I build spaces where students feel seen, and help them rise.
A doctoral researcher and student affairs leader with nearly a decade of experience advancing belonging for students on the margins of higher education.
I am a first-generation international scholar from Ghana and a PhD student in Higher Education at Florida International University, where I hold a Ziff Education Fellowship and work in Transfer and Transition Services. My dissertation is mentored by Dr. Kirsten Edwards in the Department of Educational Policy Studies.
Over nearly a decade in higher education, I have worked in residence life, multicultural affairs, and student engagement at institutions including Brown University, Marshall University, Syracuse University, and Canisius University. That work taught me one thing above all: students do their best when they believe they belong.
My research, my leadership, and my mentorship all return to that conviction. I study how Black and international graduate students build the confidence to thrive, and I work to design programs and policies that make belonging the norm rather than the exception.
I have led residential communities, coordinated multicultural programming, and built the We See You student engagement model across multiple institutions, an approach centered on recognizing students fully and meeting them where they are.
My scholarship examines self-efficacy and belonging among Black and international graduate students, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis grounded in Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, and I present this work at national conferences.
I serve as Equity Officer for ACPA's Coalition for Sexuality and Gender Identities, and I founded the Global Griff Mentor Program to support international and historically underserved students.
Belonging is not a feeling students arrive with. It is something an institution chooses to build.
My dissertation explores how Black international graduate students develop self-efficacy as they navigate graduate education in the United States.
Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, I center the lived experiences of Black Sub-Saharan African and Afro-Caribbean students within a Hispanic-Serving Institution, drawing on Bandura's four sources of self-efficacy to understand how confidence is built, tested, and sustained in racialized academic environments.
The goal is practical as well as theoretical: scholarship that helps institutions design support that genuinely works for students who are too often overlooked.
Assiam, S. D. (in press). Review of Transforming Educational Leadership by A. Kundu. Critical Questions in Education, 17(2).
Assiam, S. D., & Kwenin, I. A. (in preparation). The Civic Self-Efficacy Transfer Model. Targeted: Journal of Studies in International Education.
Enhancing Belonging: Multicultural Centers at PWIs. ACPA National Convention, Baltimore (2026).
Enhancing Student Belonging at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. FIU SEHD Research Conference (2026).
Multicultural Centers and Minority Student Success at PWIs. CSPA-NYS, Saratoga Springs (2023).
My research centers students who are too often on the margins of higher education: first-generation students, Black students, low-income students, and international students. I study how they build belonging and the confidence to succeed, and what institutions must do to support them.
This work takes real resources: conference travel, interview transcription, participant support, and research tools. If this mission resonates with you, a contribution of any size helps me keep doing it well.
Contributions are personal gifts that support independent research costs. They are not tax-deductible charitable donations.