Sparking a Commitment to Social Justice in Asian American Studies

Centralizing Our Voices to Enact Social Justice

Social justice is embedded in our nation’s foundational fabric; we must name and resist tyranny and oppression, especially in governance, that compromises our society’s members’ safety, freedom, and equitable access to participate and make decisions democratically, to learn and grow, to share the power and work of the society, and to fairly benefit from its rewards. To us, social justice is the value that both (a) names society’s inequities that contradict these principles and (b) seeks to rectify these injustices through the process of social change.

Foregrounding our voices centralizes social justice in the pedagogy and scholarship of community engagement through the value of equity. As Mitchell and Rost-Banik (2017) note:

Educational research has a long history of excluding AAPIs’ experiences (Chan & Wang, 1991; Hune & Chan, 1997; Museus et al., 2013; Nakanishi & Nishida, 1995; Osajima, 1995; Poon & Hune, 2009; Teranishi et al., 2010; Yee, 2001). Because our intersectional perspectives as students, community partners, and members of AAPI communities are usually not assumed nor represented in traditional service learning and engaged scholarship, the presence of our voices and narratives challenges this scholarly erasure. As hooks (2015) asserts, “Oppressed people resist by identifying themselves as subjects, by defining their reality, by shaping their identity, naming their history, telling their story” (p. 43). As faculty, students, and community partners who originate from and identify with the racialized and historically marginalized communities with whom we serve, we offer unique standpoints on the impact of service learning designed intentionally within Asian American studies, an academic field created to achieve social justice through social change (Hune, 1989; Yee, 2020) and offered at CSUF, a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) that also meets Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–Serving Institution (AANAPISI) criteria. We exercise power to write about ourselves in ways that people who do not share our experiences or social positions might “other” us through their own privileged lenses (hooks, 2015). To counter this scholarly inequity, we view our insiders’ perspectives, roles, and community membership as assets of “community cultural wealth” (Yosso, 2005, p. 75).

Likewise, we intervene in community-engaged scholarship through the social justice value of access by creating knowledge written clearly for students, community partners, university practitioners, and scholars. We are frustrated by research written by and for academics using language and theory “to establish a select intellectual elite and to reinforce and perpetuate systems of domination, most obviously white, Western cultural imperialism” (hooks, 2015, p. 40). We seek to generate understandable ideas and knowledge in a scholarly article made accessible with visuals and words that unpack conventional academic jargon.

Finally, our primary purpose is to document our shared experiences in ASAM 230, a course focused on AAS’s long-term social justice project of social change. In contrast to the now standard goals of accountability and achieving measurable student learning outcomes in higher education,[5] the historical purpose of Asian American studies is, according to Hune (1989):

Creating an environment for consciousness raising among students, to reimagine the power that comes from seeing one’s position in a social and political system that upholds white supremacy, calls for embracing marginality as “a site of radical possibility, a space of resistance. . . . It offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (hooks, 1989, p. 20). In a social, economic, and political system created to maintain people of color as subordinate, AAS offers students opportunities to build upon previous generations’ knowledge and accomplishments by learning who they are, what positions they occupy in America’s racialized society, and how to exercise power mindfully. In this way, social change occurs when next-generation leaders and activists interpret the field’s mission for themselves and embrace community-centered values to work collectively to address current issues and improve our communities for their own and future generations. Our article provides insight into this process of individual awakening and transformation as a way to effect social change to achieve social justice.

Scholarly Frameworks

Two additional theories provide lenses to signify and interpret our research: critical race theory (CRT) and intersectionality. According to Solórzano and Yosso (2001), CRT in education strives to “develop a theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical strategy that accounts for the role of race and racism in . . . education and works toward the elimination of racism as part of a larger goal of eliminating other forms of subordination, such as gender, class, and sexual orientation” (p. 472). Five themes characterize CRT:

1. the centrality of race and racism and their intersectionality with other forms of subordination
2. the challenge to dominant ideology
3. the commitment to social justice
4. the centrality of experiential knowledge
5. the transdisciplinary perspective (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001, pp. 472–473)

Employing CRT, we choose to share our personal narratives as experiential knowledge to expand definitions of community-engaged scholarship and offer insights into the impact of service learning pedagogy intentionally created to address power and social change (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Our purposeful presentation of counter-stories challenges dominant assumptions about approaching service learning consciously, particularly regarding how we view “community” and exercise power.

Collins and Bilge (2016) describe the second analytic approach, intersectionality, as the following:

They identify six core themes that often accompany intersectional analyses in various forms: (a) social inequality, (b) power, (c) relationality, (d) social context, (e) complexity, and (f) social justice (Collins & Bilge, 2016, pp. 25–30). We found intersectionality a useful theory with which to express our struggle to describe and explain our data’s nuance and fluidity. Intersectionality accounts for the complexity of our individual lives and our communities’ stories. Inherent in our positionality as people of AAPI heritage and people of color in American society is social inequality. Because we as faculty and now alumni are privileged with university resources and education that come with real yet unspoken power, we address the significance of our research contributions by purposefully employing CRT and intersectionality to present our findings.

ASAM 230’s Context and Creation

Understanding the regional and disciplinary contexts for ASAM 230’s creation illuminates our study’s contribution to the field of community-engaged scholarship. CSUF, a public comprehensive university committed to educating its regional students with a global perspective (CSUF, 2020a), is situated in Orange County, home to the third highest population of AAPI residents in the nation (Campbell & Bharath, 2011) and the largest number of people of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam. Among the 23 California State University campuses, CSUF is one of the largest, with 41,408 students enrolled in fall 2020 (CSUF, 2020b). More than 75% identify as students of color. Mostly a “commuter” campus, CSUF houses approximately 5% of its students in residence life. As of fall 2020, CSUF’s students consist of 20.7% self-identified Asian students and 0.2% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander students. Of these, only 47% have parents who graduated from college (CSUF, 2020b). With these demographics, CSUF and ASAM have prioritized offering students educational opportunities not only to earn degrees and gain employment but also to become engaged citizens and leaders who effect culturally responsive, community-minded policies and practices in our region, state, and nation.

As indicated in the introduction, our research team originally came together as professor and undergraduate students through ASAM 230. When alumni co-authors took ASAM 230 from 2011 to 2016, they served primarily with OCAPICA’s after-school youth programs mentoring high school students of mostly Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, Latinx, and African American heritage in our local communities. More than half of the high school youth served through OCAPICA’s youth programs have parents who had neither attended nor completed college. At that time, OCAPICA’s goals included improving health and increasing access to higher education among its surrounding communities.

Through this CSUF-OCAPICA partnership, ASAM 230 provides students the opportunity to enact a vision originating in the Asian American Movement of the 1960s and 1970s (Yee, 2020). ASAM 230 students learn that the movement gave rise to both the academic discipline of Asian American studies and direct-service, advocacy-oriented CBOs (Wei, 1993). Both were intended to collaborate to serve the community (Wei, 1993) in order to achieve the Asian American Movement’s goal of “revolutionary structural change for liberation and social justice in education and society” (Yee, 2020, p. 43). ASAM 230’s purposeful design embeds students in the process of serving with our communities via mutually beneficial community-university partnerships (Yee & Cheri, 2018–2019), as intended by AAS founders (Hune, 1989; Ishizuka, 2016; Liu et al., 2008; Louie & Omatsu, 2014; Wei, 1993; Zhou & Ocampo, 2016). OCAPICA partners affirmed this vision as they taught our college students how to mentor high school students with a respectful, reciprocal asset-based approach. ASAM 230 students learned to conceive of their service-learner roles as both university partners and community members—rather than as “college outsiders/experts” coming “into” and “fixing” community. The high school mentees benefited from the mentors’ experience as college students, and the ASAM 230 mentors gained insight and practical knowledge by supporting the high schoolers’ college application process and socialization. As a result, ASAM 230 students learned AAS’s definition of “community” firsthand by simultaneously uplifting all community members and viewing themselves as part of an intergenerational cycle of community building.

Who Are We?

Situating ourselves is a qualitative research practice that explains how our unique lenses influence our scholarly approach, analysis, and findings (Creswell, 2007). We write in first and third person and singular and plural voices to try to balance our team’s perspectives. Additionally, we articulate our names’ preferred phonetic pronunciations, as the anglicizing, changing, or indifferent mis-pronunciation of AAPI community members’ names is often a seemingly innocent yet disrespectful form of domination and diminishment.

Figure 1 explains our relationships, including when we met through ASAM 230, our collaborations, and current occupations. ASAM 230 professor Jennifer A. Yee (Jen) taught all undergraduates during the indicated terms. Alumni Kasandra Tong (Kassie) and Anthony Villanueva graduated and served as OCAPICA community partners, where they created ASAM 230’s first formal 10-week service curriculum and co-taught the other four alumni, Phong Doan, Mitchell Tao, Quyen Le, and Vy Le, from fall 2014 through spring 2016. After graduating, Vy also served as community partner at Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Orange County (AAAJ-OC), designed AAAJ-OC’s service curriculum, and co-taught ASAM 230 students from spring 2019 through spring 2020.

Figure 1. Co-Author Connections

In 2017, Jen invited alumni to design a pedagogical workshop to share ASAM 230 experiences at a national conference (Yee et al., 2017). We had so much fun that we embarked on a longitudinal collaborative autoethnography to understand ASAM 230’s impact. We presented preliminary findings at a 2019 conference (Yee et al., 2019) and culminate our study in this article.

With relationships built on trust, care, respect, honesty, and mutuality, we have sustained this project with weekend in-person and Zoom meetings as each student graduated and progressed to careers and graduate school. We proactively discussed shifting power dynamics from a hierarchy as former students, community partners, and service learning co-instructors to a collegial scholarly partnership as alumni, professionals, and mentors. We shared project responsibilities and openly decided co-authorship order by consensus.

Why Did We Teach/Take ASAM 230?

To understand our lenses as researchers, we convey our origins and reasons for teaching and taking ASAM 230. All of us originate from or identify with the immigrant and refugee communities of color served through ASAM 230. Of our seven team members, one is 1.5-generation (immigration status),[6] five are second-generation, and one is descended from multiple generations.

Jen, ASAM 230’s faculty creator, shared her family history:

She described embracing social justice values through her K–12 Catholic education, solidified by her college education in the California State University system, where she affirmed her goal to serve “the public good with an explicit foundation of social justice values.”

ASAM alumna and community partner Kassie Tong shared a family history that embodies AAPI fluidity of migration and identity. After transferring to CSUF, she turned to Asian American studies because “it was the first time . . . [she] was able to make a personal connection” with the curriculum.

ASAM alumnus and community partner Anthony Villanueva (professionally pronounced VEE-ya-new-EH-va; family pronounced VIL-ya-new-EH-va) wrote of his childhood health challenges as motivation to pursue his career:

Alumnus Phong Doan (first name pronounced Fawmg; last name pronounced doh-AHN) has an incredible story of being mentored by ASAM 230 students as a high school student, then becoming an ASAM 230 student in college and mentoring others.

Alumnus Mitchell Tao (last name pronounced Tow, rhymes with now) examined his identity through ASAM courses.

Alumna Quyen Le (pronounced Quinn and Leh) noted that while her previous ASAM classes had taught her conceptually about serving with community, ASAM 230 made this abstract ideal concrete and real.

Alumna and former community partner Vy Le (pronounced Vee and Leh) described the relationship between taking ASAM 230 and developing her personal identity:

Intentionally situating who we are in both service learning spaces and community-engaged scholarship highlights the richness of our stories as our community wealth (Yosso, 2005). Delgado Bernal (2002) contends that all students of color are holders and creators of knowledge, as their family “histories, experiences, cultures, and languages” offer strengths to respond to oppression (pp. 120–121). In this spirit, our team reflected on the relationship between their origins, the consciousness that emerged during and subsequent to taking ASAM 230, their present lives, and their future goals (see “Findings”).

Collaborative Autoethnography

We conducted a collaborative autoethnography (CAE), a “qualitative research method in which researchers work in community to collect their autobiographical materials and to analyze and interpret their data collectively to gain a meaningful understanding of sociocultural phenomena reflected in their autobiographical data” (Chang et al., 2013, pp. 23–24). Our project followed the “iterative process of collaborative autoethnography”: (a) preliminary data collection, (b) subsequent data collection, (c) data analysis and interpretation, and (d) report writing (Chang et al., 2013, p. 24; Holman Jones et al., 2013).

From 2017 to 2021, we shared team responsibilities, met at least 80 times in person and via Zoom, collected and analyzed data, and generated theory together (see Appendix for methodological details, timeline, and protocols). Our data set includes reflections from 2017 to 2020, the 2017 Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) presentation, the 2019 Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Senior Colleges and Universities Commission (WSCUC) Academic Resource Conference (ARC) presentation transcript, and our 2017 to 2020 meeting notes.

After reviewing 2017 and 2018 data in summer 2018, alumni articulated and defined preliminary themes; then each alumnus individually coded all data by hand. Together we chunked data by organizing alumni quotes on posters into emergent themes (i.e., leadership, mentorship, activism, reflection, class and field curricular development, culture, service learning, radical care, and community). Then alumni organized the major themes and narratives into an Excel database in 2019. As alumni researchers analyzed our findings, Jen asked probing questions (e.g., What do you mean? How do you know this? Do these concepts and themes relate to your development, and if so, how?). Centering alumni interpretations about micro-level details led to our collective inductive reasoning. After discussing alumni analyses, Jen subsequently identified and named our emerging phenomena in qualitative methodology terms. She reflected her understanding back to the team in clearer language for verification. In turn, the team clarified and drew diagrams to ensure Jen grasped their analyses, which she translated into writing.

Our rich discussions moved alumni to challenge our initial research question; that is, how could alumni explain the course’s assumed, one-way impact on their development without understanding how Jen designed the class? Their insistent questioning led our team in two directions: (a) Jen answered their questions in an article on how ASAM 230 addresses social justice as a critical service learning course (Yee, 2020), and (b) we sketched a circular process depicting ASAM 230’s much broader impact on alumni’s lives, emerging as ASAM 230’s theory for social change (Figure 2). Integrating CAE and a grounded theory analytical approach of being open to what emerged from our data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) helped us to represent our theory generation non-traditionally. Chang et al. (2013) “argue that CAE as an emerging research practice should not be limited to a particular approach or style of representation as long as it holds true to salient aspects of methodological rigor” (p. 25).

As alumni availability decreased due to post-college job searches, life changes, and graduate school, co-authoring shifted to Jen, whose methodological expertise and research experience enabled her to draft and finalize the article. During the writing phase, the team met biweekly to refine ongoing analyses, content, and language. Finalizing the article has followed the same process, with the team discussing reviewers’ and editorial feedback and clarifying analyses together. Jen rewrote with the team’s direction, consent, and final approval. Our article is truly a product of collective thinking and shared scholarly work.

Professor’s Identity and Pedagogy

To understand ASAM 230’s impact on us, we alumni asked, How and why did Jen create the class? Through our probing, we found that Jen’s AAPI feminist pedagogy (i.e., her approach and practice of teaching) centered on expressing the value of “community” through radical care and mindful power. Jen reported manifesting her intersectional AAPI feminist identity, values, and epistemology when partnering with OCAPICA to design ASAM 230’s transformative curriculum (Nicol & Yee, 2012; Yee, 2009, 2020; Yee & Cheri, 2018–2019). She recalled that during her master’s and doctoral programs she engaged in research and community programs with university and community activists who inspired her intersectional understanding of “community.” She created ASAM 230 for the following reason:

Jen’s insight helped us to make sense of what we experienced in the ASAM 230 classroom and through our service. That is, instead of designing a space in higher education that maintains existing hierarchical structures and the status quo, she and OCAPICA partners intentionally sought to empower ASAM 230 students to learn about and experience personal and community transformation. The course’s reflective assignments fostered our articulation of who we are, how we see ourselves in relation to community, what matters to us and why, and our chosen life paths (Yee, 2020). Our team found that the combination of the course pedagogy, lessons, assignments, service, and explicit values raised our consciousness and influenced our alumni’s development as leaders and activists committed to social justice.

Emerging Consciousness and Sense of Self and Community

Our data reveal that several curricular elements stimulated our (alumni’s) evolving consciousness and clarified our sense of selves and potential to effect positive change in our communities. They are (a) clear social skill building on compassion, non-verbal communication, and kindness to prepare students to interact with community members; (b) reflective writing and the final “What Matters to Me and Why?” paper; and (c) the structured community service learning experience.

Social skill building for lifelong learning. Intentionally creating a humanistic environment that models respect, compassion, and support is critical to preparing students to engage with community. Through ASAM 230, Quyen learned what’s possible in education:

Anthony highlighted the lifelong lesson on non-verbal communication and body language:

Quyen appreciated hearing the distinction about the expected classroom norm to be kind by listening intently and asserting one’s perspectives honestly and sincerely:

As a result of learning ways to conduct themselves while serving with community, alumni felt empowered with consciousness and interpersonal skills that humanize their environments.

Reflective writing and “What Matters to Me and Why?” final paper. Research has found that reflection plays an integral role in community service learning (Astin et al., 2000). ASAM 230 students write service-related reflections and papers on who they are, their life timelines, their hopes and dreams, culminating in a final paper answering “What matters to me and why?” Our alumni recount how much the paper and its writing process impacted them.

Kassie shared that writing the paper stimulated her identity development:

Likewise, Phong mentioned how much the class and paper helped to discern his core values:

Anthony credited the final paper with integrating and crystallizing his purpose:

Likewise, Vy reflected on ASAM 230’s role in solidifying her direction:

Our alumni narratives affirm the effectiveness of involving students in structured critical reflection throughout the term and particularly a culminating reflective paper that integrates the curricular content, service experience, and values exploration.

Intentional service/field curriculum. The long-term ASAM/CBO partnership afforded ASAM 230’s co-creators the privilege of continually improving the course (Yee, 2020; Yee & Cheri, 2018–2019). Each semester concluded with students, community partners, and faculty reflecting on what worked well and what could be better. Prior to 2015, students’ service experiences involved showing up on-site and assisting OCAPICA staff with their day’s activities. ASAM 230 students from fall 2014 recommended improving the class by providing a more structured community service learning curriculum. When Kassie and Anthony became ASAM 230’s OCAPICA community partners, they reflected on both their ASAM 230 student experience and OCAPICA’s Youth Program goals to envision a 10-week service curriculum engaging service-learners in a developmental service process. OCAPICA staff began to prepare and orient ASAM 230 students during Weeks 2 and 4 in the classroom. From Weeks 5 to 14, ASAM 230 students commenced on-site service as observers, increasing interactions with OCAPICA high school youth to become college student mentors. With OCAPICA staff guidance, ASAM 230 students became program leaders who planned and facilitated a full-day health-oriented curriculum—including a fun physical activity, a creative workshop, and a journal reflection prompt—for the high school students.

Mitchell and Vy benefited from the revamped developmentally progressive service curriculum. Mitchell described how the intentional service curriculum raised his awareness of community issues:

Vy also learned that attending to the details of building relationships makes a difference in the community:

Pondering the impact of these elements on our growth and consciousness, we alumni realized that the process of engaging in the class sparked our consciousness about our identities, values, and sense of purpose.

Course Values

Jen modeled AAPI feminist values by teaching with community-mindedness, radical care, and mindful power (Yee, 2020; Yee & Cheri, 2018–2019). These values influenced (a) our understanding of how important a commitment to community is to our sense of selves, (b) how much the feeling and practice of radical care impacted us, and (c) how the transparency of having and using our power affects our leadership and activism.

Community and community-mindedness. The Asian American Movement’s concept of “community” refers to a value and belief instrumental to the overall AAPI community’s political empowerment and survival in the United States. In Asian American studies, we actualize this value as the practice of “community-mindedness,” which assumes that individuals are always in relationship with one another. Jen welcomes students warmly during the first week of class, as she establishes clear norms that convey the importance of communication, compassion, honesty, and mutual respect as foundations for building community. These norms translate into shared expectations for how faculty and students eventually engage with community partners and members. As Kassie observed:

Vy described “community-mindedness” as a way of thinking and being that balances individual needs with the collective good:

Practicing community-mindedness has helped us alumni to embrace and manifest the value of community in our present lives. Community-mindedness is a way of connecting and supporting one another through shared histories, experiences, and oppressions and interacting through authentic, non-judgmental balanced relationships with one another. Distinct from how community-engaged learning and scholarship may define “community” as entities “outside” or beyond the university’s scope (i.e., not students), we perceive community as intersecting with the university (e.g., we are community members and students who move fluidly through the university and return home to live, socialize, and work). In other words, we write about ourselves as both “students” and “community” in this article.

Radical care. Jen consciously manifests the value of “radical care” to foster humanity, mutual respect, humor, safety, kindness, and compassion in the classroom. “Radical” reflects non-conforming, out-of-the-box thinking, and radical care is a way of being that extends beyond conventional ideas about classroom interaction. Mitchell conveyed our composite definition:

Kassie observed radical care practices included sitting in a circle, checking in to understand people’s mindset, and assuming that everyone in the class, including the professor, learns from one another (2017 Reflection). We alumni observed how much this acknowledgment of our humanity impacted our learning and now intentionally lead with radical care to value people as people rather than as workers, producers, and consumers.

Mindful power. Employing power consciously requires acknowledging one’s position in hierarchical relationships between and among people and organizations. This critical perspective acknowledges structural oppressions such as racism, sexism, classism, able-ism, and privilege. Because power shifts with each context, one who does not feel powerful in one setting may either be perceived to have or actually possess power in another. Using one’s power to humanize our spaces emerged in our data, as Vy asserted:

In this section we have articulated ASAM 230’s pedagogical approach and explained how social skill building, reflective writing, and service animated our awareness of self-purpose and community. Upon identifying the course’s underlying values of community-mindedness, radical care, and mindful power, we now understand more clearly how ASAM 230 has impacted our evolution as leaders and activists.

ASAM 230 Inspires Leadership, Activism, and Professional Aspirations

Our most compelling evidence of ASAM 230’s impact lies in connecting the spark of our consciousness to our post-graduation leadership and professional pathways. Three of us alumni have served as community partners, designed service learning curricula, and co-taught subsequent ASAM 230 service-learners. Now progressing in our careers, we alumni share examples of how we embraced and carry forward the values of community, radical care, and mindful power.

After becoming a program coordinator at OCAPICA, Kassie practiced the community-mindedness, radical care, and mindful power she learned in ASAM 230:

Kassie has taken this knowledge into her current role:

When Anthony worked as a high school coach, he exercised his power as a leader mindfully to model community-mindedness:

Anthony’s philosophy as a business owner continues to embrace community:

Phong’s transformative experience conveys the full impact of the community-university partnership that created ASAM 230. As a high school student, he participated in OCAPICA’s after-school program in which he was mentored by ASAM 230 students. Upon enrolling at CSUF, he became an ASAM 230 service-learner and mentor.

After graduating, Phong’s return to OCAPICA shows that ASAM 230 can build capacity for community leadership:

As a physical education teacher, Mitchell has purposefully translated his experience of social skill building, community-mindedness, radical care, and mindful power into similar curricular opportunities for his students:

As a physical education teacher, Mitchell articulated his goals:

Quyen attested to ASAM 230’s combination of care and empowerment as inspiring her self-confidence as a leader:

Quyen’s development as a leader also involves activism. She continues to stretch herself professionally:

Vy also connected the empowerment and care she experienced in ASAM 230 to her professional career:

Our findings reveal that the combination of ASAM 230’s pedagogical origins, curricular elements, and values have influenced our (alumni’s) identities and professional lives. While ASAM 230 was not the only class and Jen was not the only professor to impact us, we have learned that ASAM 230 sparked our commitment to enacting Asian American studies’ social justice values of community-mindedness, radical care, and mindful power and thus inspired our commitment to social change.

Theory for Social Change

We found that a direct link exists between an intentionally designed critical service learning course and long-term student and community commitments to effect social change for social justice. This causal assertion stems from the unique nature of our longitudinal collaborative autoethnography, through which we verified short- and long-term outcomes with our researchers. Our team illustrated the visual model (see Figure 2) to convey the alumni’s self-perceived impact of ASAM 230 on their growth and development. Finding that ASAM 230 served as a “spark” for their consciousness raising has tremendous implications for how university and community partners intentionally design civic education, service learning, and leadership development programs.

Centering AAPI Student and Community Voices

A persistent critique of community-engaged scholarship points to the absence of research centering community, student, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) perspectives. Our study directly addresses this critique, especially the dearth of AAPI voices, which are often overlooked or made invisible in higher education research (Osajima, 1995; Poon & Hune, 2009). Conducting our study with both Asian American studies and critical race theory lenses, we proactively centralized our experiential knowledge as AAPIs to counter structural racism in higher education research and by implication call for more research conducted in solidarity by, on, and with BIPOC communities, particularly scholarship on Asian and Pacific Islander and Desi Americans. In addition, one of the challenges of conducting research with students and community members as co-authors is the time commitment and variance in scholarly training. Our study’s implications for future research attest to the significance of committing time and resources, sharing scholarly power, continually clarifying students’ and community partners’ meanings and analyses, and obtaining consent.

Challenging Assumptions about “Community” and “Student” Constructs

Our study’s contribution lies in challenging assumptions about what “community” means, and, by extension, questioning the foundational language upon which community-engaged scholarship is built. Our team’s fluid conceptualization and interchangeable use of the terms “community” and “students” spotlights the importance of centralizing historically marginalized standpoints and meanings. Upon receiving initial editorial feedback following peer review, we were asked to consider making clearer distinctions between the impact on students and community, with the assumption that the two are different. This question opened a very animated discussion among our alumni, who argued that they are students situated in community and therefore our use of “student” is synonymous with “community.” They could not understand why the use of the word “community” would cause confusion, as they hold the “both-and” intersectional meaning of “community” in Asian American studies, not the “either-or” meaning distinguishing between “university” and “community” in existing community-engaged scholarship. The alumni advocated for recentering and claiming Asian American studies’ definition and value of “community” in our article. While groundbreaking bodies of knowledge (i.e., research on service learning and community engagement) at their inception rely on commonly held operational terms in order to communicate and disseminate research, the implication for contemporary community-engaged scholars is to challenge current scholarly assumptions and include previously excluded standpoints, language, and meanings.

Methodological Details

For scholars, students, and community partners considering longitudinal studies on their community-engaged collaborations, we share additional insight into our methodology. Our study evolved from examining the course’s impact on students to generating theory on how the course contributes to social change (see Table 1). At its onset, we projected the process would take two to three years and felt very fortunate that our project fit the MJCSL call for papers’ theme and timeline. Researchers considering similar studies will benefit from knowing the actual amount of time, commitment, and work required from conceptualization to completion.

Team members shared project responsibilities and took lead based on training, skill, and interest. Because Jen has taught qualitative research methods and published autoethnographic studies, she scheduled and set meeting agenda and taught the team fundamentals of qualitative research methods (i.e., theoretical frameworks, autoethnography, grounded theory, coding, and inductive data analysis), as most had not taken graduate-level qualitative methodology courses. Kassie assumed project management and communication when Jen focused on other faculty duties. Kassie and Mitchell ensured data collection completion and formatted reflections and presentation/meeting transcripts in preparation for coding. Quyen and Mitchell initiated code identification and coached all teammates on coding data by hand with colored pens, as teaching and accessing qualitative analysis software were not feasible. Anthony’s experience of both taking and teaching service learning courses offered the team context to compare types of service learning. Pursuing professional careers serving with community, Vy and Phong provided specific insights into analyzing ASAM 230’s impact on their formation of identity and community-mindedness. Jen and Kassie took notes during analysis meetings, and after team discussions, Jen wrote research proposals and each article’s section, which were edited with extensive team input, consent, and approval. The team completed research on human subjects training in fall 2018 and received CSUF institutional review board (IRB) approval in February 2019. Kassie created visual figures. Data were stored in shared Dropbox and Google folders and in Jen’s office. Kassie, Quyen, Vy, Mitchell, and Phong refined the article’s findings, analysis, and discussion.

While autoethnographies cannot be replicated, we provide reflection protocols (see Table 2) and meeting data (see Figure 3) to explain the depth and breadth of our project’s work. Jen formulated 2017 (pre- and post-AAAS) and 2019 (pre-MJCSL submission) protocol questions, whereas the team co-developed 2018, 2019 (pre-WSCUC), and 2020 questions.

Figure 3. ASAM 230 Number of Team Meetings

We include meeting data (total = 83) to make transparent the time needed to engage in the social justice work of partnership and capacity building, inclusivity, consultation, seeking consent, and obtaining approval. Each meeting had goals and action items, with all participants invited to engage as they were able. We defined meetings as any scheduled time during which at least two team members discussed (or gave consent to discuss) the project in person or via Zoom. Our chart does not include considerable communication by email, phone, social media, and texts. Meetings occurred mostly on Sundays and evenings to accommodate alumni work schedules. No team members were compensated for their time, but Jen secured intramural grants for conference presentations and refreshments.