Critical Community Building: Beyond Belonging‪.‬

I am thrilled to be here today to give the keynote address for the Southeastern Association of Educational Studies. It was less than four years ago that I graduated from the Culture, Curriculum and Change program here at Chapel Hill, and I never would have dreamed that I would be invited back so soon to give a keynote! I am particularly happy to be speaking at this conference because it is a primarily graduate student conference, and one of the first I presented at in my doctoral program. In our crazy hierarchically structured world, we sometimes mistakenly give more credence to the work of faculty members. Although many faculty members produce great work, graduate students often have the most cutting edge information and ideas, not to mention passion.