Gordon Palmer
Educational Policy Studies
About
Gordon Palmer will be joining the Department of Urban Higher Education as a Bridge to Faculty Fellow this Fall. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in International Studies and Religion from Baylor University, a Masters degree in Higher Education from Miami University (in Ohio), and is receiving his PhD in Higher education and Psychology from the University of Michigan. His current work is supported by a Ford Foundation and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.
His work is motivated by an effort to understand how Black people transform the places that they occupy into more just and compassionate places through meaning-making, cultural ideologies, compassionate relationships, and acts of justice. Gordon’s emerging program of research broadly focuses on 1) examining the sociopolitical development of Black urban residents—with a particular focus on Black women college and graduate students—through innovative critical qualitative placed-based methodologies and 2) examining how parents, mentors, and spirituality influence the well-being and persistence of Black peoples generally and Black university students specifically. He takes on this work as someone dedicated to ethical, rigorous, and reciprocal research practices aimed at transforming the extant higher education understanding of urban residing Black students in the US into one that is more emic and inclusive.