The Future of Education
Graceful Grip: A Conceptual Framework for Institutional, Communal, and Personal Accountability During Graduate School
Denise Jones, University of Michigan (United States)
Gabrielle Kubi, University of Michigan (United States)
Hilary Simpson, University of Michigan (United States)
Abstract
Graduate students face unique challenges as they navigate higher educational institutions (Fernandez et al., 2019). While these institutions are sites of promise and possibility (for some students), they are also contexts with rich social, political, and racial strife that negatively shape students’, particularly women of color’s, experiences (Patterson-Stephens & Hernández, 2018). These individuals must master curricular difficulty alongside structural and systemic inequities that can hinder and compromise their post-secondary journeys. Although campus resources exist to mitigate the barriers influencing these students' trajectories, available resources and supports are often insufficient, ineffective, or limited for those within doctoral programs (DeAngelo, 2016; Moate et al., 2019). This paucity of institutional support has caused students to resort to alternative grassroots solutions rooted in their own agency and power-disrupting mechanisms. This autoethnographic case study highlights one such approach known as the graceful grip, an original conceptual model
examining institutional, communal, and personal responsibility and accountability to support students’ successful degree attainment. We present the narrative of how we used this model individually and as a cohort towards our success within our graduate program. This newly developed framework draws on the theoretical underpinnings of higher educational campus climate literature and reinforces the importance of student agency and autonomy within academic and institutional structures.
Keywords: higher education, graduate students of color, institutional accountability, peer support
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https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/65705019-2a0d-418f-88a3-d49d3fc2c9a1/content
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