Bryan K. Hotchkins, Ph.D.

Bryan K. Hotchkins, Ph.D. is the director of Faculty Success and a tenured associate professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Psychology, Leadership, & Counseling at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

As director in the Office of Faculty Success, Hotchkins works to support and enhance faculty community and persistence through research-based programming designed to encourage faculty connectedness, sense of value, and holistic success.

Broadly, Hotchkins uses his cyberbonding play theoretical framework (2023, 2026) to study how high school and undergraduate students navigate the geographies of school/college climate, context, and culture. His research directly focuses on how learned video-game knowledge, in digital spaces, informs persistence strategies in physical places where academic outcomes, social integration and leadership development are key. Mostly, how educational entities empower students to use videogames, for their holistic betterment, is broached. Stated differently, when institutional retention practices and student persistence tactics align, how are pathways to degree conferral impacted? Hotchkins' research is guided by questions related to how student use of video-game modding, comms and respawning influence educational involvement and engagement in- and outside of class. With nearly 1,228 citations since 2016, a h-index, an i10-index, and nearly 100 formal trainings and keynote lectures to his credit, he actively uses research to amplify rarely seen or heard life perspectives.

Hotchkins also utilizes his Belongingness as Organizational Emotional Intelligence™ trainings to teach people how to actualize thoughtful connectedness across organization practices, policies, and programs. In 2021, his book “My Black is Exhausted: Forever in Pursuit of a Racist-free World Where Hashtags Don't Exist” and “Becoming (Un)exhausted: An Interactive Journal for Moving Beyond Racism,” served as templates for teaching people how to better understand what it means to problem-solve in a world of difference.

Bryan earned his doctorate in educational leadership and policy from the University of Utah.