Queer chief student affairs officers: the impact of lived experiences and disclosure on professional identity.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20236474

This was an interpretative phenomenological analysis study which explored how eight chief student affairs officers at institutions of higher education, seven who self-identified as gay men and one who self-identified as a lesbian woman, perceived their sexuality impacted their career and professional identity. Throughout the study, the researcher utilizes the word queer to align with queer theory, as the participants explored not just their sexual orientation, but gender expression, gender expectations, and how heteronormativity and gender binary assumptions impacted their role. Within queer theory, queer is utilized to explore experiences of the non-heterosexual experience. This study helped address a gap in literature that tends to leave out the voice of staff, particularly student affairs professionals, in LGBTQ+ studies on college campuses. This study examined the early career experiences of participants and how those experiences impacted their leadership and personal values in their current role; participants also were reflective on the juxtaposition of time and place in their experience. As Swan (1995) explored the lavender ceiling-the concept that LGBTQ+ employees are constrained by explicit and implicit biases to achieving higher level leadership positions-participants detailed their own experiences that were either discriminatory or supportive in their ascension to their leadership role; using queer theory as the lens of analysis, the study analyzed how campuses contribute to workplace dynamics. The results of this study will provide leaders at institutions of higher education a better understanding of how to support queer employees and create organizational policies that demonstrate diversity as a top priority. The experiences may also assist queer emerging student affairs professionals with an understanding of the potential obstacles (such as explicit discrimination and tokenization) these participants faced in the workplace and how these individuals overcame them. The researcher recommended future research incorporate current events into the sense making process of participants and explore whether their perceptions of physical and career safety had shifted.