The National Resource Center as a Catalyst for Research-Informed Practice
Kate Lehman, PhD, Director of the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina
Welcome to the new E-Source, rebranded as Insights for College Transitions! I am thrilled to kick-start this new column “Making the Case: Revisiting the Why” which will serve as an opportunity for individuals to engage with pressing and important issues related to first-year students and those in all postsecondary transitions. In its inaugural issue, I will use this space to share a bit about myself and my vision for the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition (NRC) as the new director.
Background and Research
By way of introduction, I am a native Ohioan and began my career in higher education and student affairs through my involvement as an undergraduate in the Honors and Scholars program at Miami University. From there, I headed to The Ohio State University, where I earned my Master’s in Higher Education and Student Affairs and worked in residence life (Bernie Savarese, our esteemed keynote speaker for the 31st National Conference on Students in Transition, NRC advisory board member, and fellow columnist in this issue, gave me my first job in student affairs at OSU!). I then moved to the University of North Carolina Charlotte to work with living-learning programs before heading west to the University of California Los Angeles in 2012 to pursue my PhD in Higher Education and Organizational Change. During our time in LA, my husband Zach and I welcomed three amazing children: Sophie (10), Libby (7), and Charlie (2). It was a transformative experience for me to simultaneously become a mother and a higher education scholar, crystallizing my commitment to research that effects change in our educational systems to benefit all students.
Over my 12 years at UCLA, I co-founded and served as associate director of Momentum: Accelerating Equity in Computing and Technology, a research group that focuses on the experiences of college students in computing fields and efforts to retain them in the technology workforce. My research centers on the major selection process for first- and second-year college students, experiences that promote student retention and success in their major field (particularly STEM and computing fields), and the college-to-career transition.
My Why: The Intersection of Student and Academic Affairs
With that background in mind, you may be wondering about my “why” as I accepted this new post and moved my family cross-country to lead the NRC. Across my previous roles, I have sought out the intersections of student affairs and academic affairs. Most recently, I did this work within computing, as I studied efforts to recruit and retain women and underrepresented students of color in that field. I regularly found myself serving as an advocate for student affairs; so often, my research would point to the need for stronger partnerships between computing departments and their student affairs colleagues to address the challenges they faced in recruiting first-year students to their department, retaining them in computing, and supporting them in their transition to a career in tech. I saw firsthand how much progress could be made when institutions were able to break down silos between the curricular and co-curricular in support of students, such as through the work advocated by my colleagues and research partners at the Center for Inclusive Computing at Northeastern University. In short, I love bringing a student affairs lens to my research and research to conversations about practice. I relish the opportunity to engage directly with practitioners who can put research into action and effect change. The NRC’s mission to serve as a clearinghouse for scholarship and best practices around the experiences of first-year students and those in transition embodies this passion. I hope to bring what I learned about forging stronger collaborations between student and academic affairs to the NRC and to continue my research at the Center.
I arrive at the NRC at a critical moment for the Center and for higher education writ large. As a field, we are navigating challenging external forces (e.g., global unrest and conflicts, a polarizing political climate, a changing economy, and shifting demographics) that manifest as concerns and opportunities at the institutional (e.g., magnified equity gaps, questions about college’s value proposition, and enrollment concerns) and student (e.g., pandemic-related learning losses, mental health challenges, questions about college costs/student debt, and workforce readiness) levels. You can expect the Center to engage on these issues—I seek to meet this moment by modeling excellence. Fortunately, my new colleagues at the University of South Carolina have been leading the charge to foster scholarship and inform practice around students’ first-year and transitional experiences for the better part of the past half-century. I am particularly grateful to the three NRC directors who came before me: John Gardner, Stuart Hunter, and Jennifer Keup. I hope to stand on the shoulders of these giants in our field as we build from the wonderful foundation they established at the NRC.
Looking Ahead
The NRC will continue to be collaborative and seek extensive and deep research-practice partnerships. I am deeply grateful for the spirit of collaboration I have found in this community and will seek synergistic opportunities to advance the work of the Center. As we navigate this time of transition at the NRC, I am committed to ensuring that the Center is clear on our goals, values, and mission, so that we can pursue our collective vision with determined focus. Insights is a key part of that plan—our new editor Dr. Annie Kelly has done an incredible job of laying out a vision for this publication that I know will serve the NRC community well. We hope that you will engage with Insights and share your own expertise by submitting articles to coming issues, and I look forward to meeting you and getting to know you through our many upcoming events!