Opening Keynote Speaker: Chris Linder – She/Her/Hers
Dr. Linder will give her keynote at 11:00 am – 12:00 pm on Monday, October 15th.
Professional Biography: Dr. Chris Linder (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Utah, where her scholarship focuses on sexual violence and student activism. Chris regularly teaches courses on diversity, equity, and inclusion; student development theory; foundations of higher education and student affairs; and qualitative research through a power-conscious, historical lens. Chris identifies as a queer, white cisgender woman from a working-class background who strives to interrupt power and dominance in her work as an educator and activist. Prior to becoming faculty, Chris worked as a student affairs educator and administrator for 10 years, spending the majority of her career as a director of a campus-based women’s center supporting survivors of sexual violence. Chris earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs Leadership from the University of Northern Colorado. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a master’s degree in Student Affairs from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a first-generation college student. Chris’s new book, Sexual Violence on Campus: Power-Conscious Approaches to Awareness, Prevention, and Response (Emerald Press), was published in May 2018. Additionally, in partnership with Dr. Jessica C. Harris (UCLA), Chris co-edited Intersections of Identity and Sexual Violence on Campus (Stylus, 2017). Chris is also co-editor of the 2nd Edition of Multiculturalism on Campus (Stylus, 2017), and has published work on student activism, white women’s anti-racist identity development, and racism in graduate preparation programs in a variety of journals in higher education and student affairs. Chris serves on the editorial board for the Journal of College Student Development and the NASPA Journal about Women in Higher Education.
Closing Keynote Speaker: Zak Foste, Ph.D. he/him/his
Dr. Foste will give his keynote at 1:00 pm-2: 00 pm on Tuesday, October 16th
Professional Biography: Zak Foste is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration at the University of Kansas. His research examines how college students with dominant social locations, particularly cisgender men, and white students, interpret and make sense of privilege, power, and systemic oppression. Central to this line of scholarship is a belief that educators cannot challenge racism, genderism, and sexism on campus without an attention to those students who produce and normalize such systems. Most recently his work has explored how whiteness functions to underwrite racially hostile and unwelcoming campus climates. His dissertation, Narrative Constructions of Whiteness Among White Undergraduates, was awarded the 2018 ACPA Marylu K. McEwen Dissertation of the Year Award. Zak received his Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University, his M.S. in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Miami University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Sociology from Western Illinois University.
Keynote Synopsis: Dr. Foste will engage participants on how supposedly well-intentioned, progressive white students reproduce the racial status quo on campus, despite their good intentions. Drawing on data from 14 white student leaders, Zak will explore how these heavily engaged student leaders appeared more preoccupied with a presentation of the self as innocent and progressive than any meaningful critique of racism and white supremacy. The presentation will illuminate white student leaders’ complicated relationship with race, their desires for innocence, and what such desires say about our approaches to engaging white students on racial justice in student affairs.