Dr. Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley is an assistant professor of Higher Education Studies & Leadership and interdisciplinary scholar of higher education informed by student affairs practice. She also serves as affiliate faculty in Women's and Gender Studies in the Baylor College of Arts & Sciences. Her research addresses staff in higher education, financial aid, community colleges and transfer, and gender in the academy. Her research has appeared in outlets such as the Journal of Higher Education, the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, the Journal of College Student Development, the Community College Journal of Research and Practice, the Journal of Student Financial Aid, and the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education. Dr. McKinnon-Crowley is primarily a qualitative and post-qualitative researcher, though her mixed-methods work can be found in AERA Open.

She has been working in higher education as a student, staff, or faculty member since starting as a Resident Assistant in 2007. Due to her experiences working at universities, she is particularly concerned with the ways that institutions send messages of belonging and non-belonging to their members. At Baylor, she teaches higher education business and finance, higher education law, and educational policy.

Dr. McKinnon-Crowley's service includes journal board membership on the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, the Journal of the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, and the Journal of College Student Development's Research-In-Brief board. She began service on the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Dissertation of the Year Committee in 2022. Along with her research team, she won the annual NASPA Center for Women Ruth Strang Research Award for research about women in higher education in 2019.

Dr. McKinnon-Crowley is passionate about translating research to practice. In 2019, she began service as NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education’s Womxn in Student Affairs Knowledge Community's Research and Scholarship Co-Chair. In this role, she advocates for open communication and translational work between scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners in higher education. With Jake Gross, she contributed to the 2012-2017 commissioned history of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. She has also published about graduate writing for Inside Higher Education.

Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, and a proud Midwesterner, Dr. McKinnon-Crowley is a dedicated board, video, and card game player and baker. She is a Ruling Elder at Genesis Presbyterian Church (USA) in Austin, Texas.