Research Advancing Identities and Student Experiences Center (RAISE Center)

The Research Advancing Identities and Student Experiences Center, or RAISE Center, began in spring 2022 as an effort to revivify research and outreach about SFA’s college students and explore how identity develops through their formative college experiences. The RAISE Center will aim to profile the spectrum of diversity that comprises the contemporary college student through research and critical praxis. Programming will discuss and highlight student populations, trends and issues in regard to how they are supported by our institutions. Furthermore, the center will explore the identity experiences of the diverse spectrum of our students to highlight their intersections of identity and research crucial issues facing students within their persistence towards graduation.

Mission

The mission of the RAISE Center will be to support research activities and outreach about higher education specifically related to the identity development and experiences of college students.

The center’s activities are organized around centering student experiences through three A’s: amplifying voice, affirming identity and advancing belonging.

1. Amplifying voice will foreground marginalized social identities across student populations to explore how the college student experience expands their developmental narrative despite systemic barriers and personal challenges. 
2. Affirming identity will center specific identities across gender, racial and cultural identities to discuss how institutions or their individual lived experiences influence their identity salience and may facilitate learning across differences.
3. Advancing belonging will highlight the potential ways in which the college experience can involve student populations the research notes as “invisible identities,” which are often pushed to the far boundaries of the cocurricular experience.

Research Activities and Opportunities

• Enhance research capacity about higher education related to college student identities and promote research collaboration among SFA researchers, graduate students, administrators and practitioners
• Build capacity to be competitive in obtaining grant funding and sustainable external funding
• Author and collaborate on original research by forming an extended network of higher education researchers and scholars who examine college student identities and their experiences
• Promote the study of college student identity research related to undergraduate student experiences through the creation of an academic journal
• Disseminate knowledge and scholarship through public service, which will include continuing education and training workshops

Contact the RAISE Center

For research projects and to connect with the RAISE Center, contact:

Dr. Pietro A. Sasso
Director of the RAISE Center
Assistant Professor
Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership
Pietro.Sasso@sfasu.edu 
936.468.1418

RAISE Center
Human Services Building, Room 315
P.O. Box 13019