For her research, Dr. Ford Turnbow won the 2022 Ruth Strang Research Award from the Center for Women of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, an international organization of student affairs professionals. Her research project, “Gender and Work: An Analysis of Mid-Level Women Administrators in Student Affairs,” was selected for the richness of the work and the timeliness of how it connected with the organization’s theme for the year.
“Receiving this award is exciting and humbling,” says Ford Turnbow, who intends to continue investing in and advocating for this work. “Thirty-two women trusted me to share their experiences, and I am proud to know that NASPA and the Center for Women has recognized its value on the profession.”
Ford Turnbow’s study focused on how gender inequality was reproduced in women’s work within institutions, as they had found themselves overcompensating by working from home late at night and extreme exhaustion and emotional labor from exerting so much energy into their work.
Theoretical frameworks coupled with the study results identify how the academy is operated by gendered dynamics, and the study calls for senior leadership to enact institutional structural shifts of acceptable behavior in the workplace.
This change is immensely important for the emotional wellbeing of women working in student affairs, which emerged as a contribution from the study. Numerous women identified aspects of student affairs as emotionally taxing, especially those working in care and crisis work on college campuses. Additionally, the concept of emotional labor for women of color too served as a major contribution from this study as the racial intersection with the helping profession aspect of student affairs created a form of racialization in the field.
Due to the ongoing systematic racism in society, Black women felt the need to focus their attention on students of color. Whereas, White women neither mentioned nor discussed emotional exhaustion from cultural obligations or the extended family.
This emotional exertion also led to a negative impact from the student affairs care work on the private lives of mid-level women professionals, who mentioned guilt, frustration and stress from work which forced them to spend less hours with family and their ability to contribute less to household needs.
Student affairs as a profession discusses the importance of personal wellbeing to prevent burnout, but rarely have institutions enacted workplace cultures that embraced the need for work-life balance or integration.
The central barriers associated with experiences of mid-level professional women in the study are rooted in structural policies and practices, Ford Turnbow wrote, and a national call to action is needed to address the systematic disparities.
Associations such as NASPA, the leading international association for student affairs, have the capacity to prioritize and facilitate additional research to build data on experiences of mid-level women nationwide, and adopt new strategies of best practices for institutions.
In student affairs the primary focus is best practices for student development and retention to graduation strategies, yet the condition of administrative staff carrying out this work is not a priority. New best practices will demonstrate higher education institutions’ commitment to student affairs to structural change for more equitable practices.
Dr. Ford Turnbow was also selected as winner of NASPA’s Collaboration Award for her oversight regarding the Humboldt Orientation Program.
In 2019, the Humboldt Orientation Program was realigned to the Dean of Students Office, which instituted best practices from a student affairs lens. Strategic partnerships among academic areas, student affairs, and students themselves were established to meet their needs as an Humboldt student.
Many of our significant accomplishments thus far stem from conducting, analyzing, and shifting procedures and protocols based upon assessment data after each orientation program
For example, the 2019-2020 data told us that our Transfer students wanted earlier access to register for courses the following fall semester. The Humboldt Orientation Program collaboratively implemented an Early Bird Registration window for Transfer students to register for courses in April, versus late May, and this produced an increase of early registration of 17% for transfer students for fall 2021.