Abstract
Empathy can be a powerful tool in education. Empathy can enable personal connections across cultural differences. Empathy can support our mutual humanization and afford new possibilities for human connection. Empathy can provide comfort to one another, while remaining action-oriented toward more generative solutions. Empathy is rarely enough in and of itself, but it can be essential for providing effective outreach and support, as well as in the design of broader institutional systems and practices. Without empathy, we struggle to imagine the consequences of planning, strategy, and decision-making for members of the campus community whose voices are muted by the foundational biases of our institutions.
Empathy requires recognition that experience can transcend the self. When someone else shares an experience, or when we ourselves recognize that conditions subject someone else to an experience we may or may not be familiar with, empathy provides an entry point to provide support, without necessitating first-hand experience. Developing empathy requires ongoing effort by the individual, including self-reflection, lifelong learning, and respect for difference. Developing empathy also requires supportive institutional contexts—policies, practices, and structures that empower empathy across the campus environment. Putting the onus of empathy solely on an individual is unfair and unproductive. We each need to cultivate campus environments that support the development and exercise of empathy as we seek to support one another, particularly those of us who face historic and contemporary marginalization in the academy.
The articles in this issue each work toward empathy in their own ways. Some are more direct than others, certainly, but each offers a way to cultivating more empathetic campus environments—elevating traditional conversations around empathy from the individual to the institutional context. Within this issue, the lessons for inclusion, learning, and development traverse across remote campus relationships, emergent e-athletic subjectivities, activist implications from gender studies programs, the recuperation from trauma, and the affordances of poetry in educator's practice in the collegiate environment. It is one of our most disparate collections of ideas, yet one of our richest offers for learning during the tenure of our current editorial board.
On the subject of our editorial board, I am honored to announce that Dr. Michele Tyson at the University of Denver has joined us as a co-executive editor for the remainder of our stewardship of the journal. Dr. Tyson brings over 20 years of professional experience in higher education, including academic advising, enrollment management, and adult education. She currently serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the University of Denver's higher education department. I am grateful for Dr. Tyson's expertise and leadership. As I have transitioned to a new role as the Dean of the College of Education at Eastern Michigan University, Dr. Tyson ensures a firm footing remains in the journal's current host institution. Her insightful scholarship and her critical commitments to enhancing the student learning experience will serve About Campus well.
As a reminder, ACPA is currently searching for the next Executive Editor of About Campus, as our current editorial board's tenure will come to an end in Summer 2023. If interested, please visit https://myacpa.org/search-for-executive-editor-about-campus/.