Title: Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration, Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies, University of Alabama
Education: B.A., communication and culture, Howard University; M.S.E.d., higher education management, University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., educational policy and leadership, University of Maryland, College Park
Age: 38
Mentors: Dr. D-L Stewart, University of Denver; Dr. Kimberly Gri n, University of Maryland; Dr. Noah Drezner, Teachers College, Columbia University; Dr. James Earl Davis, Temple University.
Words of encouragement/wisdom: “Stand by what you believe in, even if it’s unpopular, and do the work that you want to do. And that does not come without risk. I would be the first to say that a lot of the decisions I’ve made — they’re risky.”
If he had to sum up his scholarship in one line, Dr. Steve D. Mobley Jr. would tell you he is “complicating blackness within higher education settings.”
An assistant professor of higher education administration in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies at the University of Alabama, Mobley’s most widely known work centers around the experience of Black students — particularly those who identify as queer or transgender — at historically Black colleges and universities.
“When I was a doctoral student, I would see a lot of scholarship on Black students, but we weren’t delving into this research intersectionally,” says Mobley, whose research interests are a reflection of his own lived experiences as a low-income, first-generation undergraduate student at Howard University. At the elite HBCU, he also struggled with his identity as a gay man.
