UW-River Falls
Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Wisconsin Teaching Fellow, 2001-02
Wisconsin Teaching Scholar, 2009-10
Co-Director, Wisconsin Teaching Fellows & Scholars, 2012-18
I arrived at UWRF in the fall of 1999 planning to continue the disciplinary research I was trained to do as a graduate student in social psychology. For me, this meant studying racial attitudes, a task that would require large pools of participants and plenty of anonymity.
At the same time, I was teaching more than I had ever taught as a graduate student, with four course preps each semester. I was also teaching the course I had been most excited to develop: the psychology of prejudice and racism.
What I quickly realized, on my relatively small campus, was that my needs as a researcher had changed even more than my context. Not only was it relatively impossible to do the kinds of work I had been doing before (large, anonymous surveys and carefully constructed experiments with multiple variables), I no longer saw that work as vital. I was coming to see that what really mattered to me was my students understanding (or lack of understanding) of racism.
As this was happening, I was accepted as a Wisconsin Teaching Fellow for 2001-2002. I had no idea that I would be learning the methods of scholarship that would allow me to try and answer this more vital question.
That first SoTL project, conducted as part of my fellowship and guided by the steady leadership of Jane Ewens and Tony Ciccone, was completely focused on how my students were learning about racism. I tried to assess their racial identification pre- and post-course and to better understand how they were thinking and feeling over time. I was hooked! That first study became the first of many to try and understand the same basic thing: How do we learn about racism and how do we learn best? What are the best strategies for dealing with the cognitive and affective resistance that so often arises?
I have not found all the answers, but I have discovered how powerful it is to create community and inclusion within a classroom. Accepting our students as they are while still holding them to high expectations is an important catalyst for learning, especially when resistance is strong.
I have also discovered how important it is to provide broader explanations for the ideas and information that we teach. Helping students to see the larger systems at work can provide them with the language they need to liberate themselves, to step back, to critically analyze, and to connect themselves and their communities to the ways the world is working (or not working).
It is not an overstatement to say that my first experience with SoTL, that first SoTL project as part of the WTFS program, was transformative. Not only did I find my way forward as a researcher, but I also found a community of like-minded people with whom I would continue to work. It is an amazing thing that we have built in Wisconsin, this large community of SoTL scholars.
After participating again as a Wisconsin Teaching Scholar in 2009 and 2010, I was lucky enough to become the program Co-Director in 2012 (serving until 2018).
Throughout, I have only grown to respect the job of teaching more. Learning is a wonderful mystery, unknowable in so many ways, but still more legible than because of SoTL and the opportunity we have had to join this worldwide scholarly conversation about teaching and learning.
As a result of our efforts, we can speak confidently about the basics of teaching and learning: building trust, being inclusive, providing transparency, holding high expectations. All these discoveries and so many more, across a variety of teaching contexts, have emboldened us to demand more from our institutions and to do better work in the classroom.
More than any one project or collaboration, it this approach and attitude towards teaching that I treasure the most from my association with the WTFS program. Focusing my efforts away from myself and toward the learning of my students is what has helped me weather all the changes that have occurred over these last 25 years of teaching.
Knowing that I can learn from others and learn from my own students has allowed me to continue finding meaning and purpose in what I do, even in the face of so many challenges: austerity budgeting, a pandemic, AI, waves of burnout and exhaustion.
To be clear, I do not welcome these challenges, and I often profoundly disagree with the ways that my profession has chosen to deal with them. But because of the work I have done and the people I have worked with, I know what my values are, and I feel more confident in trying to implement them. I see how what we do in teaching matters, and I know that there are others who feel the same. That is the power of community across a shared practice.
My hope for all of us is that we can use this community to push back against bad ideas in teaching and learning and higher education more generally. We should be confident in what we know and in what we have already done.
Biography:
Cyndi Kernahan is professor of psychological sciences and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. A social psychologist, Cyndi’s expertise is in the psychology of prejudice and racism. Her scholarly work is focused on teaching and learning about racism and prejudice and how racial bias and prejudice influence student learning and student success. Her book Teaching about Race and Racism in the College Classroom: Notes from a White Professor was published in 2019 as part of the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series of West Virginia University Press.
Selected SoTL Publications and Media Contributions:
Kernahan, C., & Withers, E. (Revision and Resubmission in Process) “The Man Had a Dream”: Helping Students Think Structurally About Racism.
Stachowiak, B. (2025, January 9). Teaching about Race and Racism in the College
Classroom. Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast. Retrieved from https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/teaching-about-race-and-racism-in-the-college-classroom/
Kernahan, C. (2022, February 11). Teaching about Race and Racism in College Classrooms. Thriving in Academe, NEA and the POD Network. Retrieved from https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/teaching-about-race-and-racism-college-classrooms
Kernahan, C. (2019, October 31). Teaching Racism as an Idea. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/31/we-should-teach-about-racism-idea-thats-expressed-through-behaviors-rather
Kernahan, C. (2019). Teaching about racism in the college classroom: Notes from a White professor. West Virginia University Press (Series on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education).
Kernahan, C., & Chick, N. L. (2017). How do you Listen to your Students to Help Them Learn about Race and Racism? In Gurung R. A. R. & Voelker, D. J. (Eds.) Special Issue: Big Picture Pedagogy: Finding Interdisciplinary Solutions to Common Learning Problems. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Wiley Series, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Kernahan, C. (2016). Raising Awareness and Reducing Colorblind Racial Ideology in Higher Education. Neville, H. A., Gallardo, M. E., & Wing Sue D. (Eds.) What Does it Mean to be Color-Blind? Manifestations, Dynamics, and Impact. American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C.
Kernahan, C., Zheng, W., & Davis, T. A (2014). A Sense of Belonging: How Student Feelings Correlate with Learning about Race. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8, 4. http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol8/iss2/4/
Kernahan, C., & Davis, T. (2010). Learning about Racism: What are the Long-Term Effects? Teaching of Psychology, 37, 41-45.
Chick, N., Karis, T., & Kernahan, C. (2009). Learning from Their Own Learning: How Metacognitive and Meta-affective Reflections Enhance Learning in Race-Related Courses. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 3(1).
Kernahan, C., & Davis, T. (2007). Changing Perspective: How Learning About Racism Influences Student Awareness and Emotion. Teaching of Psychology, 34, 49-52.