By Rasul A. Mowatt

This month we welcome Dr. Rasul A. Mowatt, who has served on the AAG JEDI Committee for three years and steps down this month. We appreciate Dr. Mowatt’s perspective on the uphill battle of being a university leader of color, a perspective that is critically important at all times, and especially now.

There is a strange thing that happens once you are hired or appointed to a leadership post within higher education. You, the racialized you, sit in the chair, hopefully a functional one, and the onslaught begins. The type of onslaught that no orientation program or notes from the previous seat holder can prepare you for, because they are often unprepared to actually provide any assistance to you on such matters. What matters? The matters of Race, the matters of gender, and the matters of difference. At least on matters of Race, becoming and being an administrator of color leaves you with very little insight from literature in higher education (most studies and discussions are pre-2000s: Poussaint, 1974; Wilson, 1989). More contemporary discussions have been focused on the (needed) diversification of leadership in the university (Jackson, 2003; McCurtis, Jackson, & O’Callaghan, 2009) or have been focused on pathways that were undertaken to become leadership of color in the university (Liang, Sottile, & Peters, 2016; McGee, Jett, & White, 2022; Valverde, 2003).

But there is an acknowledged issue with the experiences of those administrators of color, and an acknowledged issue with the scant amount of attention given to studying and understanding the experiences of those administrators (Breeden, 2021; Chun & Evans, 2012; Razzante, 2018; Rolle, Davies, & Banning, 2000; West, 2020 — Breeden and West are the foremost scholars on the subject). While there is a multitude of research on this subject in ProQuest searches for theses and dissertations, the published academic book and article barely reflects 10% of that output. So, this results in so many administrators to sit in those chairs, in those offices, within those units of the university that are already unforgiving to the graduate student of color, the adjuncts of color, the early career scholar of color, and staff of color (within operations, student affairs, and academic affairs), with little to no insight on how to navigate the job and one’s life while doing the job.

In many ways we are still stuck in late-1960 questions of how do we get more students of color and faculty of color to come to our respective institutions, so much so that we have fallen far behind the questions we needed to ask in the 1970s (on curriculum), in the 1980s (on degree programs), in the 1990s (on policies of protection), in the 2000s (on strengthening budgets), and in the 2010s (on legislative safeguards). In the 2020s, we are still calling and fighting for representation, when there were greater collective needs for ideas about expansion and fortification. As we have not been prepared to address those collective needs, we have been ill-equipped to address the individual needs of administrators of color. And not the type of individual need to fortify one’s self against a microaggression that may affect one’s emotional state. No: The individual need to fortify one’s self against joblessness, career-ending incidents, and field-wide ostracization. The type of needs experienced by people who serve as chancellors, provosts, vice-chancellors, vice-provosts, associate vice-chancellors, associate vice-provosts, deans, associate deans, department heads, department chairs, associate department chairs, program directors, head librarians, managers, officers, full professors, associate professors, and faculty serving as chairs of a particularly important committees or task forces.

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from standard operating problems, hiccups in processes, miscommunication, and errors in tasks that become a bigger issue when the subject [or target] is you?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from the sabotaging of paperwork processing (i.e., not submitting faculty reimbursements, missing dates for tenure and promotion letters, never sending letters or other correspondence onward on your behalf)?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from the number and frequency of complaints against you, rather than the substance or credibility of any one complaint?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from every accusation levied against you requiring regular visits to the office of the next level in the protocol system of a university (even when there is no substance or credibility)?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from donors not wishing to give to your unit because you are the person that they must be work with (and so, your very being is a detriment to your unit)?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise when every unfavorable review, report, and decision that may affect someone employed in your unit invokes a particular set of actions and words against you?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from anonymous emails that are directed at you but meant for others to see, messages that question your humanity and being (and yet, information and technology units cannot identify the source or put a stop to them)?

How do you (the racialized you) handle issues that arise from people wanting to hire the idea of you instead of hiring  you — all of you, your scholarship, your ways of thinking?

How do you (the racialized you) handle (potential) issues that arise from the need to be extra aware of how a disaffected student, staff, or faculty may react to your decision that may affect them unfavorably (failing grade, removal from a program, termination of a job, or denial of tenure — not knowing the level of concern you may need to have for your own safety)?

And so many more questions and scenarios that seem to not have answers, much less discussion in any known book, article, workshop, training, tutorial, and the like. You begin to question your sanity when you raise these issues and the particular ways that they occur for you because of the racialized you and not because of the administrating you. It can be argued that some progress has been made on the diversification of the faculty (in certain fields and disciplines, or departments of geography). It can also be argued that there have been some gains, in some places, for some faculty of color in moving through the ranks of the professoriate. But it cannot be argued that we have quite found a way to think of how we can best serve, protect, support, and grow leadership of color.

In the meantime, sitting in such chairs and offices comes with a decreasing quality of health that brings on its own set of issues from long late-night emergency room visits due to dizzy spells, lack of pain relief from constant stomach churning, or the mounting stress that comes with the knowledge of a potential diagnoses of social death.

Such a social death is not inevitable, even at times of much publicized oppressions and increased levels of scrutiny in campus operations. In fact, now is the key time to close the gaps in our literature and discussions, to document and address the plight and experiences of leaders of color in academia. What we do not have today as intellectual resources are a product of what was not explored yesterday, thus, it is our obligation to gift tomorrow with insight. The readings below are an important start in this discussion, yet only a few are recent enough to reflect the pressures and aggressions — micro and macro — that leaders of color confront on campuses right now, in an anti-JEDI, anti-immigrant, anti-difference era. Only by documenting our experiences, and acting on what we know, can we break through and begin to make campuses sites of true learning and liberation.

References

Breeden, R. L (2021). Our presence is resistance: Stories of Black women in senior-level student affairs positions at predominantly White institutions. Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, 14(2), 166–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/26379112.2021.1948860

Chun, E., & Evans, A. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril: The new indentured class in higher education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Jackson, J. F. L. (2003). Toward administrative diversity: An analysis of the African-American male educational pipeline. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 12(1), 43-60. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.1201.43

Liang, J. G., Sottile, J., & Peters, A. L. (2016). Understanding Asian American women’s pathways to school leadership. Gender and Education, 30(5), 623–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1265645

McCurtis, B. R., Jackson, J. F. L., & O’Callaghan, E. M. (2009). Developing leaders of color in higher education: Can contemporary programs address historical employment trends? A. J. Kezar, ed., Rethinking Leadership in a Complex, Multicultural, and Global Environment: New Concepts and Models for Higher Education (pp. 65-91). Routledge.  

McGee, E. O., Jett, C. C., & White, D. T. (2022). Factors contributing to Black engineering and computing faculty’s pathways toward university administration and leadership. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 15(5), 643–656. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000407

Poussaint, A. (1974). The Black administrator in the White university. The Black Scholar, 6(1), 8-14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41065748

Razzante, R. J. (2018). Intersectional agencies: Navigating predominantly White institutions as an administrator of color. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 11(4), 339–357. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2018.1501082

Rolle, K. A., Davies, T. G., & Banning, J. H. (2000). African American administrators’ experiences in predominantly White colleges and universities. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 24(2), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/106689200264222

Valverde, L. A. (2003). Leaders of color in higher education: Unrecognized triumphs in harsh institutions. Rowman Altamira.

West, N. M. (2020). A contemporary portrait of Black women student affairs administrators in the United States. Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, 13(1), 72–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/26379112.2020.1728699

Wilson, R. (1989). Women of color in academic administration: Trends, progress, and barriers. Sex Roles, 21, 85–97. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289729

Rasul A. Mowatt, Ph.D., is Department Head and Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, College of Natural Resources, at North Carolina State University (NCSU); and Affiliate Professor in Sociology + Anthropology at NCSU. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was formerly Professor in the Departments of American Studies and Geography in the College of Arts + Science at Indiana University. His primary areas of research are Geographies of Race, Geographies of Violence/Threat, The Animation of Public Space, and Critical Leisure Studies. His most recent publication is The City of Hip-Hop: New York City, The Bronx, and a Peace Meetin (Routledge, 2025).

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

Analyzing Faculty Mobility and Research Themes Through Hiring Networks

The following Perspective is drawn from a paper currently under review at Cartography and Geographic Information Science journal. This research was supported by the CaGIS Rising Award and the GISphere project, which summarizes more than 400 GIS programs and faculty information globally.

By Yanbing Chen, University of Wisconsin, Madison and Yuhao Kang, University of Texas, Austin

Academia is profoundly shaped by the dynamics of faculty hiring networks, acting as a pathway for knowledge dissemination and collaborative research formation in higher education. With rapid technological advances and a surging demand for spatial analysis, GIScience is transforming research and industry alike, underscoring the need to examine how hiring practices influence academic networks and research trajectories. This study addresses the gap by analyzing data provided via the GISphere project (GISphere Institution Guide, 2023) on 946 GIScience faculty members from 384 universities across 27 countries. We employ network and word cloud analyses to demonstrate the connections between PhD-granting institutions and faculty affiliations, revealing global placement patterns, diversity in hiring trends, and the thematic evolution in GIScience research interests between year 1990 and 2024. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on faculty hiring (in)equities and provide insight into the formation of research clusters within the GIScience community.

The network analysis of GIScience faculty placements reveals that hiring is predominantly concentrated within the Global North. North America, Asia, and Europe collectively account for 92% of GIS faculty positions, with the United States (28.54%), China (26.74%), and the United Kingdom (8.35%) leading in faculty placements. The analysis shows that certain institutions play a dominant role in the GIS hiring network. For example, Wuhan University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, The Ohio State University, and Peking University are responsible for 15.43% of all global GIS faculty placements (Figure 1). While faculty hiring in other fields, such as computer science and economics, follows a clear prestige-driven hierarchy (Clauset et al., 2015; Wapman et al., 2022), the GIS hiring network appears more decentralized, with a wider distribution of contributing institutions. However, this relative decentralization does not eliminate regional inequalities. The network structure reveals localized recruitment patterns within continents. For instance, North American GIS faculty often originate from U.S. or Canadian PhD programs, while European institutions tend to hire graduates from within Europe. This regional clustering reflects the limited cross-continental mobility of GIS faculty, likely influenced by geographic proximity, immigration policies, and reduced recruitment costs for regional candidates.

The diversity index refers to the proportion of faculty originating from a particular region relative to the total affiliated faculty within that same region. It examines regional disparities in hiring patterns at the continental, country, and institutional levels. At the continental level, North America has the lowest diversity index, with only 11.01% of GIS faculty holding PhDs from outside the continent (Figure 2). Asia (24.37%) and Oceania (64.00%) show higher cross-continental hiring, though often from neighboring regions or countries with historical ties. Europe reports 11.15% diversity overall, with nine countries having 0% diversity, as all GIS faculty obtained PhDs within Europe. The country-level diversity index highlights varying patterns of domestic retention. For example, in the United States, 87.70% of faculty obtained their PhD domestically, while China exhibits a similar pattern, with 79.45% of GIS faculty holding domestic PhDs. Conversely, Singapore and Thailand have the highest country-level diversity indices (100%), indicating reliance on external academic talent. At the institutional level, external recruitment is common. On average, 60.66% of GIS faculty at global universities were externally recruited. These trends suggest that while universities value external perspectives to promote intellectual diversity, internal recruitment practices persist in countries with smaller academic systems (Figure 3).

The findings of this study have important implications for GIScience education and hiring policies. The preference for internal recruitment at continental and country levels highlights the need to promote international mobility. Institutions should encourage greater international recruitment, particularly from underrepresented regions like Africa and South America, to diversify the pool of GIS scholars. The role of influential institutions in global GIS hiring also raises concerns about academic equity. While GIS faculty placement appears less hierarchical than in other fields, the concentration of placements within a small subset of universities highlights a potential inequity in access to faculty positions. Universities seeking to foster a more inclusive academic environment should consider promoting mobility pathways for PhD graduates from less influential institutions. In conclusion, hiring patterns and thematic shifts in GIScience highlight the importance of fostering a more inclusive, globalized GIS community, ensuring that ideas from across the world are equitably represented in GIS education and research.

References

Clauset, A., Samuel Arbesman, Daniel Larremore. (2015) Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks. AAAS Science Advances, 12 Feb 2015, Vol 1, Issue 1. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400005

Wapman, K.H., Sam Zhang, Aaron Clauset, Daniel B. Larremore. 2022. Quantifying hierarchy and dynamics in US faculty hiring and retention. Nature 610, pp. 120–127. Access https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x

Perspectives is a column intended to give AAG members an opportunity to share ideas relevant to the practice of geography. If you have an idea for a Perspective, see our guidelines for more information.

By Ken Foote

For almost a quarter century, the AAG’s Geography Faculty Development Alliance (GFDA) and Healthy Departments Initiative (HDI) have provided support for our members, from those just getting started in their careers to those leading departments and programs. Summer workshops, symposia at national and regional meetings, webinars, and publications like Thriving in an Academic Career and Practicing Geography are all part of these efforts.

Fundamental to all these activities is the belief that caring for our community strengthens our community. Indeed, hundreds of our members have already benefited from the community-building activities the AAG supports, including those that focus on building mutual respect, empathy, trust, and shared responsibility for the health and progress of our field and all its members.

The need to reaffirm these values this year has been made imperative by rapid-fire policy changes at the national and state levels. These are already having profound impacts on geographical research and education at all levels. This impact has been especially hard on our undergraduate and graduate programs, where changing policies are affecting students, faculty, research, and teaching. This year’s workshop “Maintaining what matters: Strengthening your department in a time of rapid change” has been organized to help our community respond to these challenges by providing a forum for sharing concerns and strategies in a supportive setting. Sessions will touch on:

From crisis to courage: Creating a sustainable future for your department

Planning for improving our departments

Supporting international students

Academic freedom in the face of new, restrictive legislation,

Mentoring, promotion, and tenure in the current climate

Envisioning transformative GenEd curricula in challenging times

Scheduled online for June 23-24, starting at 11:00 a.m. ET, with panels, discussions, and interactive activities throughout each day. The program is free to all AAG members. Non-members pay $250.

The GFDA and HD Organizing Committee

This year’s Department Leadership workshop has been developed by a capable and experienced organizing committee of leaders within their own institutions, in GFDA and HDI, and at AAG:

• Patricia Ehrkamp, Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor, Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky, and 2024-2025 AAG President
• Ken Foote, Deputy Head and Director of Urban and Community Studies, Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies, University of Connecticut, 2010-2011 AAG President
• David Kaplan, Professor, Department of Geography, Kent State University, 2018-2019 AAG President
• Rebecca Lave, Associate Dean for Social and Historical Sciences, Professor, Geography, Indiana University-Bloomington, 2024-2025 AAG President
• Shannon O’Lear, Joint appointment with Environmental Studies Program, Professor, KU Chancellors Club Teaching Professor 2024-2029, University of Kansas
• Risha RaQuelle, Chief Strategy Officer, AAG

For questions or further guidance about any of these opportunities, please email [email protected].

Ken Foote is a member of the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies at University of Connecticut. A past president, longtime member, and Fellow of AAG, he founded the Geography Faculty Development Alliance in 2003.

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

By Jenna Loyd, JEDI Committee Chair

Justice. Equity. Diversity. Inclusion. These words animate the work of the AAG committee going under the acronym JEDI. These words represent values that are enshrined in AAG’s Statement of Professional Ethics, whose second paragraph reads:

Our discipline of geography is stronger when we uphold equity, human rights, and educational freedom across the breadth of geographic inquiry. We appreciate the diversity of our members’ experiences and backgrounds, as well as the broad variety of ideas and approaches to geographic knowledge production.

When I joined the JEDI Committee in 2023, DEI already had assumed a prominent place in the campus culture wars along with the distortion of critical race theory (CRT). Since then, these acronyms have been unmoored from the meanings found in the scholarly history of critical race theory and social movement histories of the struggles against racial, gender, and disability discrimination. DEI and CRT came to mean reverse discrimination and indoctrination, arguments that situated its proponents on the right side of history and validated their efforts to dismantle it. Since 2023, 19 anti-DEI bills have become law across seven states, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education; another 75 have failed or been tabled. Related pieces of legislation have passed restricting what can be taught in classrooms.

These efforts became an opening salvo in the even broader attacks on higher education and research we are living through right now. Some universities, academic associations, and research nonprofits have scrubbed their websites of DEI. The AAG has not, nor does it intend to do so. In February, the JEDI Committee reiterated its commitments to its principles and reaffirmed the AAG’s 2023 statements of support of educational freedom, critical geography and the well-being of LGBT2QIA+ people, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

We are not backing down because JEDI is more than an acronym. When I was first learning this committee’s history, Meghan Cope explained to me that justice was an important principle informing its initiatives. Justice has more than one meaning for our discipline, a concept that often provides a way of linking issues together, from racial justice to economic justice, environmental justice, disability justice, climate justice, and more. To me, it informs why equity would be a value and suggests that inclusion itself should be just. In the introduction to their new edited collection, How to Foster Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Geography, Guo Chen and LaToya Eaves recount how decades of collective efforts to broaden the scope and societal relevance of geographic inquiry have gone hand in hand with criticisms of the discipline’s systematic forms of exclusion. For Chen and Eaves, our embrace of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as interconnected values serves to “enrich the theories and practices that help more and more geographers feel at home and foster passion and inquiry in creating a vibrant world discipline for current and future generations of geographers” (2024, 3-4).

More than an acronym, [TLC-GRAM is] a mnemonic reminding us that care and relationships should guide transformative work in the AAG, departments, and specialty groups.

For just inclusion of groups of people who’ve been neglected or excluded from the discipline, we need to actively change the structure of our collective work as geographers. And this takes cultivating a culture of care. Over the first two years of the JEDI Committee’s existence, the committee worked with over 50 members in seven working groups to synthesize 32 points of its strategic plan into a useable framework for change shorthanded as TLC-GRAM. Like the idea that justice is indivisible, each of the elements of Training, Listening, Communications, Governance, Reports, Advocacy, and Membership are interconnected. More than an acronym, it’s a mnemonic reminding us that care and relationships should guide transformative work in the AAG, departments, and specialty groups. AAG’s Chief Strategy Officer, Risha RaQuelle, has provided invaluable leadership for this work. She launched the beta version of the toolkit at the 2024 GFDA meeting; you can read her overview of the TLC-GRAM here and discussion of how care can inform research here. At a session last month in Detroit, leadership of the Energy and Environment Specialty Group walked through how they had put the toolkit to work in their specialty group and the Committee will be finalizing materials for its use this academic year.

I think part of why JEDI work continues undiminished in the AAG is because of the decades of cultivating principles of justice as interconnected. Another reason is the longstanding engagement with care ethics, articulated by AAG President Victoria Lawson in 2005. Geography as a discipline and AAG as an association are filled with members, staff, and leadership who want our profession and field of inquiry to hold true to justice and care, even as we debate and expand what these terms mean. We know that we are responsible for making this space as a collective effort. What we do will continue to be debated and will continue to evolve. And we do this because we think the space we make to do critical work with each other is worth defending.

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

By Risha RaQuelle, Chief Strategy Officer

In times of such profound transformation, it’s crucial to lean on the work and relationships we’ve built over years of collaboration. The strength of our professional networks, resources, and shared commitment is what helps sustain us through challenging periods.

The constraints and threats we face are real—anti-DEI legislation, funding elimination, and systemic shifts challenge the very fabric of our work. But despite these obstacles, we continue to press forward. AAG, like each of our members, is navigating the path forward Yet, we persist—in supporting your career, your well-being, and the values that unite us as a community.

We encourage you to take a moment to reflect on the resources that sustain you. We’d also like to highlight some of the support AAG offers to contribute to your success and thriving.

For Individual AAG Members

Keep up your peer and mentoring network. Use the opportunities AAG offers for members to connect—through our Annual Meeting, career-focused sessions throughout the year, and local connections through the AAG Regional Divisions. As an AAG member, you are automatically part of your Regional Division, allowing you to engage with peers near you, strengthening community ties among geographers. The Regional Divisions also sponsor events focused on the next generation, from preliminaries for the World Geography Bowl to paper competitions and travel grants.

Your career matters, and we can help. From job search tools to liability insurance, AAG wants to help you navigate your career. The AAG Job Board lists opportunities in all sectors, at all levels of experience. AAG’s member-created Statement of Professional Ethics provides clarity and peer-sourced insight into the values and principles we seek to uphold in our discipline.

Communities of practice to support you.  AAG Specialty and Affinity Groups and Communities of Practice are designed to connect you with colleagues who share your expertise or interests. Your AAG membership makes you eligible for all of these communities of practice, which are renewed annually and carry their own modest dues, generally from $1 to $5 each year. These groups can serve as vital resources for advice, networking, and new opportunities.

Dedicated AAG staff can answer your questions. AAG’s Communities Team—Eddie McInerney and Mark Revell—can answer questions and support your participation in the Specialty/Affinity Group communities. You can also sign up for AAG’s regular JEDI Office hours.  JEDI Office Hours offer individuals and programmatic leaders the chance for one-on-one conversations about your ideas, experiences, and questions. Schedule a time to talk.

For Department Chairs and Program Leaders

AAG is strengthening tools to offer leaders of geography departments and programs new ways to protect and advance the discipline:

TLC-GRAM: This bridging inventory is designed to promote strategies for increasing belonging within the geography community, especially through strategic planning. We’ve curated a collection of resources, ideas, and initiatives, aimed at fostering inclusive and supportive environments that promote good governance and focus on making sure that all members of a community feel welcome and valued. If you have adapted this toolkit or have ideas for how to do so, we’d like to hear from you at [email protected].

State of Geography Dashboard: AAG’s repository for data on geography higher education as a field of study. These data provide insight into the educational landscape for geography in the U.S., as well as insights into the field that might inform dialogues within your institution, especially strategic planning.

Each summer, over the past years the Geography Faculty Development Alliance workshops have offered early-career geographers and department chairs support in pursuing their work in teaching, mentoring, and leadership.

The Healthy Departments Initiative addresses the challenges faced by geography departments. The HD Committee assists department chairs and provides practice information that can improve program quality. To find out more, contact [email protected]

For Protecting and Advancing Our Discipline

AAG offers ways to monitor and participate in activities on behalf of the geography discipline. AAG’s Advocacy Hub provides Information on AAG’s policy stances and recent advocacy efforts. Learn about our policy principles here.

Positions and Task Forces at AAG have taken up critical disciplinary questions that can aid your direction and decision making within our discipline. One of the core such documents for this moment is AAG’s Statement of Professional Ethics.

Visit our governance page to view reports of past AAG task forces and find out about current task forces, such as the Mentoring Task Force, which is examining how to expand mentoring opportunities within geography. AAG’s Professional Conduct Policy is also a foundational document that keeps all of us accountable to one another and sets the standard for professional conduct within our discipline.

Navigating Hostile Environments

Reflecting on the hostile working conditions that critical geographers have faced—attacks on tenure, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, and challenges to academic unionization—I recognize the delicate balance between advocacy and pragmatic action. We, too, face shifting political landscapes. The AAG, like you, is navigating a world where decisions are made rapidly.

Here’s what I want you to know: The AAG is your member association. As a member, you are integral to how we adapt, educate, and advocate for the discipline of geography. We are a bridge, ensuring that geography remains a space where belonging is fostered, even when forces of othering try to dominate. Together, we can continue advocating for the values that matter most to our community, even as the political climate shifts.

Moving Forward Together

In closing, our commitment to promoting scholarly spaces, critical geographic research, and JEDI initiatives remains steadfast. We will continue to publicly affirm our dedication to advancing these principles through advocacy, awards, career-enabling functions, and providing access to training for students. By engaging in these efforts, we ensure that geography remains a space of possibility, even in increasingly inhospitable environments.

Through our annual meetings, regional gatherings, and resources, AAG offers opportunities to not only share research but also connect with others who understand the unique challenges we face. AAG will always be a space where ideas are shared freely, and all members are given the opportunity to contribute.

Let’s continue to work together—to build a future where geography and its practitioners can thrive, no matter the challenges we encounter.

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

By Risha RaQuelle, Chief Strategy Officer

In these times of rapid change, connection and community matter more than ever. AAG stands firm in our commitment to support and uplift our members, providing access to our member networks—networks necessary to navigate an evolving landscape. Through strategic planning, member-led initiatives, and resource development, we are building a future that reflects the resilience, creativity, and strength of geographers everywhere.

Together, we will sustain a thriving community where members can connect, contribute, and succeed—driven by the power of collective care and hope.

Charting a Bold New Course

AAG is actively preparing in collaboration with Council a new 10-year strategic plan and two staff-led 5-year operational plans to align organizational goals with the evolving needs of our members. These plans build on the strengths of our past while advancing a sustainable and forward-thinking agenda.

Members will play an essential role in shaping the 10-year plan. We invite all members to participate in upcoming listening sessions at the Annual Meeting. Your voice and perspectives will be key to ensuring that this plan reflects the collective needs and aspirations of our community

Our vision for growth

Forecasted last year, through our Request for Research Partnerships initiative, our vision for growth will continue to center member-driven grant partnerships to provide essential resources for meaningful work and programs. By investing in our members and fostering new networks of support, we are laying a foundation that sustains innovation and community engagement for years to come.

AAG’s renewed focus on connectivity is embodied in Communities@AAG, a newly aligned  organizational framework designed to enhance collaboration and resource-sharing across Specialty Groups, Affinity Groups, Communities of Practice, and Regional Divisions. This approach elevates community-driven programming and resource development through strategic grant seeking and member engagement.

Communities@AAG: Enhancing Connectivity and Collaboration

Communities@AAG represents a strategic organizational realignment that fosters networks of care, empowering geographers at every stage of their careers to connect, belong, and thrive. It is evolving into an all-hands approach by AAG staff, led by two key roles for AAG staff members dedicated to advancing this mission:

• Community Impact Coordinator: (Eddie McInerney) Strengthens collaboration among member groups, including the 75 specialty and affinity groups, to foster equitable practices, share resources, and enhance member engagement. Eddie also monitors engagement opportunities around issues of importance to AAG members, in keeping with our Policy Principles.

• Manager for Career Programs and Disciplinary Research (Mark Revell): Oversees professional development and research initiatives that align with AAG’s strategic goals, including expanding professional development offerings at the annual meeting, delivering comprehensive educational programming year-round, and enhancing AAG’s learning resources and disciplinary information to support students, professionals, and departments through essential services such as the Healthy Departments Initiative, Jobs Board and Guide to Geography Programs.

Building on Past Achievements

As we chart this new course, we are also reflecting on past efforts to ensure continuous improvement. In recent years, AAG has been developing leadership cohorts, improving our operations, piloting new programming formats, and refining community engagement strategies to be ready to support our members.

By partnering with members on efforts like Healthy Departments, the annual Geography Faculty Development Alliance workshops for both early career support and leadership development, and projects such as the Convening of Care and GAIA, we are creating sustainable pathways for innovative programming, professional development, and research. This approach ensures that our work is driven by and responsive to the needs of our membership.

We look forward to hearing from you. Join us at the listening sessions during the Annual Meeting and reach out to our Communities@AAG team to connect and get involved!

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

By Risha RaQuelle, Chief Strategy Officer

The AAG will host the Convening of Care, September 19-20, 2024, funded by the National Science Foundation in partnership with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) and the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP).

Thirty participants, drawn from among early career scholars, department leaders, and representatives from the research enterprise (ex. funding officers at colleges and universities), will meet at the AAG offices in Washington, DC, to explore how belief systems such as the ones we live within today still carry the heat signature of systems created hundreds of years ago.

Many behaviors and practices that we take for granted in current institutions are in fact the legacy of these older systems, undermining the lives and often the careers of many of us:

• prioritization of timeliness and urgency at the expense of developing trusting and collegial partnerships,
• Individualism, competitiveness, and perfectionism, and
• hierarchies of power that reinforce one-way belief systems.

The exploration of how these entrenched systems and attitudes lead to protecting or reinforcing the “it’s always been this way” tradition, is paramount in creating an “Ethos of Care.”  An ethos of care seeks to enhance practices and processes within the research enterprise and enable collaborators to confront and address the accepted norms of power and bias, and “resolve to disrupt and transform those norms in a mutually beneficial, evolving and inspiring manner,” according to Principal Investigator Emily Skop of UCCS.

The goal of the convening is to enable practitioners in the research enterprise to probe the origins of knowledge discovery and inspire critical reflection on the ethical, political, economic, and emotional aspects of research practice and knowledge production.  Participants will complete an Ethos of Care Credential and a foundational paper to inform implications for care in practice.

Our work is ever-evolving, and optimistic that even the most permanent-seeming system of beliefs or policies once invented, can be transcended.  Did you know that we have a TLC GRAM toolkit? You can start today by evaluating and tracking your progress in this community engaged care movement.  I’m rooting for you.

The Convening of Care project is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2324401 and Award No. 2324402. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

By Risha RaQuelle, Chief Strategy Officer

I most recently had the privilege of presenting a beta version of our TLC GRAM toolkit at the 2024 GFDA Department Leaders workshop with Dydia DeLyser of California State Fullerton and Daniel Trudeau of Macalester College. The TLC GRAM Toolkit is a compressed, operationalized approach to the AAG’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee’s strategic plan. I was excited to share this newest version of the strategy, which we piloted with our JEDI Committee working groups, as a potential tool for geography departments and program leaders at a time when such tools are very much needed.

Briefly, I invited the participants to walk through the toolkit and consider their own justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion strategies in one of the seven domains: Training, (Focused) Listening, Communications, Governance, Reports, Advocacy, and Membership. Although created for use by geography education leaders, we hope that anyone could adapt these tools to a wide variety of settings. We have also taken care to prepare this for many contexts, knowing that some campuses and states are pushing back against JEDI programs in explicit ways. For program leaders in states where JEDI work is being challenged, the TLC GRAM framework provides a universal outline to consider how to do the work within these limitations, by emphasizing management and training approaches that have broad relevance for good governance and student support. For example, in the workshop, participants were invited to match existing and planned strategies with the TLC GRAM categories the activity aligned with.

This “inventory” approach is helpful for identifying a range of strategies and approaches that are already in place, viewing them through the lens of TLC GRAM “best practices,” and then identifying new methods they’d like to try.

The TLC GRAM inventory is a process designed to encourage leaders to identify and build on the JEDI practices they have planned or underway.

The TLC GRAM inventory is a process designed to encourage leaders to identify and build on the JEDI practices they have planned or underway. This approach also leads the participant to round out their JEDI practices by developing strategies within each of the seven domains of the toolkit. Through this process, a participant will begin to see opportunities for alignment, areas that overlap, and gaps in planning. When a team co-creates this list, it can be even more powerful, as they refine their brainstorming into clear and actionable steps, celebrating the opportunity to collaborate in accomplishing their identified aims.

In other words, the toolkit is designed to take the guesswork out of identifying the “perfect” strategy.

Why Seeking the “Perfect” Strategy is Not the Best Way

The request for a toolkit often comes with an expectation of highly specific steps to take, and this is understandable. Who wouldn’t want a quick and straightforward way to identify actions to take, find clear categories we can get right the first time, and co-create strategies that are seamless and efficient? However, a toolkit is just that: tools. Try as we might, we can’t make the tools themselves into the end. They are only the beginning of an intention toward change. Uncertainty, learning, trial and error are not only unavoidable, but necessary to facilitating change.

The work we do to intentionally create opportunities for systems change is not a short game. This work is deeply systemic, unpredictable, and requires long-term commitment. The temptation is to identify ALL the strategies that anyone has ever taken, listen to how they utilized them, and consider if those strategies may work in your own context. While there is value in considering many options, you as leader and your team are the best candidates for identifying what you want to accomplish and what might motivate you.

Knowing that this work requires patience, we can still motivate and energize ourselves by engaging in quick exercises to jumpstart our thinking.

Knowing that this work requires patience, we can still motivate and energize ourselves by engaging in quick exercises to jumpstart our thinking. Doing so allows us to become time delimited, listing activities that might be possible in each domain. Of course, fear and anxiety might emerge as the pressure builds to find the “perfect” strategy. The purpose of this exercise is to identify “a” strategy. Carving out 10-15 minutes together with your team will jump start a process to co-create and refine each strategy, as time permits. The goal is to see what might be possible. For example,

• In the Training domain — I might want to identify what training courses are available to support faculty and staff or students in undertaking justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion work. An inventory of what exists in the department is a first step toward finding out who is already doing the work on our team. In states where constraints are being placed on many kinds of DEI programming, I might think creatively about ways to strengthen existing mentoring and leadership training programs and faculty development.
• In the Focused Listening domain, a participant might say they will create opportunities to have discussions about a justice, equity, diversity, or inclusion strategy that the department might want to undertake. This could be during a staff meeting as a quick exercise. Again, this can take other forms, like a special listening activity for students to talk about their needs and experiences on campus. You could also regularly assess the departmental climate to ensure that it is ideally free of tensions and hostility and that it fosters a healthy, constructive and inclusive environment for all groups — students, faculty, and support staff.
• In the Communications domain, one might identify who is represented on our website and why. Who is missing? Developing a strategy around gaining stories from scholars that you do not see on your website, personal testimonials, and narratives about their lived experiences in their research journey, could be a first start.
• In the Governance domain, one might start with adding a justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion item (or a similar item focused on creating a culture of care, addressing full student needs, etc.) on every agenda to discuss opportunities for alignment and support. This way you will be certain to address this topic each time you meet.
• In the Reports domain, you may want to identify what demographic reports exist for your department, who may have access to this and what might the trends be that you see as you disaggregate the data by demographic categories. You could also pair the demographic trends that you see with lived experiences of those that may not be represented in the data. What do we want to accomplish together and why, could be a first start.
• In the Advocacy domain, you could identify what your advocacy aims are for your department, how you might support them and who might want to get involved.
• In the Membership domain you might want to identify who makes up your department, team, or classroom, taking an assessment of who is missing and how you might find new opportunities to engage or recruit those that are not present.

While we can quibble over aspects of what is represented in the toolkit — and this matters — the first attempt is to take the first step, write something down and commit to doing the work. Pull the list together, with your team, co-create and consider the possibilities and limitations, with others, and start somewhere. You will be surprised at what you will accomplish when you take this first step. Please contact me so that we may celebrate your success. I am rooting for you!

Download the toolkit

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.