MY STORY

Dr. Aireale J. Rodgers is an Anna Julia Cooper Fellow and Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis department. Drawing on frameworks from critical race studies and the learning sciences, Dr. Rodgers’ scholarship seeks to illuminate how people’s everyday (mis)understandings about race and racism shape learning across various higher education ecologies. She uses qualitative techniques to study how people and organizations learn and how educators can better facilitate learning that advances critical race consciousness for faculty and students in postsecondary institutions. She has studied learning in a variety of postsecondary contexts, including university classrooms and doctoral coursework, a faculty intergroup dialogue program, the implementation of new organizational processes via graduate student socialization, and the transition to Ph.D. candidacy. Dr. Rodgers holds a B.S. in Social Policy and an M.A. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and a Ph.D. in Urban Education Policy from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. 

When not thinking about equity and justice in higher education, Aireale is spending time with her beloved partner and stepdaughter, hosting dinner parties, or scouring books by fantastic Black Women, like Audre Lorde, Joy James, and Toni Morrison, for inspiration.