In October’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. Paul Garton and Dr. Larry Baranowski explore how universities extend their influence beyond their beyond physical boundaries and how improvement initiatives could contribute to community empowerment. Dr. Garton is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at East Tennessee State University, where he researches higher education and economic development. Dr. Baranowski also works at East Tennessee State University, where he researches science education, curriculum theory, and the alignment of K-12 science curricula with current scientific research. The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2027 AERA theme, “Transcending Borders and Boundaries in Education Research: Toward a Beloved Global Community,” calls on education researchers to examine and move beyond boundaries that can divide disciplines, institutions, communities, ways of knowing, and people. It asks us to build more relational, equitable, and ethically connected approaches to education research while remaining attentive to power and collective responsibility. How are you, or how do you plan to contribute to this vision?
Paul Garton and Larry Baranowski (PG & LB): We consider our work to be an application of geography theory to the study of higher education. When thinking about borders in geography, and the act of stretching beyond borders, we can consider three frameworks in ascending order of complexity. The first, and simplest, is as mutually agreed upon demarcations of sovereignty or property rights. This is the approach of lawyers and the courts. Second, rather than thinking of nation-states or property owners as neutral actors who just happen to have a defensible stake over a space, we can think of borders as political tools used to exert control over a territory and the people within (Sack, 1986). The third and most complex framework is borders as performative sites, used to legitimate the very concept of the nation-state (Jones, 2009) or, in the case of our writing, the university campus. If the point of the border is not legal but performative, then the legal demarcation line is less important than the line at which people believe the border to be (Jones, 2012). The nation-state, or university, can then influence movement and a sense of belonging in ways that go beyond lines on a map.
Think of a brick-and-mortar university you are familiar with. Do you know where the land that is owned by the university ends? In other words, do you know what makes up the campus? Now ask yourself, how do you know where the campus ends? For many readers, you will have a clear idea of the boundaries of campus, though that idea did not come from looking at a survey map. Your idea of the border is likely defined by performative markers like signage, the architectural style of the buildings, landscaping, or categories of amenities. These markers serve to establish a presence in the public imaginary of a space, sending messages about who is welcome and who is not.
Universities are competing for a shrinking pool of students while also trying to attract new faculty who are often participating in a global labor marketplace. Part of these recruitment efforts involves the perceived quality of the campus space within the legal boundary, but the perceived quality of neighborhoods near the campus also plays into decision-making, both from the prospective student/faculty perspective as well as the university trying to recruit them. We argue that, in these cases, universities often take steps to extend beyond their legal boundaries to shift the character of the neighborhood, sometimes with strategies that economically and culturally displace current residents. Universities adjust performative markers, occasionally in ways that co-opt a space into the public imaginary of the campus like new academic buildings or student housing with university branding, occasionally in ways that keep the neighborhood distinct from the campus imaginary but caters to students and new faculty, like with public-private partnerships to build mixed-use buildings or innovation districts. Our objective with this line of research is to consider the role of higher education in the spatial organization of towns and cities, moving beyond the first level framework of campus borders towards more complex and more critical theories.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars in the field of Educational Change might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
PG & LB: One of the key takeaways from our work is that educational institutions need to think more critically about the consequences of the changes they pursue, particularly when those changes extend beyond the physical boundaries of the institution (Garton & Baranowski, 2026). Universities see themselves as geographic anchors and important partners in community development. That role can create tremendous opportunities to contribute resources, expertise, and infrastructure to communities, but it also gives institutions significant power to shape those communities.
Our findings suggest that we cannot evaluate educational change solely by asking whether an initiative produces the outcomes an institution intended. We also need to ask: Who defined the problem? Who benefits from the initiative? Who pays the costs? And whose voices were included at the table when decisions were made? In our study, neighborhoods that were more vulnerable to gentrification were more likely to be targeted by university-led development initiatives. This raises important questions about how institutional perceptions of need, blight, and improvement can reflect broader racial and socioeconomic assumptions.
For practitioners, this means that community engagement should not just include consulting after major decisions have been made. Communities should have meaningful influence over the goals, design, implementation, and evaluation of initiatives that affect them. Institutions should also establish measures of success that extend beyond typical institutional metrics (enrollment, recruitment, property values, or economic growth) to include community stability, well-being, and equitable distribution of benefits.
For scholars, the broader lesson is that educational change should be studied as part of the larger social and political systems in which educational institutions operate. Schools and universities do not simply exist within their environments; they are powerful actors capable of reshaping them. Understanding this reciprocal relationship can help identify unintended consequences before they become permanent.
“Schools and universities do not simply exist within their environments; they are powerful actors capable of reshaping them.“
Fostering a better educational system requires us to expand our definition of improvement. Change is not necessarily progress simply because an institution grows or an initiative produces measurable outcomes. Educational change is most meaningful when it expands opportunity without shifting costs onto the communities with the least power to absorb them.
LtC: Where do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for its future?
PG & LB: To answer this question specific to the geographies of university campuses, we think there are a few somewhat countervailing trends. First, demand for online education and the concentration of enrollments within large, public universities are reducing the spatial footprint of some universities, while drastically increasing the footprint at others. News stories of universities closing sit alongside stories of universities that need more residence halls to accommodate student housing needs. Some campuses sit vacant while others grow every year. University roles in local development are highly context dependent, based on local history, municipal governance, and institutional factors like enrollment trends and finances.
Second, the role of universities as real estate developers is in a state of flux relative to the first 20 years of the 21st century. Real estate that serves an academic purpose, including things like residence halls and administrative support, is tax exempt, but if the building does not serve an academic purpose, like if it is leased to a private company, then the university pays property taxes. Non-academic buildings are generally part of a university’s endowment investments and meant to diversify holdings, along with the aforementioned goals of neighborhood change for purposes of recruitment. Real estate investments were profitable for universities while interest rates steadily dropped since the 1970s, but post-COVID, many holdings have become liabilities (Gillers, 2025), especially when paired with the taxes that are unique to the non-academic buildings. Simultaneously, several major universities experienced public relations disasters related to campus expansions or real estate holdings. Johns Hopkins faced steep opposition after displacing several hundred families for a development in Baltimore, Columbia opened a new campus in Manhattanville that still riles locals, and Harvard infuriated Boston after buying huge swathes of land in Allston using a shell company. With market volatility and struggles with public trust, university decisionmakers might not think real estate development is worth the effort in many situations.
Finally, while universities might be looking at real estate development, many are explicitly adopting identities as local or regional anchor institutions. We see this as a source of careful hope. We are critical of development work that is imposed upon communities and could result in displacement, but we celebrate work that builds wealth equitably, improves health outcomes, and increases educational attainment. In 2012, Rita Axelroth Hodges and Steve Dubb called for postsecondary institutions to adopt an “anchor mission,” to leverage their existing resources and functions purposefully for local and regional development. We see compelling evidence every day that universities are taking up the charge. The work we see for ourselves as educational researchers is to ensure such anchor initiatives are conducted in concert with communities and through a lens of empowerment, not imposition to meet the goals of the university.
References
Garton, P. M., & Baranowski, L. B. (2026). University Anchor Initiatives and Gentrification Vulnerability: Predictors of Neighborhoods Targeted by Place-Based Development Initiatives. AERA Open, 12. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584261459702
Gillers, H. (2025, Sep 02). Private-Equity Strategy of Yale Is Harder to Copy. Wall Street Journal https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/private-equity-strategy-yale-is-harder-copy/docview/3245524181/se-2
Hodges, R. A., & Dubb, S. (2012). The road half traveled: University engagement at a crossroads. Michigan State University Press.
Jones, R. (2009). Categories, borders and boundaries. Progress in Human Geography, 33(2), 174-189. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132508089828
Jones, R. (2012). Border walls: Security and the war on terror in the United States, India, and Israel. Zed Books.
Sack, R. D. (1986). Human territoriality: its theory and history (R. D. Sack, Ed.; Vol. 7). Cambridge University Press.
