UW–Madison’s Xueli Wang is receiving a significant award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) for her groundbreaking work examining ways to improve the higher education landscape in an effort to help college students find their path to a better life.
Her research emphasizes issues of equity in the transfer process among students who start out at two-year colleges with an eye on transferring to a four-year institution to earn a bachelor’s degree, particularly in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics) field.
For these efforts, Wang is being presented with the ASHE 2020 Council for the Advancement of Higher Education Programs (CAHEP) Barbara Townsend Lecture Award on Nov. 18 during the annual ASHE conference. Wang will then virtually deliver the Townsend Lecture at 3:30 p.m. (Central) on that day titled, “Centering Equity in Research on Community Colleges and Transfer—A Path Toward Full Participation.”
“It was nearly impossible to fully unpack my feelings and reactions as the 2020 recipient of the Barbara Townsend Lecture Award,” says Wang. “During my graduate school years, Barbara Townsend’s extensive and forward-looking research on community college transfer was a major source of inspiration for me. Indeed, the democracy and mobility embodied by community colleges and their transfer mission have since propelled me and my work as a higher education scholar and faculty member over the past decade.”
A summary of Wang’s lecture explains, in her own words: “Community colleges and transfer embody democracy and mobility — a promise to be fully delivered only when we front center equity. I share my decade-long learning, unlearning, and relearning in this direction. I also discuss how community colleges have and can continue to help students cope and thrive during times of crisis.”
With more than a decade of research in this realm, Wang is the author of: “On My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Building Equitable STEM Transfer Pathways,” which was released in April 2020.
Wang is the Barbara and Glenn Thompson Professor in Educational Leadership with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
The 2020 Barbara Townsend Lecture nomination describes Xueli Wang as “among the most prolific scholars, and a leading voice around myriad community college topics and, in particular, upward transfer. She is a leader in training community college researchers for tomorrow. She propels the voices of actual community college students into the public sphere. By elevating the voices of students on the ground, and by providing actionable ideas to move toward equitable access to transfer, Dr. Wang challenges all of us to do better.”
Townsend served as the ASHE Executive Director, among many other committees, to advance the study of higher education. She was a leading scholar on community colleges, feminist studies, doctoral education, and higher education programs.
“Although I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Barbara in person, from countless colleagues who knew Barbara, I came to appreciate, and strive to emulate, the ways in which she approached work with the highest possible quality, thoughtfulness, and care,” says Wang. “Receiving this honor is a humbling reminder to devote my research, teaching, and service where they matter the most to ensure truly equitable postsecondary outcomes, through the kind of perpetual openness and reflexivity that underlined Barbara Townsend’s expansive scholarship.”
To learn more about the Barbara Townsend Lecture and the ASHE 2020 Virtual Conference, visit this awards web page.