Essential Conditions
- Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Materials
Eight Actions to Reduce Racism in College Classrooms (posted 4/5/2018)
This article is based on racial climate assessments on college campuses. The researchers present eight actions faculty members must take to respond more effectively to racism in college classrooms. Students who participated in the studies say it would greatly improve their experiences if their professors did these eight things. (Shaun R. Harper and Charles H. F. Davis III )
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Aspirations to Achievement: Men of Color and Community Colleges (print report) (posted 4/5/2018)
This report provides data that describe the experiences of Latinos and Black males in community colleges. It also offers strategies colleges can consider as they work to strengthen those experiences so they lead to better outcomes. (Center for Community College Student Engagement)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Aspirations to Achievement: Men of Color and Community Colleges (video) (posted 4/5/2018)
Hear directly from men of color at community colleges in these video companion pieces to Aspirations to Achievement: Men of Color and Community Colleges. (Center for Community College Student Engagement)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergeneration Reproduction of White Racial Privilege (posted 4/5/2018)
This report explores how the higher education system is a passive agent in the systematic reproduction of White racial privilege across generations. It analyzes enrollment trends at 4,400 postsecondary institutions by race and institutional selectivity over the past 15 years. (Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Latino Education and Economic Progress: Running Faster but Still Behind (posted 4/5/2018)
While Latinos are running faster in the education race, this report finds that they are falling farther behind Whites and Blacks in many crucial college outcomes. (Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
African Americans: College Major and Earnings (posted 4/5/2018)
This study found that African American students are highly concentrated in lower-paying fields, which has an impact on potential earnings and social mobility. (Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
The Economic Value of College Majors (posted 4/5/2018)
Using census data, researchers analyzed wages for 137 college majors to detail the most popular college majors, the majors that are most likely to lead to an advanced degree, and the economic benefit of earning an advanced degree by undergraduate major. (Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Equity Scorecard (posted 4/5/2018)
The Equity Scorecard helps participants become experts on what their campus is doing — and what it could do better — to improve the success of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Armed with this knowledge, they can set actionable short- and long-term goals. (Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Five Principles for Enacting Equity by Design (posted 4/5/2018)
This brief essay presents five principles that leaders and practitioners need to build equity by design. (Association of American Colleges & Universities)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Transforming Remediation: An Essential Part of Campus Equity Efforts (posted 4/5/2018)
This essay focuses on practices to transform remediation with a goal of increasing student completion of transferable gateway courses in English and math. (Association of American Colleges & Universities)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
The Equity Imperative (posted 4/5/2018)
This issue of Diversity and Democracy calls on institutions to invest in high-quality learning for all students by ensuring equitable access to both effective educational practices and welcoming campus climates. (Association of American Colleges & Universities)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Project Implicit at Harvard University (posted 4/5/2018)
Take one (or more) of these free online tests that help reveal how all people have been socialized to view people from racial backgrounds that are different from their own. (Project Implicit, Harvard University)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Perspectives on Equity: 10 Books Worth Reading (posted 4/5/2018)
The books on this list provide a deeper dive into key issues related to equity on college campuses.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Pathways to Equity PowerPoint Slides from Pathways Collaborative Organizations (posted 4/19/2018)
Various Collaborative organizations use these slides when they discuss the role of guided pathways in improving equity and economic upward mobility. (Pathways Collaborative)
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Culturally Relevant Practice: A Reading List (posted 2/8/2021)
This resource is a reading list created by UNCF Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute. It is titled “Equity Centered Research Practices, Theories, & Methodologies Reading List”.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
PRACTITIONER, PRESIDENT, AND PARTNER PERSPECTIVES
Rosie Rimando-Chareunsap, Vice President, Student Services, South Seattle Community College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
Guided pathways is the institutional mechanism by which we will create equity. And when we talk about that, the story I tell is when we sort of had a collective realization around this, and when we talked to our colleagues about, you know, the whole reason why you came into your work in a community college versus all the other places you could have done this work, the reason why you come to work every day is because you believe in making a difference in the lives of students.
And for most people that work in the community colleges, that comes essentially with an equity bent, or a social justice bent. And when we talk to our colleagues around the college, I get this — I talk about this body language shift. People sort of relax, and they say, “Yes, this is why I’m here. You know, this is what I want to do.” And that really helps us connect the guided pathways work with a very compelling why … why we are doing it, why they should be a part of it.
So now our challenge is in translating that into the how. What does it look like operationalized? And I think that that’s where a lot of discussions will take place because that will really define how we make decisions around design elements, how we make decisions around process changes, and things like that. So I think that’s kind of the next place where our equity development really has to go.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Michael Baston, President, Rockland Community College, Pathways Coach (posted 4/5/2018)
We need to be thinking from an equitable perspective in this work. How students are really introduced to academic programs that actually bring them into a living wage, a life-sustaining wage. If you have students in poverty, helping them to get in academic programs that are going to keep them in poverty is not a benefit to those students. We have to be very thoughtful about how we encourage students to think about the kinds of academic programs, based on their interest and based on their backgrounds, that will enable them to be in life-sustaining, family-sustaining wage opportunities long term. And so that’s something that is extraordinarily important if we are really going to create the level playing field, particularly for low-income students, that they’re going to need to be able to lift themselves and their families into the opportunity for a middle class life.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Kay McClenney, Senior Advisor to the President & CEO, AACC, Pathways Partner (posted 4/5/2018)
If we look carefully at our data, we also know that despite people of good will working hard to try to improve the lives and outcomes for their students that higher education can unwittingly perseverate institutional racism, disproportionate outcomes for certain groups of students. Let me give you an example. Tony Carnevale from the Georgetown Center for Workforce and the Economy did a study a couple of years ago that shows that across American higher education, at both community colleges and four-year institutions, that Black and Hispanic students are enrolled in disproportionately high numbers in programs that lead to low-paying jobs.
That is us perseverating White racial privilege whether we like to think about that or not, and certainly whether it’s intentional or not that’s the outcome — or the current outcome — of our work. And so to reverse that in a pathways model we have to be exquisitely attentive to the possibility that the one major dark downside of doing this work could be that it devolves into some sort of 1950s-style tracking and that it perpetuates that pattern of placing students of color and low-income students in disproportionately high numbers in the programs that are not going to break out of the poverty cycle, that are not going to advance the American dream for those students.
It’s the equity lens, it’s the equity mindedness that our colleges bring to the design and the implementation, to the work with advisors, the work on culturally appropriate and culturally responsive teaching.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Mike Flores, President, Palo Alto College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
So it’s important for us to look at the aggregate, at our overall graduation rate, at how many hours it takes. For us, you know, 87 right now. And then to disaggregate by group, by racial ethnic group, by gender, by Pell status, and also veteran status to see if there are any gaps that exist.
Hispanic females, Latinas, actually graduate at a higher rate than any other group. They take less hours than any other group on campus. And so they have demonstrated that they can be successful with the right supports. And so we’re having conversations, then, with students about “What are some of your strategies that you’ve utilized?” With faculty and staff working with students, with Latinas or Hispanic females, “What are strategies that you’ve utilized to support Hispanic females on campus?” Because they are very successful on our campus. So it is really looking at the aggregate. It really is teasing it out to really then look at the data by each group and then figuring out who are the groups that are performing well, what can we learn from their performance, and then having faculty and staff around the table to be able to do that.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes
Uri Treisman, Director, Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin (posted 4/5/2018)
What are the real equity challenges connected to guided pathways? First, how do we help students who may have limited exposure to professions … make a high-stakes initial choice that will actually lead to upward mobility? The economic research shows that students self-segregate by their economic class. If students don’t know the ins and outs of different professions, how will they make good choices? So we have to be careful in our rush to intrusive advising and automated advising that we ensure that students have true, fair, equal access to programs of study that lead to upward mobility. Second, what we’re seeing in large numbers of urban community colleges is that students may complete gateway courses, but they still don’t get access to the high-value programs in their communities, like nursing, business accounting, or IT. So how, at each stage, do we ask the question of who is actually in these programs and benefitting from them, and then how do we understand the pathway levers and channels that really lead to those programs? Looking at that data will be the test of whether our commitment is a symbolic commitment to equity or a true commitment to the future of all of our students.
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Commitment to equity in student outcomes