Tamara Bauer

Dr. Bauer's scholarship centers on the co-creation of belonging in higher education and community contexts. Her doctoral dissertation examined how belonging is actively constructed through relationships, environments, and shared practices — drawing on Appreciative Inquiry as both a theoretical framework and methodology. Her research interests include sense of belonging, psychological safety, community formation, identity, and the role of higher education in fostering connection across difference. She is also deeply interested in community-engaged and asset-based approaches to learning and research, with scholarship on service-learning, first-year student success, and civic leadership published in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, New Directions for Student Leadership, and edited volumes focused on first-generation student support and leadership education.