Facilitating Sustainable Change: A Strategic Path to Inclusive Excellence

Though Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) has been ranked as the most ethnically diverse Southern regional college since 2014 (2025 U.S. News & World Report) and faculty in the School of Science and Technology (SST) are committed to support the learning of such a diverse student body, many of our faculty when surveyed in 2021 were not aware of inclusive teaching practices, nor of the poor retention and graduation rates in SST. Upon sharing of this data, 70% of SST faculty surveyed were ready to take on the HHMI Inclusive Excellence 3 challenge of "Meaningful Evaluation of Effective and Inclusive Teaching". To guide change on campus we developed a "theory of change" which states "that when faculty have a clear understanding of the value of inclusive teaching practices in student success, and are rewarded for their efforts, there will be increased student retention and graduation rates".

Since then, we have guided faculty members in SST to draft and adopt a shared definition of inclusive teaching, offered professional development on inclusive teaching practices and self-reflection of teaching, created departmental faculty-learning communities to discuss, implement, and assess inclusive teaching practices, and developed a list of inclusive teaching practices for the annual evaluation. In addition, to determine the impact of these improved teaching practices on students, a survey was developed to gauge students' sense of belonging in their major.

As we bring change on our campus, we have been supported by members of the HHMI IE3 Learning Community Cluster 4 (LCC4 comprising fifteen other institutions across the United States). Weekly meetings with these amazing faculty helped us build trust as we shared our challenges, ideas, and successes. This presentation will review GGC's progress to date and participation in LCC4 projects.