Nathan Alleman, Ph.D.

Dr. Nathan F. Alleman’s teaching and research foci converge around his interests in marginal and marginalized populations and institutions in higher education, often from a sociological perspective. These include students (first generation, rural, low income, undocumented, religious outsiders, food insecure), faculty (non-tenure track, religious minority, faculty denied tenure), and institutions (Christian higher education, community college).

Along with his collaborators, Baylor Educational Leadership PhD graduates Cara Cliburn Allen and Sarah E. Madsen, Dr. Alleman has nearly a decade of scholarship and advocacy work focused on collegiate food insecurity at prestige-oriented universities. This work has culminated in the book Starving the Dream: Student Hunger and the Costs of Campus Affluence (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), with Cliburn Allen and Madsen. This qualitative analysis of students and administrators at three “normatively affluent” universities highlights how students navigate food needs amid cultural expectations of extensive involvement and expendable income that can undermine their experiences and goals.

Based on a Spencer Foundation racial equity grant, Dr. Alleman and his collaborators are currently extending this work longitudinally. This follow-up research with participants, at 5 and 10 years out from the initial set of 3 interviews with students, focuses on the “echoes” of food insecurity and related experiences in the possible selves of participants, as they navigate emerging adulthood and all that accompanies it.

As an additional example of Dr. Alleman’s commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration, for the past five years he has served as co-PI on an S-STEM NSF grant with colleagues from Baylor’s Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) programs. This grant focused on creating pathways through STEM programs for low-income students by leveraging predictive analytics. The research team is currently seeking a $2 million renewal for this initial $1 million grant, anticipated fall 2025.

These and other efforts have led to publications in a number of the field’s top journals, including American Educational Research Journal, Journal of College Student Development, and Research in Higher Education, as well as leading peer-reviewed outlets in several sub-genres, including Christian Scholar’s Review, Journal of Research on Students Placed at Risk, and Planning for Higher Education. His research on non-tenure-track faculty and collegiality, covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education, also appears in the Journal of Higher Education, a book with Stylus Publishers (Inclusive Collegiality) and an ASHE monograph (Collegiality and the Collegium in an Era of Faculty Differentiation). Dr. Alleman’s writings on faith-based higher education include the critically acclaimed book Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Education in a Fragmented Age (IVP Academic, with Perry Glanzer and Todd Ream), The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching (Oxford, with Perry Glanzer) as well as a national survey of Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) faculty that brought to light implicit categories of faith tradition integration approaches at these institutions.
Ultimately, the insights of this work find their meaning in larger ends: helping students, colleagues, and practitioners to excel academically, grow personally, and serve the Kingdom of God in the capacity to which they have been called and equipped.

Dr. Alleman serves as Graduate Program Director for the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) master’s program. He counts it as an honor and privilege to engage graduate students in a wide range of courses, including Foundations and History of Higher Education, Sociology of Higher Education, Great Texts in Higher Education, Qualitative Research Methods, and Qualitative Theory and Theology in Education.

See more about him and his team’s recent scholarly work at: Starving the Dream