In the summer of 2020, students at WCSU, like students all over the country, planned a demonstration in response to the murder of George Floyd. I stood with them as they held the moments of silence representing the time that Floyd was held down, the stunning amount of time for the police officer to stop what he was doing and not take a life. The tears were flowing.
We then participated in a brief march around the campus and ended at the podium where some students and faculty took a moment to air their concerns, not just about the treatment of African-Americans in the criminal justice system, but the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion at our university. While many of the things said represented a moment of pain beyond my ability to respond, one concern that was raised was about our curriculum. This is my bailiwick, so I called the student leaders in for a meeting and tried to get at what they were worried about. From this conversation, I attempted to take action.
The concerns expressed by the students were two-fold. 1. There was a sense that our curriculum did not fully represent the histories and contributions of the diversity of peoples that make up our campus community. 2. There was a sense, demonstrated through various examples, that students of color are marginalized in the classroom. Not being aware of the range of literature about inclusive teaching practices, the students struggled to express their concerns. Nevertheless, I thought I had an idea of what they were experiencing.
As provost, my default next move is to reach out to the faculty and ask for help in addressing these concerns. In the fall after that demonstration, I visited our University Senate and asked for volunteers to form an ad hoc committee and charged them with the narrowly defined task of identifying some tools for looking at our curriculum from an equity and inclusion lens. I thought that this group would review the many tools that have been developed by other campuses to look at curriculum and recommend one for adoption. This tool would then be used by faculty within their departments to consider opportunities to be more inclusive. Oh foolish me.
I should have known better. You see the trouble is that there is too much equity work to be done on our campus, and the areas of inquiry just kept expanding. There were questions about our campus climate (good questions) that got bundled into the report. There were concerns about our recruiting practices and the persistent results of our searches that still skew toward historic representations along race and gender lines. There were concerns about trying to address diversity and equity in every class, potentially distracting from the overall goals of the course. There was no concern whatsoever about our own achievement gaps and how our pedagogies might be contributing to that, but I assume that would have emerged eventually. It was not a happy conversation.
Well, we are moving on to another committee whose charge will be to address these many questions, broadening the scope of the analysis, which is probably appropriate. But this will likely take another year, which doesn’t seem right to me. I must admit, I am disheartened.
From the range of questions and comments that emerged, it is clear that our community cares deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion on our campus. Nothing that was said suggests that there isn’t concern about how to best serve our students from this perspective. Unfortunately, I think we are so aware of just how complicated these questions are that we are paralyzed. It reminds me of how I used to feel in the library stacks when I was getting my PhD; I just couldn’t figure out where the end of the question might be. This knowledge of the layers of complexity makes it difficult to take action.
The trouble is, I think those students deserve some action, sooner rather than later. So, at the risk of over-simplifying things, I’d like to suggest a few first steps for our community. These are baby steps, available to us right now, while we wait for the more complex DEI plan to be fully developed.
- Each faculty member should take a look at their syllabi and simply ask if there are any opportunities to include a wider range of voices in the readings assigned. This does not mean that math classes need to teach subjects that are more appropriate to anthropology classes. It simply means looking at the many people who have contributed to the field of mathematics and consider whether or not their voices or discoveries are reflected in the materials.
- Each department might come together to look at the whole of what they are offering and consider whether or not, taken together, the curriculum includes opportunities to encounter a diversity of scholars who have contributed to the field. That work together could reveal a few insights about the dominant narratives being presented and whether or not there are opportunities to grow the range of voices encountered by our students. This holistic approach to the major can help address any gaps in perspectives while at the same time avoiding trying to make all courses do the same thing.
- Our curriculum committees might take a moment to scan our catalogs (graduate and undergraduate) to see if there are ample opportunities for students to pursue some of the particular histories, fields, and narratives of interest to them. Can we find more than one course focused on women, or African-American, Asian-American, Latin-American, or LGBTQ+ communities? Can we pursue a line of inquiry about the role of religion or culture or social structures in social justice movements? Is it possible to complete a degree at our university without ever hearing about a culture or community that is different from our own?
- For all of the above, can we include our students in the conversation? They might not see things the same way that we do. Perhaps we should try to learn what they are seeing.
And when we’re all done with the process above, it might be a good idea to a) communicate about it in some way and b) make a plan to do this work every few years.
There is a lot more to do. We really do need to look at the literature about inclusive teaching practices and get serious about finding out why some of our students are feeling marginalized. We need to get serious about looking at the ways in which that lack of attention to inclusive teaching practices is impacting our students in terms of successful course/degree completion. We really do need a climate survey to help us gauge how widespread the feelings of exclusion might be. Then we need to act on the results of that survey. We really do need to examine our hiring practices to try to get a better understanding of why we keep replicating the status quo. All of this is important, and I hope that the next committee will do a great job on this.
But for right now, the simple steps above could help us move forward. They allow the content experts to do the work. They do not involve any external reviews of anything, and so might encourage departments to have honest and thoughtful conversations. They do not suggest that every course needs to become a course about diversity or culture. Instead, they just ask all of us to be mindful of our decisions and look for reasonable opportunities to be more inclusive. That doesn’t have to take another year.
