Insiders, Outliers showcases the educational histories and lifewide writing experiences of adult HBCU students to illuminate critical needs for more age-inclusive practices across academia. Their cases also show the centrality of writing in fueling changes for these students and the people and institutions that they care aboutincluding higher education.
Insiders, Outliers invites readers into the lives of adult HBCU students for whom college is one meaningful activity among many. Although adults over the age of twenty-four comprise a quarter of all undergraduates, they are institutionally segregated and only partially served by a US higher education system that remains organized around traditional aged learners. Even as such students are regarded as a market for post-secondary institutions, they are routinely marginalized by institutional barriers. Students stories of their personal, professional, community, and academic writing experiences illuminate a critical need for more age-inclusive practices across academia. Their cases also offer new conceptual models of writing as an ethical and emotional practice that fuels changes for individuals and the people and institutions that they care aboutincluding higher education. What adult students reveal about writing across their life domains has powerful implications for conceptualizing writing as a complex form of agency and for teaching writing across the curriculum.
