Connections in Unexpected Places: Learner-Oriented Mindsets in Staff-Student Partnerships

Abstract

For this reflective essay we describe our lived experiences of an inspirational staff-student partnership where Tracie Addy, a Black, female centre for teaching and learning (CTL) director and associate dean at Lafayette College partnered with Maria Salmeron Melendez, now an alumna, who identifies as Black, female, and Latina. At the time of the partnership Salmeron Mendez held a leadership role in student government focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. She was also a scholar of the Posse Foundation, a nation-wide organisation partnered with Lafayette to train exceptional students from diverse backgrounds for future leadership. Our partnership was born out of Salmeron Melendez seeking more development for faculty around topics of equity and inclusion. The partnership evolved into her playing a lead role in helping the CTL generate campus conversations around social-emotional learning and trauma-informed pedagogy in higher education, topic areas of both personal and professional significance for Salmeron Melendez. After a process of developing mutual understandings and jointly collaborating on what could be accomplished, our partnership blossomed and paved a way for a new area to be explored on our campus during a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was altering ways of being. In this piece we discuss various learner-oriented mindsets that manifested in our staff-student partnership such as openness, investment in student agency, flexibility, sponsorship, and advocacy. Each of these mindsets contributed to the achievement of our reciprocal goals.