H. Kenny Nienhusser is an Associate Professor of the Higher Education & Student Affairs Program in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Professor Nienhusser is Faculty Director of La Comunidad Intelectual, a living-learning community with a mission to support students’ learning about their Latine and/or Caribbean identities and diasporas, support their academic and personal successes, and empower their engagement on our campus and in our communities. He is also Affiliate Faculty in El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies. Previously, Professor Nienhusser was an Associate Professor in the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership in the College of Education, Nursing, and Health Professions at the University of Hartford.
Dr. Nienhusser holds an EdD in Higher and Postsecondary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. He also holds an MSW and a BA in Economics, both from Stony Brook University.
As a first-generation Latino college student who grew up in a working-class household of formerly undocumented immigrant parents, diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of his work as a researcher, teacher, advisor, and scholar-citizen.
His research examines the postsecondary education access and success of minoritized youth in the United States. More specifically, he addresses two lines of inquiry that shape higher education opportunities for minoritized youth. The first line of scholarship includes a further understanding of the origins of public policies and their implementation environments that affect the postsecondary education access and success of minoritized youth. The second explores the experiences of minoritized youth as they navigate higher education barriers (largely the consequences of discriminatory public policies and practices). Most of his scholarship has investigated the public policy landscape and experiences of undocumented immigrant youth including those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in relation to their postsecondary education access and success.
In his work, Dr. Nienhusser aims to help address social and educational inequities by reconceptualizing the manner in which we view the intersections of how education institutional agents grapple with contemporary issues in their daily practice and how these junctures shape the high school to college transition of minoritized students. Specifically, he hopes his scholarship will help reframe how we understand areas such as sensemaking, moral reasoning, information networks, and critical practice of institutional agents’ and its impact on minoritized students’ college access.
His work has appeared in academic journals such as Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, The Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, Teachers College Record, Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, The Urban Review, Community College Review, Education Policy Analysis Archives, and Journal of College Admission.
Dr. Nienhusser has presented his work at annual conferences such as Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), American Educational Research Association (AERA), American College Personnel Association (ACPA), Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), among others.
He has taught courses such as higher education policy, diversity in higher education, organizational theory and change in higher education, foundations of higher education and student affairs, student affairs administration, law and decision-making in higher education, leadership in highereducation, qualitative research, proposal seminar (developing dissertation proposals), and synthesis seminar (preparing literature reviews).
In addition to his over 10 years in the professoriate, Dr. Nienhusser has over 15 years of professional experience (in Student and Academic Affairs) at several types of higher education institutions.
Kenny loves spending time with his family—with his son Pablo and husband Alex—and in his spare time does photography. He also loves traveling to visit his family in Chile and Spain.