More about Jennifer...
As a new professional in student affairs, Jennifer decided when she joined University Recreation at Central Michigan University (CMU) that she would be out about her identity from the start. Fortunately, she worked in a department where she was not the only lesbian in the place and found support from her co-workers as well as her superiors. Eventually, one of her former student workers who had left URec to work for the university's Office of Gay & Lesbian Programs, encouraged Jennifer to participate in their speakers' bureau program, visiting classes and sharing her coming out story. Hesitant at first, Jennifer decided to try it out and after just a couple of classroom visits, Jennifer was hooked!
The excitement of seeing the light go on for a student and for some understanding to be achieved by folks who had never had the opportunity to really discuss the issue filled Jennifer with an energy and passion that she had never experienced before. Gradually, Jennifer's involvement with the Office of Gay & Lesbian Programs snowballed from sitting on speaker panels telling her story, to facilitating those panels, to facilitating the trainings for the speakers' bureau, to involvement in just about every program that had to do with sexuality or any other variety of diversity for that matter. By virtue of her involvement, Jennifer was included in a transgender sensitivity training that was being held to prepare CMU's student affairs staff to serve their first out transgender student that would be coming to campus that fall. It was this training that would change Jennifer's career path and ultimately, her life.
Never having met a transgender person that she knew of to that point in her life, Jennifer did not really understand exactly what it meant to be transgender and more specifically, the circumstances that came along with that. The training that day was one of the most eye-opening experiences Jennifer had had and it moved her to want to do the work that the person leading the training was doing. She felt a personal connection to the work that she didn't necessarily understand and passionate about changing the world even then. Jennifer approached the facilitator and told him that she wanted to do the work he was doing and asked about what kind of education or experience she would need. He pointed her in the direction of a masters degree in student affairs and Jennifer began her grad work the very next semester. She spent the next three years earning her graduate degree while still working full-time in URec before landing her dream job with The University of Georgia.
In August of 2008, Jennifer became the Director of the LGBT Resource Center at The University of Georgia where she anticipated interaction with the trans* community would be challenging to find due to being located in the Bible Belt. However, much to her surprise, a good quarter of the students that she worked with right from the beginning identified as trans* or genderqueer and provided an opportunity for her to continue to learn about and serve the trans* community. Jennifer's time at UGA, and perhaps even more so, her relationship with her husband, Ethan, have broadened her perspective on gender and caused her to challenge even the most basic, mundane, constructions of gender. It is through these experiences, as well as the experiences of her own gender expression and the assumptions people make about her based on it, that she has arrived at this radical, game-changer idea about how to free the world from gender.
The excitement of seeing the light go on for a student and for some understanding to be achieved by folks who had never had the opportunity to really discuss the issue filled Jennifer with an energy and passion that she had never experienced before. Gradually, Jennifer's involvement with the Office of Gay & Lesbian Programs snowballed from sitting on speaker panels telling her story, to facilitating those panels, to facilitating the trainings for the speakers' bureau, to involvement in just about every program that had to do with sexuality or any other variety of diversity for that matter. By virtue of her involvement, Jennifer was included in a transgender sensitivity training that was being held to prepare CMU's student affairs staff to serve their first out transgender student that would be coming to campus that fall. It was this training that would change Jennifer's career path and ultimately, her life.
Never having met a transgender person that she knew of to that point in her life, Jennifer did not really understand exactly what it meant to be transgender and more specifically, the circumstances that came along with that. The training that day was one of the most eye-opening experiences Jennifer had had and it moved her to want to do the work that the person leading the training was doing. She felt a personal connection to the work that she didn't necessarily understand and passionate about changing the world even then. Jennifer approached the facilitator and told him that she wanted to do the work he was doing and asked about what kind of education or experience she would need. He pointed her in the direction of a masters degree in student affairs and Jennifer began her grad work the very next semester. She spent the next three years earning her graduate degree while still working full-time in URec before landing her dream job with The University of Georgia.
In August of 2008, Jennifer became the Director of the LGBT Resource Center at The University of Georgia where she anticipated interaction with the trans* community would be challenging to find due to being located in the Bible Belt. However, much to her surprise, a good quarter of the students that she worked with right from the beginning identified as trans* or genderqueer and provided an opportunity for her to continue to learn about and serve the trans* community. Jennifer's time at UGA, and perhaps even more so, her relationship with her husband, Ethan, have broadened her perspective on gender and caused her to challenge even the most basic, mundane, constructions of gender. It is through these experiences, as well as the experiences of her own gender expression and the assumptions people make about her based on it, that she has arrived at this radical, game-changer idea about how to free the world from gender.