Rate My Professor Ashley Carpenter

Ashley Carpenter is an associate professor in the higher education program at Appalachian State University’s Reich College of Education, within the Department of Counseling, Family Therapy, and Higher Education. She holds a PhD in Higher Education Administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2019), an MA in American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis (2015), and a BA in Psychology and Sociology from the University of Missouri (2013). Before joining the faculty, she worked as a college administrator assessing and implementing strategies for recruiting and retaining minoritized graduate students. Since approximately 2020, she has taught courses on the history and law of higher education, higher education policy, supervising and advising, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. In the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, she instructs EDL 7011: Multidisciplinary Seminar: Emerging Issues I and EDL 7065: Writing for the Professional Educator.

Carpenter’s research focuses on advancing equity and accessibility in K-12 and higher education pathways, examining institutionalized systems, policies, and cultural contexts that affect racially minoritized students; historical, legal, and policy implications of higher education; and the climate crisis through a social and racial justice lens. As an arts-based methodologist, her scholarship emphasizes (re)humanizing education, challenging neoliberalism and marginalization via participant action research. Notable projects include exploring Black collegians’ visual narratives of safety and joy. Key publications comprise “Rage In (and Out) the Cage: Black Students’ Negotiation of Safety” (Journal of Black Studies, 2024), “Impact that Transcends Proximity: Black College Students Traversing Multiple Pandemics” (Liberte, 2022), “Black identity and perceptions: Strength and struggle” (Journal of Negro Education, 2023), and “Black elephant in the room: Black students contextualizing campus racial climate within US racial climate” (Journal of College Student Development, 2018). She has earned the 2024 Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant for “Picturing Resilience: The Visual Narratives of Safety and Joy among Black Collegians” (nearly $50,000), the 2024 Reich College of Education Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, the 2022 RCOE Inclusive Excellence Award, a fellowship in the NASPA Emerging Faculty Leader Academy, and the Teaching for Community Resilience Fellowship. Carpenter serves on the editorial board of the Journal of First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, founded and chairs the RCOE Equity Think Tank, and holds leadership positions including ASHE Council of Ethnic Participation Subcommittee Chair.