College Student Services Administration

Kirsten Hextrum is an Assistant Professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society, and the Coordinator of the College Student Services Administration (CSSA) Program. Her research, teaching, and service are unified through her rigorous and persistent intersectional racial justice efforts. As a cultural studies scholar, she employs critical theories to examine the production and transmission of privilege across three interrelated terrains that restrict college-going opportunities for BIPOC and lower-income communities: (1) organization and administration of higher education, 2) the state and legal issues and 3) emergent parent and student cultures. She takes a relational approach to studying privilege by always considering how the (re)making of dominance mediates educational access and inclusion for historically marginalized groups. Leading journals across diverse disciplines including Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Higher Education and Gender & Women’s Studies have published Dr. Hextrum’s work, including Harvard Education Review, Teachers College Record, Gender & Education, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport.

Dr. Hextrum’s recent book, Special Admission, (2022 outstanding book award, honorable mention, by the Society of Professors of Education) contradicts the belief that college sports provide an avenue for upward mobility. Her book’s findings identify the complex ways individual and familial sport preferences, interactions in school and sport settings, hierarchical models of athletic advancement and competition, and geographic and community resources converge into predictable patterns to preference white middle-class students in athletic recruitment. The book charts the dynamic and historic relationships between the state, elite groups, private entities, schools, and sports that undergird college athletic access. These relationships allow white, middle-class athletes to accelerate their racial and economic advantages through preferential admission to elite universities. Her research has been supported by competitive granting agencies, including the Spencer Foundation ($50,000) and recognized by awards from institutional (recipient of the University of Oklahoma’s Presidential Professorship) and national associations (American Educational Research Association SIG 164 Emerging Scholar Award).

Dr. Hextrum disseminates her research beyond academic venues and has joined or founded various service initiatives to improve the educational conditions of historically underrepresented student groups. For instance, her research into athletic admission has been featured in over 40 international news outlets including The Atlantic, The Guardian, CNN, and National Public Radio, among others, in a legal brief for the seminal case NCAA v. O’Bannon, and in practitioner recommendations to create more equitable athletic departments. Racial justice curriculums by professional organizations such as the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, American Volleyball Coaches Association, and USRowing use her research. In June 2022, she hosted a training for US Office of Civil Rights Title IX and Title VI enforcement divisions.

Prior to joining the faculty at Oregon State, Dr. Hextrum was an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies and the Edith Kinney Gaylord Endowed Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma (2017-2022). She received her PhD in Social & Cultural Studies of Education at the University of California Berkeley (2017). She also spent seven years working in academic support for college athletes and competing as a DI rower—two experiences which continue to inform her research, service, and activism efforts.