Blog
Change Topics (Working Groups) Show all
Equity and Inclusion
27 matchesTarget Audience Show all
Institution Administration
27 matchesBeyond the Diversity Status Quo
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion
The arc of history is long but it bends towards freedom. - Martin Luther King Jr.
Most of us who work in equity and inclusion have an orientation towards wanting to make progress towards systemic change. There is a shared acknowledgement of past injustice, present struggle, and persistent hope. Consistent with the ASCN, those who work in equity and inclusion in higher education are often seeking long term, sustainable transformations of their institutions.
And yet, higher education institutions also prize stability and can be remarkably slow to change. Equity and inclusion concerns get framed as issues for committees and task forces, which eventually become standing entities rather than forces empowered to make radical change. Diversity work feels at risk to budget cuts and to voicing unpopular truths. Overworked and underfunded, the point people for equity and inclusion in an institution can take up somewhat conservative goals: retaining individuals who are underrepresented in a discipline can turn into a standing effort to at least not lose the little bit of diversity left in the department. Although its proponents are often oriented towards transformation, it can seem like higher educational diversity work is far removed from the work of systemic change.
In my dissertation I made calls for going "Beyond Diversity as Usual" in undergraduate engineering work, using new research approaches and new ways of conceptualizing institutional practice (Secules, 2017a). Here are a few directions from my work and others' that may help move towards systemic change in the institutional diversity landscape: More
Frameworks for Inclusive Excellence and Systemic Change
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration, Teaching/Learning Assistants, Post-doctoral Fellows
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Cultural Competency
In the work I and my colleagues have done to create change around STEM Education on our own campus we've intentionally worked at two levels. We try to focus both on what will help individual faculty to make changes to their teaching and on how we can shift norms, structures, and teaching culture at the institutional level. My focus as a faculty developer has historically been focused on helping faculty make changes to their pedagogy through exploration and adoption of a variety of active learning pedagogies. I've also been interested in how the spaces in which faculty teach and the norms and policies that guide their practice can promote the adoption of evidence-based teaching practice. More recently, and for a variety of reasons, I've become more interested in how to support faculty to pay attention to their classrooms as inclusive places for learning and the degree to which their courses help to support equitable outcomes for students. While these ideas are connected to good pedagogical practice, thinking about inclusivity has prompted me to expand my toolbox. More
Do I want to be recognized? Reflections on my experience with (Dis)Ability and working in Higher Education
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Institutional Systems:Personnel/Hiring
My name is Paul. I was born missing fingers and have funny arms. I am ok with it. There really isn't much that I can't do and I have learned to adapt.
People who looked at me probably thought I could never play college football but yeah...I did that. I even coached it for a while. I loved my time working in athletics and although I looked different, I never felt out of place or discriminated against. I was just Paul Artale, football guy, and keeping teams from scoring on us was the most important thing in the world. I bring up football because being an athlete (and the lessons learned from it) are still very prominent pieces of my identity.
Disability is a complex and nuanced identity. Disability is not a primary, or even secondary identity for many people with a disability. My athletic identity, ethnicity, and nationality (Canadian) are far more prevalent in my life. On a good day, it is something I don't think about much about. On a rare bad day it is something that I repress. Disability is often left out of discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) because individuals with disabilities frequently do not prioritize their disability identity, or leave it completely out of conversations because it is a secondary or tertiary identity. Another reason is that disability is often perceived as a medical condition; a person has a condition, they adapt, they persist, and they almost forget they had a disability in the first place. More
Responding to Racism
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion
In response to the events that took place in Charlottesville, we sent ASCN members an email with a subject line – "How shall we respond to racism?" in which we condemned these appalling displays of racism, violence, and ignorance, and discussed how they brought to light the importance of education in fighting racism and promoting equity and inclusion. We also reaffirmed that fighting racism and promoting equity and inclusion are a daily responsibility, and an important priority in our work. More
Reflections on the SMTI/ASCN Workshop on Diversity and Inclusion
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration, Post-doctoral Fellows
Last month in partnership with the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) we organized SMTI/ASCN Workshop on Diversity and Inclusion.


One of the major objectives of the workshop was to advance a dialog on diversity and inclusion in undergraduate STEM education between practitioners transforming institutions and researchers who are studying systemic change at higher education institutions.
The workshop featured case studies of institutions that are making progress on increasing diversity and inclusion on their campuses. These case studies were used to stimulate small group discussion amongst all participants on what is working or not on their campuses. In addition, small group discussion by ASCN working groups also were offered.
With a great interest we read reflections offered by the workshop participants and in turn More
