Paris D. Wicker (She/Her/Hers)
Ph.D.

Paris Wicker(she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at the University at Buffalo (Territory of the Seneca Nation). Her interdisciplinary research, informed by a decade of higher education experience in student affairs and college admissions, contributes to scholarship that explores the conditions and consequences of success and well-being in higher education, especially for Black and Indigenous students, faculty, and staff. Throughout her career, Dr. Wicker’s combination of counseling training, student affairs experiences, and research has been at the intersections of well-being, campus climate, anti-racist and race-conscious policy and practice, and organizational change towards equity and justice. She offers a combination of mixed and multi-methods research on relational, educational, and health-equity research on higher education to improve educational experiences and outcomes.

Dr. Wicker especially enjoys using interviews, surveys, and social network analysis, with guidance from Critical and Indigenous frameworks such as Critical Race Theory, Social Network Theory, Relational Sociology of Education, and Relationality. While the problems within education are not new, her research offers innovative methodological and practical implications into the full extent of inequity in higher education. Dr. Wicker leads with a renewed moral imperative to broaden the purpose, goal, and outcome of higher education to include well-being as not only a means to other notions of success, such as degree attainment, but also a worthy end goal in and of itself.

Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Ford Foundation, and the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research (WCER), and published in academic journals such as the Review of Higher Education, the Journal of College Student Development, and Education Sciences.

Another area of interest for Dr. Wicker is incorporating contemplative and mindfulness-based equity research, policy, and practice within higher education. She began a formal meditation practice in 2018 and meditates daily through a Vipassana or insight tradition. Dr. Wicker is progressing towards a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher Training certification, and facilitates a number of mindfulness and equity-based classes and workshops every year.

• PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (2023)
• MSE, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Professional Counseling- Student Affairs and College Counseling (2017)
• BA, Lawrence University, Music (Vocal), French and Francophone Studies (2008)

• Dissertation of the Year Award; Association for the Study of Higher Education; 2024-11-21;
• Alternate Postdoctoral Fellow; Ford Foundation; 2024-05-01;
• Semifinalist, Dissertation of the Year Award (Division J- Postsecondary Education); American Educational Research Association (Division J); 2024-04-14;
• Edward Bouchet Graduate Honor Society Induction; University of Wisconsin-Madison; 2023-03-09;
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship; Ford Foundation; 2022-09-01;

• Wicker, P. D. (2024). Well-Being and support network affiliations for Black and Indigenous college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Education Sciences, 14(8), https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14080832
• Benson, J., Wicker, P., Barnes, I., & Winkle-Wagner, R. (2023) Community and culture: Black women reminiscing on their experiences in college transition programs. Journal of College Student Development, 64(6), pp. 663-678. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2023.a917022
• Wicker, P. (2023). Well-being consciousness and college access borderlands: Staff perspectives on supporting students’ well-being. Journal of College Access. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jca/vol8/iss1/3
• Wicker, P., McCoy, D.L., Winkle-Wagner, R., & Barnes, I. (2023). A Web of Support: A Critical Narrative Analysis of Black Women’s Relationships in STEM Disciplines. Review of Higher Education. Advance online publication on Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/rhe.0.a900428

• Wicker, P. (2024). The consequences of getting it right: Navigating anti-blackness in quantitative statistics courses [essay]. In S. David (Ed.) Being #BlackintheIvory: Truth-telling about Racism in the American University. University of North Carolina Press

• Wicker, P. (February 21, 2025). Relational (r)evolution: why social networks and connections matter for whole person wellness now more than ever. [Keynote presentation]. Mindfulness Symposium. Washington State University. Pullman, Washington;
• Wicker, P. (November 1, 2024). The undergraduate to graduate transition process. McNair Scholars. University at Buffalo;
• Wicker, P. (November 8, 2024). The past, present, and future of academic advising: Theoretical approaches to student success and equity. Authur O. Eve Educational Opportunity Program. University at Buffalo.;

• Muniz, J., Moore, J., Washington, L., Stovall, J., & Wicker, P. (2025). "Journeying from Home to Everywhere: Centering Black Girls & Women Across Learning Environments" [Paper Session]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. Denver, CO.;
• Wicker, P. (November 2024). “I stop by [the 7-Eleven] every day”: The role of space and place-based support in college student well-being praxis [Paper Session]. Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Conference. Minneapolis, MN.;

• Relational determinants of emotional well-being support for Black and Indigenous college students; Federal; National Institutes of Health (NIH); Center for Healthy Minds; Plasticity of Well-Being Network; Awarded; (03/01/2025-09/30/2025)

• Facilitator, Mindful writing, American Educational Research Association (AERA), (Division J), 2022- Present
  09/01/2023-05/31/2024