Date Approved
5-27-2025
Embargo Period
5-27-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. Higher Education
Department
Educational Leadership
College
College of Education
Advisor
Stephanie Lezotte, Ph.D.
Committee Member 1
Andrew Tinnin, Ed.D.
Committee Member 2
Tyrone McCombs, Ph.D.
Keywords
higher education;housing;portraiture;transgender
Disciplines
Education
Abstract
This study seeks to develop an understanding of how transgender students experience living in on-campus housing and how these experiences affect their senses of wellbeing, inclusion, safety, and connection with their college. Additionally, this study solicits suggestions from its participant that can help campus housing departments identify ways to best serve their transgender student populations. Imperative due to the precarity suffered by the transgender community, especially during the notoriously anti-trans second Trump administration (Francois, 2025), this research focuses on transgender student experiences in housing due to the heightened vulnerability they experience in the confines of their on-campus housing assignments (Brauer, 2017). To tell an in-depth story about transgender student experiences in housing, this study’s participant sat for a semi-structured interview that was transcribed and was coded to extract key themes in the form of feelings, or senses (Saldaña, 2015). These themes were then crafted into a portrait—a narrative genre of research presentation that focuses on blending art and science in an effort to elicit emotional engagement with readers (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2016)— that reveals that transgender student experiences in campus housing can result in profound senses of being othered, marginalization, fear/anxiety, and, thankfully, resilience.
Recommended Citation
Bamford, Andrew, "Pride Flags and Five-Headed Monsters: A Portrait of a Transgender College Student's Experiences in Campus Housing" (2025). Theses and Dissertations. 3366.
https://rdw.rowan.edu/etd/3366
