GPSS 2023 Conference Keynotes

Michael Brown and Rachel A. Smith, both assistant professors in Student Affairs and Higher Education, will present on their models and research findings related to gradate student support, wellbeing, and community generation. 

Dr. Michael Brown is an assistant professor in Student Affairs and Higher Education in the School of Education in the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University. His research focuses on the development of undergraduate and community college curriculum, pedagogy, and technology with a focus on how curriculum, pedagogy, and technology shape students’ academic momentum, career aspirations, and social and academic networks. At ISU, he serves as the program coordinator for the Masters degree in Student Affairs and co-directs Game2Work, a multi-disciplinary research community focused on developing serious games that expand educational and workforce opportunities. He also co-leads, with Dr. Rachel Smith, the College Networks Lab. Dr. Brown’s research has been published in Teaching and Teacher Education, the Journal of Higher Education, and Computers & Education and has been featured by Iowa Public Radio, Inside Higher Ed, and the New York Times.

Rachel A. Smith is an assistant professor of student affairs and higher education in the School of Education at Iowa State University. Her research relies on social network analysis and mixed methods to examine the roles higher educational institutions play in organizing student relational patterns and their associations with educational outcomes. Her recent work has focused on learning communities and the experiences of undergraduate and graduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has taught graduate courses on student affairs administration, U.S. college students, research methods, and assessment. She earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Higher Postsecondary Education from Syracuse University and holds a B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The GPSS Conference will be sharing their keynote and closing ceremony via livestream, accessible here: https://iastate.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=a5d3aca9-6507-4e5d-8512-afe1015bcfb8

This event was recorded and will be available for two weeks at the Lectures Available Recordings website: www.lectures.iastate.edu/recordings/available-recordings