News | LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff

A photo of Chris Hinesley, Associate Director of the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff. The photo is of a man with light peach-colored skin, short hair, medium beard, wearing a brown plaid shirt and glasses.

The LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff is growing. Starting August 26, we welcome Dr. Chris Hinesley (he/they), our fabulous new Associate Director for the Center.

Chris has more than two decades of LGBTQIA+ higher education experience as both a faculty member and campus administrator. Early in his career, Chris served as the Executive Director of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, building visible and reliable resources for the LGBTQ+ community. For the past 14 years, Chris has served as the inaugural leader of the Q Center at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and in this time, he grew the small office called the GLBT Center into a large and vibrant LGBTQIA+ community resource center.

During his time at RIT, Chris' work led to the expansion of gender-affirming mental and physical healthcare and the number of all-gender facilities; installing symbols of pride and representation in key buildings on campus; implementing one of the nation’s first trans-inclusive athletics policies for varsity athletics, intramurals, and club sports; institutionalizing a one-stop name change process; normalizing hiring of transgender and nonbinary faculty and staff, including pronouns in IT systems, name tags, signature lines, and Zoom profiles; and bringing pride to sports team events with “pride nights” that showcase LGBTQIA+ athletes at every level.

From 2014-2021, Chris served as Co-Director of RIT's Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and for 18 years, he taught courses in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, instigating the first courses centering the lives of LGBTQIA+ people, our history, culture, political landscape, and psychosocial development. Over the past decade, he has taught several courses at RIT including Intro to LGBTQ Studies; Queering Gender; Gender, Science, and Technology; and Foundations of Women’s and Gender Studies. Chris has also served as guest instructor for Diversity in Leadership in the Executive Leadership program at St. John Fisher University.

Chris' writing and research centers on transgender and queer students, the coming out process, gender transition, and gender-affirming care, policies, and practices. As a member of the NSF-funded AdvanceRIT project, he served on the team researching the lived experiences of women of color faculty, and the impact of the combination of race and gender in higher education. Chris is co-author of Promising Policies and Practices for Supporting Trans and Nonbinary People in Postsecondary Education and What’s the big deal with pronouns? His forthcoming book is titled Mattering: Showing Up with Love When It Really Counts from Unsung Voices Books.

For much of Chris' career, he has provided education and led training both within and outside university settings. Chris has regularly guest lectured on gender-affirming care in healthcare and mental health settings. He delivers Safe Zone and Operationalizing Inclusion training for professionals in higher education, medical and mental health care, athletics, and for K-12 school districts. He shows audiences how to effectively respond to micro-aggressions and builds awareness around the experiences of overlooked LGBTQIA+ groups.

Using data and examples, he prepares participants for active allyship, facilitating concrete strategy-building to remove barriers and create new supports for marginalized groups. He creates a warm and welcoming space for audiences to explore the intersections and ways in which categories like gender, sexuality, racial identity, neurodiversity, disability, deafness, and indigeneity impact our lived experiences. For example, by recognizing the ways in which racism when combined with misogyny amplifies negative effects on individuals, participants can evaluate systems and policies for ways to better protect every member of our community. He empowers audiences to apply supportive practices and policies to advance the and structural environment for marginalized students, employees, and family members.

Chris earned his Master’s in Wellness Management at Ball State University and a Doctorate of Education from St. John Fisher University. In 2020, Dr. Hinesley was awarded the Isaac L. Jordan Sr. Staff Pluralism Award for staff excellence, an award which recognizes and affirms RITs collective aspiration toward a community that celebrates differences and allows individuals to develop to their fullest potential.

Chris is excited to be joining the BU community as a proud member, resource, and advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community of faculty and staff.