Burned Out or Burned Through? The Costs of Student Affairs Diversity Work

The paradoxes of social justice education: Experiences of LGBTQ+ social justice educational intervention facilitators.

“…Interpersonal connections across facilitators could cultivate intersectional designs and approaches to encourage systemic analysis of power, privilege, and oppression in SJEIs. In short, the challenges LGBTQ+ SJEI facilitators experience reveal price of LGBTQ+ cultural taxation (Padilla, 1994) and how it is a mechanism for the colleges and universities to burn through these diversity educators (Anderson, 2021).…”

“…For instance, one of the costs to facilitators is the unacknowledged and unaccounted for the time required to engage in diversity education work extends beyond the workshops they facilitate; there is labor hidden within various aspects of LGBTQ+ SJEI facilitation such as responding to requests, logistics, and preparation for the facilitation, which reflects similar experiences of diversity educators in Miller et al's (2018) research. The uncompensated labor sets up LGBTQ+ SJEI facilitators for the institution to burn through them (Anderson, 2021). Participant experience raised questions about the types of support and development that exists for LGBTQ+ SJEIs.…”

A Mixed Method Analysis of Burnout and Turnover Intentions Among Higher Education Professionals During COVID-19

“…Various industries have begun experiencing a "Great Resignation" because of a growing discontent with workplace conditions (Hirsch, 2021). For institutions of higher education to avoid this fate and high rates of turnover, they must adjust their practices from burning through HEPs (Anderson, 2021) to prioritizing the humanity of their workforce by making institutional-level reforms to navigate the challenges to come.…”

“…HEPs who provide student services including counseling often have increased levels of burnout (Maslach, 2003;Mullen, Blount, et al, 2018;Preston et al, 2021). Anderson (2021) highlights how HEPs with responsibility for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion experience burnout because of institutional practices that 'burn through' these workers, in part because of increased responsibilities and declining resources. These high levels of burnout and stress among HEPs have also been associated with increased turnover intentions (Mullen, Malone, et al, 2018).…”

“…However, this may not be a justifiable assumption in studying burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic because of disproportionate effects on communities of color (Gracia, 2020;Molock & Parchem, 2021) and women and single parents with increased caretaking responsibilities (Calarco et al, 2021;Power, 2020). Race, ethnicity, and gender have been shown to influence burnout in HEPs as well (Anderson, 2021;Howard-Hamilton et al, 1998;Steele, 2018). However, we believe that our findings may be the 'best case' scenario, and women and HEPs of color may have even greater turnover intentions and burnout than our averages.…”