Heather McCambly is a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary scholar of higher education. She also studies the role of organizations in (re)producing systemic, racial inequalities. She draws on a range of analytic and interpretive methods to study the influence of aspiring change agents on institutionalized racial inequities in higher education practice and policy. She does this work with a commitment to producing knowledge that can help us, collectively, build alternative pathways toward just futures fo Black, brown, indigenous, and low-income students and institutions over time. Constructs central to her work include racialized organizations, institutional persistence and change, racial frames, political development and racial backlash, and organizational sensemaking.
Dr. McCambly’s current research asks: 1) What is and what could be the role of private philanthropy and public grantmaking in effecting racially just policy change in U.S. postsecondary education? and 2) Under what conditions do equity agendas address racialized inequalities rather than operating as new labels for old practices? She is a lso building up new lines of inquiry on the role of minority-serving community colleges as sites for political contestation of white-serving postsecondary histories.
As a first-generation college student, a community college graduate, and a multi-ethnic Latina, she is personally invested in generating clearer explanations for how, despite years of equity interventions, students of color continue to have limited access to life-affirming postsecondary experiences.
Dr. McCambly is part of the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy and positioned within the Higher Education Program, although some of her work crosses multiple boundaries. Her teaching interests include liberatory, equity-focused research methods; policy development and politics in education; community colleges; race, equity, and justice in organizations and policy.
Critical organizational sociology
Race and equity in higher education
Grantmaking, philanthropy, and funding
Social movements, abolition, and campus policing
Community colleges
Baber, L. D., & McCambly, H. (Eds.). (2023). Critiques for Transformation: Reimagining Colleges and Communities for Social Justice. Information Age Publishing. Available for purchase here.
McCambly, H., (2023) Rising Tides Don’t Create Racialized Change: Analyzing Institutional Change Projects in Postsecondary Philanthropy’s College Completion Agenda, The Journal of Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2023.220363
McCambly, H. & Colyvas, J. (2022). Dismantling or Disguising Racialization?: Defining Racialized Change Work in the Context of Postsecondary Grantmaking, Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory (link)
McCambly, H., & Colyvas, J. A. (2022). Institutionalizing Inequality Anew: Grantmaking and Racialized Postsecondary Organizations. Review of Higher Education, 46(1). (link)
McCambly, H. & Mulroy, Q. (Under Review). Equalizing access and the rise of (e)Quality politics: The political development of higher education policy at FIPSE, 1969-1999. (link)
McCambly, H. & Anderson, E. (2020). Moving the needle or spinning our wheels?: A research-based framework for philanthropic investment in postsecondary equity. The Foundation Review. A Special Issue on Philanthropy and Postsecondary Completion. (link)
Lumina Foundation Equity First Documentation Project, $44,500
Spencer Foundation Conference Grant, Research for What? Dreaming Toward Quantitative Paradigms Toward Anti-Racist Transformation, $50,000 (Shanyce Campbell and Sarah Pekoe Spicer, Co-PIs)
New Scholar Award, Association for Education Finance and Policy, $1,000
Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness’ Summer Research Grant, $7,500
Awards and Honors:
- American Political Science Association 2022 David Brian Robertson Award for Best Paper in Politics and History for The Rise of (E)quality Politics: The Political Development of Higher Education Policy at FIPSE, 1969-1999
- American Educational Research Association 2022 Outstanding Dissertation Award (Division J—Postsecondary Education)
- NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship (offered), $27,500
- Association of American University Women Dissertation Grant (offered), $20,000
- Presidential Fellowship Grant, Northwestern University, $86,000
Founding Board Member, SREE Researchers of Color Collective
Member, AEFP Scholars of Color Collective
Research Affiliate, Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Co-Chair Philanthropy & Education SIG, AERA
