SEPT 2022 - Promoting Equity in Higher Education, New Faculty Survey....and More

Guest Editor Adrianna Kezar, Director of the Pullias Center

Pullias Center leans into its mission –

Promoting Equity in Higher Education

Dear Colleagues,

For decades now, the Pullias Center has aimed to support historically-marginalized populations in higher education. The foundation and core of all our work has been to dismantle inequities. While we have done this work for a long time, we have not always used the word "equity" to describe it.

"Equity" has become the term used in academe as a shorthand for this critical work of both interrogating inequities and our efforts to work toward a system that supports all students, faculty, staff and administrators on campus. Our early Equity work at the Pullias Center focused more on students, but in recent years has expanded into other groups — predominantly faculty, but also staff and administrators.

"Equity" captures the work of Pullias Center scholars over our 26-year history and is a beacon for our work going forward. Thus, you will see the phrase “Promoting Equity in Higher Education” as part of our outreach and promotion materials — our goal is to help leaders in higher education better understand the work done at our Center. Over time, our focus will expand to include other groups, but 'Promoting Equity in Higher Education' will remain our foundation and guiding mission.

In this edition of the newsletter, we'll share an update and new report on Shared Equity Leadership, a model that promotes culture change so that all stakeholders in higher education take responsibility for equity. Other articles focuses on our new toolkit aimed at supporting non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF), and some great news about our new National Science Foundation-funded project — a truly groundbreaking faculty survey that will help us understand Faculty, Academic Careers and Environments (FACE) in service of equity. Lastly, we'll introduce you to a new Rossier/Pullias Center faculty member, Dwuana Bradley, whose work focuses on issues of access and the continued lack of equity for historically-marginalized groups.

We hope you enjoy our newsletter, and here's to a great new academic year!

Adrianna Kezar

Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education

New Developments on Shared Equity Leadership

Over the past two years, Pullias Center Director Adrianna Kezar, Senior Postdoctoral Scholar Elizabeth Holcombe, former graduate student Jude Paul Dizon (now faculty at Rutgers University), along with grad students Jordan Harper and Natsumi Ueda, have been working on a next phase study of Shared Equity Leadership (SEL).

The Pullias Center's SEL work, in partnership with the American Council on Education (ACE), is aimed at developing practice-based insights relative to Shared Equity Leadership in higher education. Our next report, Shared Responsibility Means Shared Accountability — is now out, and the corresponding free webinar is set for September 29.

Phase I of the SEL Project featured the report "Shared Equity Leadership: Making Equity Everybody's Work," while Phase II began with our report "Organizing Shared Equity Leadership: Four Approaches to Structuring the Work." Over the next six months, three additional reports will be released that explore how functional role and level (senior, middle level or grassroots) shape leaders work, capacity building individually and organizationally, and emotional labor inherent in this work.

Rethinking Accountability in Shared Equity Leadership

September 29, 2022

1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m. ET

In this webinar, leading scholars and practitioners will share insights from the recently-released report, Shared Responsibility Means Shared Accountability: Rethinking Accountability Within Shared Equity Leadership.

Expert panelists will discuss the ways that they are rethinking accountability both on campus and among other stakeholders, including boards and accreditors. Panelists will also discuss the broader landscape of higher education accountability and how these efforts reflect future directions in the field.

Professional Development 'Toolkit' Available to Support Equity for NTTF

Earlier this summer, the Pullias Center released our "Designing Accessible and Inclusive Professional Development for NTTF Toolkit." The interactive toolkit, created by KC Culver, Adrianna Kezar and Jennifer Yeh, is meant to accompany the report of the same name, which was created as part of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.

"The Toolkit helps campuses think through not only how institutional policies shape the ability for non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) to participate in professional development, but also how programs like faculty learning communities can be designed so that they're tailored toward the needs of this often-marginalized faculty," noted Culver.

The Tookit brings an equity focus to creating opportunities for NTTF and includes a number of different strategies for better understanding the institutional context and the specific population of NTTF on your campus, as well as considerations for the design and implementation of programs, through information finding, reflection, and assessment. The toolkit also makes recommendations for how the equity impact of existing programs can be increased without requiring a lot of resources, including how participation in professional development is recognized and how programs evaluate success.

Download the NTTF Professional Development Toolkit

SPOTLIGHT

Putting a "FACE" on Faculty: Pullias Launches Ambitious Survey of National Faculty

Who are higher education faculty in the U.S.? This may seem like a simplistic question, but the reality is that, on a national level, we don’t really know.

It's been nearly two decades since there has been nationally representative data collected about faculty, with the last National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSPSF) conducted in 2004.

Now, thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Pullias Center – under the leadership of Adrianna Kezar and KC Culver – will develop and pilot a national survey that will provide a contemporary understanding of postsecondary faculty in the United States.

The Faculty, Academic Careers and Environments (FACE) project will provide much needed data at a time when faculty nationwide face unprecedented changes.

"Leadership Moves" Project Supports Leaders in Facilitating Changes to Culture, Programs, Policies

Through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Adrianna Kezar, along with Indiana University-South Bend's Susan Elrod and Postdoctoral Scholar Ángel González, are leading an effort to build leaders' capacity to facilitate systemic institutional transformation that improves student success. The "Leadership Moves for Institutional Transformation" project fills a major gap as there are no research-based overarching models of leader moves to actualize systemic change.

This fall, the Pullias Center will release our "Leadership Toolkit for Advancing Systemic Change in Higher Education," which will serve as a foundational resource for leaders across higher education to intentionally map out and engage in systemic change efforts. Learn more about the "Leadership Moves" project here.

Dwuana Bradley Joins Rossier/Pullias Center as Assistant Professor

The Pullias Center welcomes Dwuana Bradley to our faculty! Dr. Bradley brings more than 10 years of experience in qualitative research methodologies and is a former McNair Scholar.

Her research examines the ways in which anti-Black sentiment perpetually undergirds the drivers and levers of federal, state and institutional policies across the P-20 pipeline in ways that (un)intentionally reify the social stratification of Black peoples across the diaspora.

Dr. Bradley is committed to deepening equity through her teaching and advising across each of the four Ph.D. programs in USC Rossier's Urban Education Policy program. Her two primary goals as ....Read More

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

Shared Responsibility Means Shared Accountability: Rethinking Accountability Within Shared Equity Leadership

Adrianna Kezar, Elizabeth Holcombe, Darsella Vigil, Pullias Center for Higher Education and the American Council on Education (2022). Download the Publication Here.

Shared Equity Leadership Toolkit

Adrianna Kezar, Elizabeth Holcombe, Darsella Vigil, Pullias Center for Higher Education (2022). Download the Toolkit Here.

Designing Accessible and Inclusive Professional Development for NTTF Toolkit

KC Culver, Adrianna Kezar, and Jennifer Yeh, Pullias Center for Higher Education (2022). Download the Toolkit Here.

Identifying Institutional Needs for Student Parents in Community Colleges: Recommendation for Successful Policy and Practice

Adrian H. Huerta, Maritza E. Salazar, Edgar F. Lopez, Gabriela Torres, Lauren M. Badajos, Norma A. Lopez Matias, Pullias Center for Higher Education (2022). Download the Publication Here.

MORE NEWS

PASS team researchers Genia M. Bettencourt, Lauren N. Irwin, Joseph A. Kitchen, Zoë B. Corwin have a new article in the American Behavioral Scientist titled "Understanding How Student Support Practitioners Navigated Ideal Worker Norms During COVID-19: The Role of Job-Crafting."

Zoë Corwin and Adrian Huerta shared their thoughts on how to demystify the college-going process in a recent Diverse: Issues in Higher Education article that highlights the importance of successful communication with parents and families.

Ángel Gonzalez was selected to participate in the University of Pittsburgh “Quant for What?: Dreaming Toward Quantitative Paradigms for Anti-Racist Transformation” a convening offered by scholars at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, Northwestern University, Elon University, and the American Institutes for Research with funding from the Spencer Foundation.

Royel M. Johnson was appointed to the Lumina Foundation’s Black Student Enrollment Expert Advisory Board.

Adrianna Kezar, Ronn Hallett, Joseph Kitchen, and Rosemary Perez have chapters included in two recently-published books centered around Sense of Belonging and Ecological Validation. The books, The Impact of a Sense of Belonging in College and D elivering on the Promise of High-Impact Practices, are now available for purchase through Stylus Publishing or Amazon.

Adrianna Kezar was cited in The Chronicle of Higher Education article that asks the question "Can a Teaching Track Improve Undergraduate Education?"

Comments from Adrianna Kezar can be found in a Diverse: Issues in Higher Education article on a report that details findings from AAUP's annual Faculty Compensation report.