“Our College Is Changing”: Women's College Student Affairs Administrators and Transgender Students

Student affairs administrators at contemporary American women's colleges are charged with supporting the personal, intellectual, and relational growth of students. A small but vocal group of students who identify as transgender and who are living as male, genderqueer, or transitioning to live as male, have emerged as a visible subpopulation in highly selective women's colleges. In this qualitative, phenomenological study of the perceptions of student affairs administrators (n = 31), three participant profiles-ambivalent, supporter, and advocate-emerged. Implications for student affairs practice, theory, and the continued transformation of educational environments in support of transgender students are discussed.