was called to do and as a survival mechanism for my mental health and well-being during such a traumatic period. I read and re-read books and scholarship, looking for inspiration, strategy, wisdom, and knowledge to help me navigate these roles. Specifically, I read and engaged with the writings of brilliant scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins, Nicole Hannah-Jones, Michelle Alexander, Isabel Wilkerson, bell hooks, and Ibram Kendi, to name a few. I also deepened my learning and understanding through participating in a Bootcamp podcast series with GirlTrek about the lives and stories of icons like James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Ella Baker, Shirley Chisholm, Nina Simone, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Lucille Clifton, Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till Mobley, Claudette Colvin, and so many others.

One of the main reasons I decided to run for ASHE President was the opportunity to use my work and the work of others to help shape the field of higher education for years to come. The opportunity to put forward a conference theme for the year was one way I chose to achieve this goal. I wanted the association to unite throughout the year and engage in dialogue, research, and practice around an idea that matters to people. Engaging with the writings and stories mentioned above is how I landed on the theme: “Humanizing Higher Education.” Many, if not all, of the scholars I mentioned experienced - or were writing about - the hardships of the time and the fight for justice. Coming out of the height of the COVID-19 era, we had an opportunity to do something different – to move away from dehumanization, systemic oppression, and hatred to seeing people for who they are and honoring humanity in teaching, research, practice, and praxis.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the honor of opening the 44th Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience as a keynote speaker. I shared in my remarks that the 2022 ASHE Presidential Theme, Humanizing Higher Education, and my ASHE presidential address felt more relevant today than it did three years ago. During both addresses, I emphasized that humanizing means “I see you! I actively choose to see the fullness of your humanity, and I choose to honor it!” In preparing for both keynotes, I read and re-read research and scholarship to help me understand the current moment in context. Books like the 1619 Project, Caste, and Racial Formation, for example, explain how race has been socially constructed and used to oppress, control, and dehumanize people. Further, although chattel slavery ended in 1865 , current-day manifestations of oppression, control, and dehumanization continue to exist.

Books like All About Love, Unearthing Joy, Cultivating Genius, and The Garden Within all bring to my attention the power of love. At the end of my keynote, I encouraged us to be the light because it has the power to liberate, is infused with love, and love has healing power. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. I will choose love every day because hate is too great of a burden to bear.”

Engaging in Humanizing Scholarship

Engaging with scholarship, broadly defined, is critical to me. Contributing in various ways, either through writing, reading, or speaking, helps me think creatively about how to solve complex problems, add context to understand difficult challenges more completely, and gives me critical hope to keep being a catalyst for change in the face of adversity. Inspired by the work I cited above, I am teaching a course this semester on Cultivating Genius and Joy in Higher Education. It’s a space for truth-telling and lays the ground for creativity and empowerment. The road ahead will be filled with challenges and opportunities for us to take on roles and responsibilities that are new and unfamiliar to us, which can be scary. I invite you to choose courage over fear and channel what feels scary into courageous curiosity. Take the time to pause and reflect, ask powerful questions, and engage in meaningful and humanizing scholarship to navigate and find creative solutions to the challenges that lie ahead.

References

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.

Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.

Gayles, J. G. (2023). Humanizing Higher Education: A Path Forward in Uncertain Times. The Review of Higher Education, 46(4), 547-567.

Hannah-Jones, N., Silverstein, J., Blain, K. R., Logan, T., Nicole, I., & Pitre, H. (Eds.). (2021). The 1619 project: A new origin story. One World.

hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. HarperCollins.

Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. One World.

Muhammad, G. E. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.

Muhammad, G. (2023). Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum and Instruction. Scholastic.

Phillips, A. (2023). The garden within: Where the war with your emotions ends and your most powerful life begins. Thomas Nelson.

Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. Random House.