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Welcome to the 2022 Division J Blog

Hey, y’all!

        I’m Alex C. Lange (they/them). I am the new Editor for the AERA Division J blog. I am grateful to Dr. Jenny Lee for extending this opportunity to me, and I am jazzed for the chance to shape some generative scholarly dialogue through this blog. I am also delighted to have Martha Sesteaga (she/her/ella) join me as a Managing Editor for the blog.

        A bit about me: I am an assistant professor of higher education at Colorado State University-Ft. Collins, which resides on the lands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations and peoples. I teach students in our Higher Education Leadership Ph.D. program. My research interests include student learning and development, college teaching, and LGBTQ+ studies in higher education. I often write about these topics, especially teaching and learning, through my blog on Medium (Medium link).

        What do I hope to do with this blog? So glad you asked! The blog will focus on commentaries and reflections from scholars. I hope to curate relevant commentaries and reflections to help Division J members think about theory, research, and praxis in ways that push and challenge current ways of studying and imagining postsecondary education.

        And most importantly, I want to model what it looks like to engage with others’ ideas in generous and generative ways. I notice that I listen to other people’s ideas but only engage those ideas on my terms. How does this relate to my research interest? Did they look at this thing that I am interested in? Those questions are important, and they primarily benefit my thinking. What I hope to create is a system of call and response, where someone posts an original commentary or reflection, and then another scholar responds to it. This second writer would reflect on what resonated, offer potential further ways of thinking about the topic, suggest complementary ideas or approaches, and discuss how their work and interests may (or may not) be tied to this kind of thinking.

        I am committed to trying this idea out for my first year as Editor. This idea could be excellent or not so excellent. Regardless, we will reassess the experiment’s idea a year from now. Posts will be 800 – 1200 words, not including references. If you are interested in this idea or have a commentary/reflection in mind, please reach out at a.c.lange@colostate.edu.

Also, refer to the submission guidelines for more details (Guidelines Link).

Thanks for reading!

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