Ashley Stone

Dr. Ashley Stone is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Program Director of the M.Ed. in Higher Education program in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development where she teaches courses such as Critical Understandings of Race and Gender in Higher Education, Equity and Access, History of Higher Education, Leading Diverse Campuses, and Leading in Student Affairs.

Prior to transitioning into a faculty role, Dr. Stone worked for over a decade in a variety of Student Affairs roles, beginning in Multicultural Affairs at Baylor University while pursuing her M.S.Ed. in Student Services Administration and even serving for nearly five years as the Director for New Student Services and Student Support at SMU prior to pursuing her Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin. While at UT Austin, she also worked with service learning initiatives and the summer bridge program. These past experiences have informed her work both in the classroom and her research agenda at Syracuse University, George Washington University, and now as she returns to SMU.

Dr. Stone’s research is rooted in critical understandings of place, examining the systems of power, privilege, and oppression that shape a place and the identities and experiences of the people who live and learn in it.  The application of this has primarily focused on rural students in higher education, working to disrupt monolithic notions of what it means to be rural by highlighting the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity that is often overlooked in rural communities.  In 2017, she earned the Dissertation of the Year Award from the Southern Association of College Student Affairs for this work.