The purpose for this project is to increase awareness surrounding the needs that staff members at Davidson College have in their work environment. The key and unique design to this study is its insurance of anonymity for all participants so that they do not feel restricted in any capacity to talk about the issues in their workplace that have negatively impacted them. Through this qualitative, community-based learning project that took an action research approach, we intended to provide recommendations for how the Davidson College administration and/or college broader community could work to improve upon the issues that staff identified.
In creating this digital domain to make the findings and recommendations more accessible to the broader public, we, as researchers and students, hope to eliminate the issue of activist efforts at Davidson College being lost or forgotten as generations of students, faculty, and staff may leave the school.
Embodying systems of power and hierarchy, these issues recur throughout time for staff members who feel that they must keep quiet and do not have any other means to express that college workplace issues exist in the first place. It will take both immediate and long-term action plans to begin to address the needs that staff have identified—as well as the needs that have yet to be revealed via further research. We intend for this project and its findings to be a starting point for additional and/or more extensive projects on staff voice and experience here at Davidson College. We also intend for the project to serve as a call-to-action for other colleges to consider similar routes to gauging staff’s experiences and issues in their workplaces.
