Category: Inclusion

Diversity, equity, Inclusion

A Simple Question

ProvostMissy

After a two-year hiatus, WCSU hosted a full, in-person, open house again. No more heads on screens with strained or lagging interactions. We had two waves of visitors, eager to ask questions, discover the opportunities we offer, and get to know our campus. I had the pleasure of presenting an overview to a large group and then mingling as families visited with representatives from our academic departments, our student support services, and our co-curricular programs. As grateful as I am for all of the variations on Zoom that allowed us to proceed during the pandemic, there is nothing like the energy created by a bunch of excited folks gathered together. It was a great day.

As I strolled around the O’Neill Center where we set up our tables to display all we offer, I found myself answering lots of simple questions.

  • Which department has the cybersecurity degree? Talk to the folks over there in the Management Information Systems.
  • Can I major in Biology and still study art? Absolutely – check in with the Biology faculty, then stop in to learn about a minor in art. By the way, did you know about the field of scientific illustration?
  • What do I do if I don’t know what I want to study? Stop over and see the folks in Academic Advising, they can tell you all about our exploratory pathways.
  • Is there support for students who have learning differences? Absolutely, make sure you visit with AccessAbility Services.
  • Do students have the opportunity to do internships? Sure. Go see our Career Success Center.

I was feeling really proud of all of the great work we are doing. I had the answers and they were good ones. Then I started speaking with a mother and her son and, well, it did not go as well as I’d hoped.

  • Mother – What are you doing for POC? (People of Color, she explained.) Me: Oh, we have wonderful club opportunities if your son is interested in joining a particular affinity group.
  • Mother: No, I mean what about curriculum? Me: Oh, we have courses that focus on African-American, Latin-American, and other cultural histories, literatures, and so on.
  • No, I mean, will my son see himself in the curriculum throughout his education? Me: To some degree, but we can do better. The mother smiled at me and said, we all can (she’s in higher education, too). I appreciate the thoughtfulness of her response, but I left wanting to do more.

At WCSU, faculty have been engaging these questions in a variety of ways. Some are looking at the material they assign in their courses with an eye toward greater diversity. Some departments have taken the step to compare the readings and assignments across the whole of the major to look for balance. Some programs are looking at their guest speakers and trying to be more inclusive in the guest list so that all students have a chance to see themselves as professionals in the field. Some departments have worked together to consider how questions of equity can be infused in all that they teach. Still others are focusing on developing more inclusive teaching practices, exploring best practices and research to help them re-design their courses. In short, lots of work is going on as we try to become a more intentionally inclusive organization.

But we aren’t there yet. You see, nearly all of my sentences in the prior paragraph start with the word “some.” As long as it is “some” — well I can’t reassure that mother that her son will feel a pervasive sense of inclusion. I can’t reassure her that his exposure to scholars and mentors who look like him will be routine, rather than a special moment, topic, or focus of one course.

I have tried to have this conversation with my colleagues before, but I see now that I did it all wrong. I was looking for a common evaluation tool, to be used as a self-assessment by departments. In doing so, I ran into concerns about how this assessment would be used. Of course, I really had no plans other than for the departments to take a look at what they were assigning and make adjustments that were appropriate to their areas of expertise. But a common tool felt threatening and the conversation ended.

But I don’t want the conversation to end forever, so today, I am starting it again. Building on the many good impulses and edits to syllabi that I know have already informed our curriculum and teaching strategies, I am asking every faculty member to address the core question that was asked of me: Will all of our students see themselves in the curriculum? If the answer is “some” then we have more work to do. Let’s get to it.

Affordability, equity, Inclusion

Admissions, Equity, and Outcomes

ProvostMissy

The Supreme Court will be taking up two cases related to higher education and admissions practices this week and everyone is poised for, well something. (See the Chronicle’s summary here). I know the arguments are important in as much as they set precedents for how we talk about structural inequities in the United States. The schools in question were doing their best to try to counteract the hundreds of years of biases that shape who gets the opportunity to attend college. In taking race into account, they are accused of creating new discriminatory practices, and there is a piece of that accusation that rings true to some. It is complicated unraveling generations of discrimination based on race, sex, and economic status. It is hard to get it right.

While the impact of the Supreme Court decisions in these cases may have important consequences for less elite schools than those under review, if we want higher education to serve the diversity of students seeking a college education, well, look no further than regional public colleges and universities. For example, if I look at the student body that my university serves, I see that we are rapidly approaching enrollment distributions that reflect our community.

WCSU enrollments compared with the city of Danbury and the state of Connecticut.

You can see from this chart, that the city of Danbury is more diverse than the state, so our percentage of Latin-American students is lower than that of the city of Danbury, but higher than the state. The percent of African-Americans enrolled at WCSU reflects the city population but is slightly lower than the state. We are above the state percentages with Asian-American Students, but slightly lower than Danbury. We have a lower number of Caucasian students than the state percentages, but higher than the City of Danbury. These numbers suggest that we are recruiting classes that are representative of the students in the region.

As a relatively affordable public institution, with admissions standards focused on access rather than exclusion, this achievement makes sense. We do important things like committing to non-discrimination policies, developing pathways through college that are transparent and navigable, and working to differentiate the supports for our students, so we meet their needs. But above all, the diversity of our student body is related to our desire to admit students from our region who want access to the opportunities that higher education can bring. In other words, who to leave out is not a big priority for us.

Nevertheless, we also regularly examine our practices, because legacies of access (or the lack thereof) are woven into neighborhoods, K-12 education, and our assumptions about what a “quality” program looks like. Just last week, we were examining our admissions standards for our education degrees. It is really important that we contribute to the development of new teachers. Public higher education is the best place to pursue such a degree, given the cost of education to earnings potential that all teacher candidates must evaluate. We want our graduates to be highly prepared and capable of serving their students well. Right now, we have excellent outcomes in these programs.

The question of where to set the minimum high school GPA for admission to the teacher education degrees was the focus of our conversation. We discussed the ways in which the current minimum might be excluding talented candidates with promise. We also discussed how lowering it might reduce the very positive outcomes that already exist. It was a spirited debate, but we landed on that slightly lower GPA to broaden the opportunities for more of Connecticut’s high school graduates (and align us with our peer institutions). Central to this decision was a deep understanding of the contexts of the K-12 districts from which we recruit and a deep understanding of the kinds of supports that can help our students succeed. We opted to continue to invest in appropriate levels of support as we work to overcome those long evident biases.

We also voted on adding a new degree, the BA in Popular Music. WCSU has long been known for high-quality music programs, all of which rely in students having an interest in and access to music education starting in middle school. I say middle school because that is typically how long a student needs to have been reading music and playing an instrument to get through our audition process. The new degree acknowledges both that lack of access in some school districts, or in some families, and the reality that sometimes students learn to make music in different ways. It isn’t just about what genre of music students want to create; it is about when they will learn to read music (in college or before), and how we make room for the new ways music is made (on computers, for example). We hope we are opening doors.

There is so much more to say about the equity work that goes on at a public, access-oriented, university. We develop strategies to support students who are first in their families to attend college, knowing that our policies are a mystery and resources are not always easy to uncover. We spend time examining the data of who is succeeding and who is not, and then invest in things like structured tutoring, peer mentoring, cohort models, and so on. We are trying to share information across divisions of the university so that we can continuously uncover practices that might be inadvertently impacting particular clusters of students. We are obsessed with helping all students earn a degree.

So, as the Supreme Court argues about race-conscious admissions policies, I hope the arguments are thoughtful and enlightening. We’ll see. But I must remind everyone that these cases are about schools who trade in exclusivity by design. Ok, I guess those are necessary (maybe). But, if we actually care about equity, then the focus should be on adequately supporting (funding) the universities that are already diverse (and have the capacity to be more so) so that students are not just admitted, but also supported to the finish line.

Inclusion

False Dichotomies

ProvostMissy

Over the last few weeks, I have been in several conversations about the impact of career focused education on the liberal arts. Some conversations focus on tradition (we’ve always taught this), which neglects the ways in which disciplines and departments have evolved over the last two centuries (we haven’t always taught this). Others suggest that professionally oriented majors lack flexibility in a changeable world of work, ignoring that fact that, with the exception of students who enroll in certificate programs only, our career focused degrees are part of a liberal arts program. Finally, there is an argument that prioritizing career focused educational pathways creates a kind of caste system in higher education, with access to the benefits of a liberal arts education being preserved for the lucky few at more elite universities. This framing reveals deeply held biases about what qualifies as liberal arts (and therefore a quality degree) which are pervasive in higher education.

Let’s start with the obvious: Liberal Arts education offers an important path to lifelong learning. Foundations in writing, speaking, and quantitative reasoning are necessary to navigate the worlds in which we live. Indeed, the digital realities we all navigate require clear and effective communication more than ever before. It is not enough for college graduates to know how to write clear sentences and to decode reports of trends that are presented in mathematical forms. They must now have a rich understanding of how rhetoric works, in writing, speaking, and in visual forms, so they can defend themselves from the faulty arguments that surround many important decisions.

Beyond these foundations, it is imperative that our students have at least a basic grasp of how different disciplines define truth. Students need to understand the tentative nature of truth – tied to the moment and destined to change. They need to understand that artists, historians, social scientists, and physicists all arrive at truth (or facts) in different ways. The understanding of these ways of knowing offers ways to resist misinformation and fanaticism. The need for this kind of learning is why our degrees (two- and four-year) have some number of courses devoted to general education. This is where we learn that different disciplines see the world differently. This is how all students are introduced to habits of mind that the liberal arts can bring.

After general education, we guide our students into majors, trying to match them with subjects that let them build greater insight into a specific perspective. We are agnostic about this, recognizing that most people change careers numerous times, by plan or by fate, and the ability to think clearly, do some research, and be flexible when approaching new problems or ideas are the most important outcomes of any major. We urge our students to find the right fit for them and enjoy it, because we know that deeper learning comes from a passion for a discipline. We know that whatever that fit is, it will help our students build their lives after they graduate.

All of this is to say that yes, degrees should be grounded in the liberal arts. Yes, we should be careful not to reduce our programs to just the professional pathways. However, the suggestion that universities and colleges engaging in promoting career pathways, certificates, short programs, etc., are undermining liberal arts education, reveals a very narrow vision of what a well-rounded liberal arts education includes.

Let me be clear. Elite schools are not ignoring these short-term credentials. Every day in my news feeds I see ads for digital media certificates and coding boot camps and executive format certificates in leadership, management, and so on. These ads are from elite universities, including UCONN (our flagship university in CT), Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, etc. These universities either see these as complementary to the degrees they are offering, or they may see them as alternate revenue streams. Either way, they do not seem to suggest that the offering of such opportunities is somehow oppositional to a quality, liberal arts education.

Such programs might also provide important opportunities to students at community colleges and regional, access-oriented, comprehensive universities. Offering short-term, stackable credentials can give students earning power while they are pursuing their undergraduate degrees. Since so many students need to work while they are studying, these opportunities might make that work more interesting or at least more lucrative. Short, focused credentials or certificates can also enhance those very liberal arts majors that we care so deeply about. Weaving these kinds of things into our offerings might help our students see the path from a literature or communication or biology degree to any number of careers. These are opportunities to connect the dots and explore the ways that any degree can lead to interesting career trajectories.

In addition to the concerns about certificates and such, there is a persistent framing of programs like business, health care, or technology focused degrees as somehow lesser than more traditional liberal arts disciplines (history, philosophy, or literature, for example). If you look at the curriculum in our professionally oriented programs you will see that they are all grounded in the liberal arts, rely on the thinking that our general education curriculum introduces, and apply those very skills and habits of mind to specific contexts. Not only do our Justice and Law Administration majors take introductory courses in Political Science and Psychology, but they also take those ideas to the many contexts of the criminal justice system. Students in Social Work are applying concepts introduced in Anthropology and Sociology to their work, bringing them to life in professional settings. And our health care students rely on foundations in Social Sciences, Biology, and Communication to build an understanding about the differences between health information and the social structures that shape how healthcare is perceived and received.

In other words, professional programs are the applications of the ideas introduced in our foundational liberal arts courses. Those foundations are not going away, even as the majors we offer change and evolve. Our professional programs are satisfying the interests and career aspirations of our students, while still helping them develop the habits of mind that support lifelong learning. Suggesting that these are lesser experiences devalues the work of these applied disciplines and the interests and ambitions of our students. It also fails to recognize that the degrees and certificates that are more clearly linked to a career are extensions of the ideas learned in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines. They aren’t separate; they are liberal arts in context.

So, I agree that liberal arts degrees matter. Certificates or narrowly focused career programs should be part of a building block to the broader liberal arts degree. If some people need to stop there at first, for whatever reason, it is up to us to make the path to the liberal arts degrees clear and easy to follow when the time is right. But framing career focused education as separate from or lesser than the liberal arts is not a productive position at all.

Inclusion, Resilience

Award Season Reimagined

ProvostMissy

It is mid-April and the time for awards is upon us. Students have worked hard, and faculty are eager to recognize them. We have department awards for outstanding work in the discipline. There are honor societies for top students in the major. There are research awards to dole out at our annual event – Western Research Day. Students are vying for scholarships for the coming year and the selection of commencement speakers from the student body is now complete. These are really fun days.

But I must admit there are some nagging thoughts in my mind. As wonderful as it is to recognize the hard work of our most accomplished students, these students usually win multiple awards. The criteria for recognition focus on things like GPA, great projects/performances, or dedicated service to our community. Students who are able to do this generally come to us with strong study skills and habits for success in the classroom and/or without the need to work 30 or more hours per week. When you peruse the list of winners each year, most are also in our Honors Program, which usually means this is not their first scholarship or award, but one of several. I’m exceedingly proud of them; they are a wonderful group of students. Still, I worry about all of the efforts and accomplishments that go unrecognized.

Just before the start of the pandemic, our university established a fund for emergencies. This is a pool of money for books, transportation (flat tires), food, and other miscellaneous items that trip up our neediest students and keep them from success. This initiative is so important because so many students disappear for small dollar gaps. Big scholarships are wonderful, and they provide access to education that is so important for a fair and equitable society, but there do not usually address moments when students have to choose between class and work, course materials and food, studying and housing. It is these choices that jeopardize semester or degree. This fund relies on donations and it there is always a need for just a little more. As I think about places for our investments, the short-term awards for those in need, I know this one has high value.

When I consider the availability of emergency funds, I also consider what those students on the financial margins are juggling. I have written before about how work demands can undermine classwork. What about the rest of it? You can’t spend much time in clubs if you have to work all the time. There is no time to volunteer if you are struggling to make ends meet. It is a challenge to do outstanding research, when you’re just trying to get through your classes in the face of external challenges. And don’t get me started about unpaid internships. I’m sorry, this award system is rigged.

So, after we build up a robust fund for emergency funding gaps, I think it might be a good idea to focus on a few more awards for the students who are usually overlooked during awards season. Here are my suggestions:

The We Believe in You Award: This award is for students with GPAs of 2.0 or higher who have earned 15 credits in a semester. So many of our students drop courses to salvage their GPAs, but if there was a reward for persisting, perhaps they’d stay enrolled in that course they are just barely going to pass. Fifteen credits a semester is the right pace to graduate in four years, and getting it done in a timely manner will save students money overall. I say we reward this achievement with $500 dollars off of the next semester’s tuition every time a student meets this standard. It recognizes hard work and might help us keep a few more students on track for a four-year degree.

The You Can Do it Award: This award is for students who manage to get off probation after a rough semester. This award is not dependent on the number of credits because sometimes students have to slow down to get off probation. But after that success, we will award the student one free class during the summer or intersession to catch up on some of the credits lost during their recovery semester. The great thing about this is, if the student sustains their recovery, they can then qualify for the We Believe in You Award the next semester. It is double encouragement to get back on track and stay there.

The Amazing Juggler Award: This award is for students who managed to work nearly full-time, stay on track with at least 12 credits a semester, stay off probation, and still participate in one co-curricular club or department initiative. In this case, a $500 cash award is in order. These students deserve a week off.

Don’t worry, I still want to reward those students who meet the traditional criteria for outstanding. Top GPAs, impressive research and service should still get their due. The students in this category have worked hard and contributed much to our community. We rely on them for their talents, insights, and engagement with life at WCSU. They are peer mentors, service leaders, and often recipients of prestigious external awards like the Fulbright. Excellence deserves to be recognized.

Improving and succeeding in the face of very difficult challenges also deserves to be recognized. Whether those challenges are driven by financial constraints or by uncertainty about college overall, the fact that students overcome them should be recognized and celebrated. This isn’t an “everybody gets a trophy” scheme; it is an equity scheme that recognizes that students are facing very different conditions for learning.

We have big dreams for all of our students, but the most important one of all is that they reap the benefits of earning their degrees. These additional awards might just help a few more of them get there.

equity, Inclusion

Good Intentions Derailed

ProvostMissy

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. 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.