Servingness and Liberatory Teaching with Gina Ann Garcia

Bonni Stachowiak has been getting curious about learning and teaching for as long as she can remember. She has spent more than twenty years in higher education because she believes learning shapes who people are becoming, and that conviction drives her work supporting educators and students as they grow, take risks, and find meaning in the process. She works in educational development and as a professor. Since 2014 she has hosted the award-winning Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, where she has asked well over 600 people how they create the conditions where humans can flourish.

Bonni holds a doctorate in organizational leadership, wrote The Productive Online and Offline Professor, keynotes and facilitates workshops for colleges and universities, and often joins her husband, Dave, on his Coaching for Leaders podcast. She believes teaching is the most hopeful work there is, and she would rather do it in community than alone. There is almost always a song playing in her head, even in a silent room.

Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor in the Berkeley School of Education. Drawing on theories of change, her research explores how Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) embrace an organizational identity for serving minoritized populations. She coined the term “servingness” which is a framework for organizing and envisioning new futures for HSIs. As an author she wrote Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities, Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice, and The HSI Movement: Strategies Driving Change at Hispanic Serving Institutions. She also created and co-authored the workbook Transforming HSIs for Equity and Justice: A Practitioner’s Workbook and is the host of the popular podcast ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? At UC Berkeley, Dr. Garcia serves as the inaugural Faculty Director of Latinx Thriving Initiatives (LTI) and directs the Higher Education Action Research for Transformation (HEART) Lab.