Emily Affolter, PhD
Director-Sustainablility Education Program
she/ella/they
Dr. Emily Alicia Affolter is the director of Prescott College’s Sustainability Education Ph.D. Program. Dr. Affolter loves teaching and advising in the doctoral program, and works with a direct emphasis on equity pedagogy and culturally responsive and sustaining teaching, learning, leading, and research. Prior to this role, she worked as a Senior Research Scientist and Equity Consultant at the University of Washington’s Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Multicultural Education from the UW working alongside Dr. Geneva Gay, founder of culturally responsive teaching, and is a former Fulbright scholar (Mexico and Colombia). Emily’s current scholarship, dissemination, and facilitation center culturally responsive pedagogy for teachers, faculty, and leaders in K-16 settings and STEM higher education, and harnessing equity literacy in teaching methods, content, policy, and leadership, in addition to exploring and developing decolonizing, critical research practices. Her most recent interests include understanding climate justice impacts through critical race and disability lenses.
Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Pedagogy, Equity Literacy, Anti-colonial Research Methods
Affolter, E.A. (2024). Equity-Centered Teaching, a Path to Educational Justice with Director Dr. Emily Affolter–The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation, and Resources Podcast.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/episodes/15737241
Affolter, E. A. (2024). Rehumanizing Higher Education with Emily Alicia Affolter, PhD. Care More Be Better — For a Regenerative Future Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DSmzv_1KQ4
Affolter, E. A., & Yost, A. (2024). Accountability as praxis: a dialectical conversation on decolonising teaching methods. Oxford Review of Education, 1–17. https://doi-org.prescottcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/03054985.2024.2328606
Affolter, E., Greeson, K., Ramsey, S., & Dunbar, R. (November, 2024). Sustaining Wholeness: Reimagining a Regenerative Graduate Landscape. Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, on-demand workshop.
Affolter, E. (October, 2024). Experiential Culturally Responsive STEM Teaching and Learning: Cultivating and Sustaining Equitable Science Classrooms. National Science Foundation Nex-Gen Bio Learning Network.
Affolter, E. & Bryers, R. (August, 2024). Shadow Selves Shaped by Supremacy Culture: Exploring, Claiming, and Resisting Shadows for Liberation. Prescott College Counseling Colloquium Keynote.
Affolter, E., Braden, M., & Wu, L. (April, 2024). Expanding on the Scholarship of a Pioneer Advocate for Racial Justice: Theorizing and Practicing Culturally Responsive and Decolonizing Research. Philadelphia, PA, the American Educational Research Association Conference.
Affolter, E. A. & Hodges, S. (2023). Pressing Pause: Subverting hegemonic norms in educational spaces. In Mealy T. M. & Bennett, H. (Eds.), Equity Planning for School Leaders: Approaches to Student Diversity, Access and Opportunity. Mcfarland.