Abstract Adult students of diverse experiences, disciplines, and identities can become valued contributors to faculty-directed research while also benefiting from the experience. However, national data show that older students participate in mentored research at one of the lowest rates among all groups tracked. This article forwards principles for facilitating nontraditional students’ involvement in collaborative research. These were developed during studies conducted about and with adult undergraduates at a historically Black university. Student researchers’ insights, adult learning theory, and the scholarship of undergraduate research and mentoring indicate interlacing benefits that students, faculty, and English studies may gain from developing such research partnerships.

This article examines the development of advanced writing curricula at a historically black public university during postrecession austerity measures. Analysis of institutional documents suggests that advocates enacted self-determined curricular changes by using strategies of subversive resilience to neoliberalism. Simultaneously accommodating and resistant, this form of resilience has roots in anticolonial, African American, and feminist responses to oppressive conditions.