Angelina Jenkins, assistant director, The Mosaic Center, along with Priya Bhayana, project manager, UMBC Global Asias Initiative, will present at the Association for Asian American Studies Annual Conference in April. 

Jenkins and Bhayana's roundtable presentation, "Cultivating Connections: Asian American Studies & Student Affairs at AANAPISIs," will bring together perspectives from two different professional orientations at Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) from across the country: 1) Faculty and program staff in Asian/Pacific American Studies and 2) Student Affairs professionals supporting AAPI students and university communities. It will explore the challenges and potential for collaborations between these two professional spheres and approaches. Viewed from the lens of both cultivating critical consciousness as well as fostering student belonging and mattering, this roundtable will explore the natural synergies and points of tension between the academic and student affairs approaches to student growth and support. 

Presenters will represent a diversity of perspectives, including a range of academic disciplines, student affairs roles, institutional size and structure, and geographies. Participating institutions are UMBC, Brooklyn College, University of Hawaii Mānoa, Northeastern University, and San Diego State University.