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Full-Text Articles in Education
Wicked²: The Increasing Wickedness Of Educational Developers As Dei Cultural Influencers, Lauri Dietz, China M. Jenkins, Laura Cruz, Amber Handy, Rita Kumar, Rita Kumar, Julia Metzger, Ian Norris
Wicked²: The Increasing Wickedness Of Educational Developers As Dei Cultural Influencers, Lauri Dietz, China M. Jenkins, Laura Cruz, Amber Handy, Rita Kumar, Rita Kumar, Julia Metzger, Ian Norris
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
The global pandemic that began in 2020 amplified the chasm between higher education’s stated goals to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the systemic realities that many students, instructors, and staff grapple with on a daily basis. We contend that attenuating the barriers to DEI outcomes means first acknowledging that DEI is a wicked problem, in that it is impossible to solve because of competing, conflicting, and complex sociocultural forces from within and outside our institutions. We also contend that educational developers (EDs) are particularly well situated within the higher education ecology to be key cultural influencers in how …
A Mandatory Faculty Diversity Workshop: Does It Work?, Heather Dwyer, Joya Smith
A Mandatory Faculty Diversity Workshop: Does It Work?, Heather Dwyer, Joya Smith
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This article explores the effectiveness of a mandatory training workshop for faculty. Our center for teaching and learning (CTL) was charged with designing and implementing a diversity training workshop for all full-time faculty. The workshop included an introduction to diversity and inclusion, analysis of microaggressions, discussion of inclusive teaching strategies, and practice responding to difficult situations using realistic classroom scenarios. Data were collected on participants’ familiarity and comfort level with diversity and inclusion concepts and situations via identical pre- and post-assessment. A year later, a follow-up survey was administered, which included the original assessment. Assessment and survey responses indicated positive …
The Case For Heterodoxy, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison
The Case For Heterodoxy, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive
Despite being originally designed to educate men, honors programs are not very attractive to male students in general and to male students of color in particular. Because access to honors programs is limited by a credentialing process that favors white men, many members of minority groups find them inhospitable and are significantly underrepresented. This essay suggests three concepts to be used to reimagine honors programs to be more welcoming of minority students: radical hospitality, asset-based thinking, and heterodoxy.
Taking On The Challenges Of Diversity And Visibility: Thoughts From A Small Honors Program, Kathryn M. Macdonald
Taking On The Challenges Of Diversity And Visibility: Thoughts From A Small Honors Program, Kathryn M. Macdonald
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive
The Monroe College Honors Program, located in New York, enjoys an extremely diverse student body, which can be attributed to its location within and proximity to New York City. Data about the Monroe College Honors Program are presented. More importantly, this essay presents the strategies that the honors program uses to meet the needs of a diverse student body. Our students face many challenges, including difficult family situations and economic hardship, and so the honors program has created a rigorous but flexible curriculum and co-curriculum to meet their needs. The approaches used to serve this population focus on getting to …
Congregational Honors: A Model For Inclusive Excellence, Naomi Yavneh Klos
Congregational Honors: A Model For Inclusive Excellence, Naomi Yavneh Klos
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive
This essay proposes a conception of honors programs and colleges as sacred communities that acknowledge and embrace the unique human dignity of each of their members. Drawing on Ron Wolfson’s congregational model articulated in Relational Judaism, McMillan and Chavis’s definition of “sense of community,” and the pedagogy of educators such as Paolo Freire and bell hooks, I argue that to create a true culture of inclusive excellence, an honors program or college should not be constructed as a checklist of “exceptional experiences for exceptional students” but rather as a “community of relationships.” Leading with a student-centered, holistic focus that …
The Power Of Creation: Critical Imagination In The Honors Classroom, Jennie Woodard
The Power Of Creation: Critical Imagination In The Honors Classroom, Jennie Woodard
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive
The article examines how to incorporate issues of social justice and diversity in the honors classroom through critical imagination. Inclusion and diversity are among the five strategic pillars of honors education, but the challenge is to create space for social justice as an academic inquiry. This article describes an honors project where students were tasked to come up with their own concept for a television show, using their imagination to bridge gaps in representations on television. Critical imagination allowed the students to move beyond analyzing television in its current state and conceptualize what more inclusive television could look like in …
Being Honors Worthy: Lessons In Supporting Transfer Students, Carolyn Thomas, Eddy A. Ruiz, Heidi Van Beek, J. David Furlow, Jennifer Sedell
Being Honors Worthy: Lessons In Supporting Transfer Students, Carolyn Thomas, Eddy A. Ruiz, Heidi Van Beek, J. David Furlow, Jennifer Sedell
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive
In the ever-growing discussion of how to build and support honors programs that reflect the diverse communities our institutions serve, the recruitment of transfer students has only recently been identified as a key avenue to enacting more equitable programs. Reflecting on four years of recruiting, enrolling, and graduating transfer students in the University Honors Program at the University of California, Davis, we push the conversation beyond how to welcome transfer students in honors to how to meaningfully support them. We present the initial findings of our ongoing self-assessment to stimulate discussion about the unique challenges and opportunities transfer students experience …
Seeking And Doing Justice Through Educational Development, Wayne Jacobson
Seeking And Doing Justice Through Educational Development, Wayne Jacobson
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
One thing that has shaped my understanding of educational development more than anything else is a commitment to seeking and doing justice. I see this commitment as the animating force that breathes life into the best of what educational developers do and the core value that continually challenges us to do better. In the many contexts in which we work, the one thing that defines the role of educational development is the recognition that we need to continually examine and improve how well our institutional systems are doing justice to the communities that we are trusting them to serve.
Toward Learning And Justice, Through Love, Isis Artze-Vega
Toward Learning And Justice, Through Love, Isis Artze-Vega
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This chapter responds to the call for educational developers to isolate the one perspective that guides our work. It retraces the author’s career steps, seeking the origin of love as a guiding principle, and describes its evolution and application during her career. To do so, the piece includes a theoretical perspective on love and argues that its utility as a characterizing perspective for our profession stems from its significance to learning and justice. It suggests the timeliness and urgency of elevating the role of love in our field, notes associated risks and rewards, and suggests resources for doing so.
Equity-Minded Faculty Development, Aeron Haynie
Equity-Minded Faculty Development, Aeron Haynie
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
A governing principle of equity-minded faculty development is a commitment to supporting marginalized populations who may feel unwelcome in academia: from minority college students to first-generation graduate students to faculty of color. Faculty development should encourage faculty to notice inequities and not dismiss them as student’s individual failures; to examine institutional data on student, graduate student, and faculty achievement patterns; and to collaborate with other campus partners on interventions. As we work with faculty to develop strategies to ensure all students can succeed, we must also enact the same empowering, strengths- based practices we promote.
A Minimalist Model Of New Faculty Mentoring: Why Asking For Less Gives More, Heather Lobban Viravong, Mark Schneider
A Minimalist Model Of New Faculty Mentoring: Why Asking For Less Gives More, Heather Lobban Viravong, Mark Schneider
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
We describe a research-based mentoring program for new full-time faculty at a small residential college, which emphasizes the empowerment of the new faculty themselves to identify and obtain the resources they need for success. In our model, the mentor takes on a role of primarily providing accountability, easing the burden on mentors, thereby making for a more sustainable program. Our mixed methods assessment of the program suggests that, paradoxically, these lessened expectations foster closer personal relationships between mentor and protégé than might have occurred if that were a programmatic expectation.
Ways Of Doing: Feminist Educational Development, Emily O. Gravett, Lindsay Bernhagen
Ways Of Doing: Feminist Educational Development, Emily O. Gravett, Lindsay Bernhagen
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
In response to the recent special call in To Improve the Academy, we offer the following collaborative essay that describes how feminism is our characterizing perspective on educational development. The essay details various, interrelated facets of feminism that inform our work in the field: gender, intersectionality, power, privilege, standpoint theory, and collaboration. Not only do these facets characterize our own feminist approach to educational development—from consultations to organizational development to publications—but, we argue, they also align well with the values and approaches of the field as a whole.
Educational Development As Pink Collar Labor: Implications And Recommendations, Lindsay Bernhagen, Emily Gravett
Educational Development As Pink Collar Labor: Implications And Recommendations, Lindsay Bernhagen, Emily Gravett
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Against a backdrop of other professional arenas, including higher education, this article examines the field of educational development—who we are (mostly women) and what we do (care, service, and emotional labor)—through the lens of gender. While we suggest that educational development may provide a positive counterexample to the male dominance in other higher education professions, we also argue that the common devaluing of women and their labor, well- documented in other arenas, may contribute to educational developers’ "marginal" positions on campuses, our difficulties getting "invited to the table," as well as our challenges in becoming more involved in organizational development …
Receive, Reorganize, Return: Theatre As Creative Scholarship, Sara Armstrong, Theresa Braunschneider
Receive, Reorganize, Return: Theatre As Creative Scholarship, Sara Armstrong, Theresa Braunschneider
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This article focuses on the use of theatre as a mode of creative scholarship, from the research involved in sketch creation to the presentation of that research to academic audiences. We particularly focus on a specific sketch developed by the CRLT Players—one that explores the consequences of subtle discrimination faced by women scientists in research laboratory settings— to illustrate the ways in which theatre can engage audiences with research results. The article explains how participation in such performances promotes a more active exploration of scholarship than simply reading or hearing a presentation. Interactive theatre directs and focuses an audience’s attention …
The Impact Of Urbanicity On Student Engagement At Small, Residential, Liberal Arts Colleges, Todd Clark
The Impact Of Urbanicity On Student Engagement At Small, Residential, Liberal Arts Colleges, Todd Clark
Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This study analyzed the impact of urbanicity on student engagement at small, residential, liberal arts colleges. Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) were analyzed from 29 schools (14 rural and 15 urban) using five scalets developed by Pike (2006) and six demographic variables from the NSSE survey. This analysis determined how urbanicity impacts student engagement and which group of students is particularly affected from among the demographics studied. The effects of urbanicity were measured in three ways: aggregate student data, school level data, and within-school data. These analyses showed that urbanicity does significantly impact student engagement, though …
Tracking Pod's Engagement With Diversity: A Content Analysis Of To Improve The Academy And Pod Network Conference Programs From 1977 To 2011, Stacy E. Grooters
Tracking Pod's Engagement With Diversity: A Content Analysis Of To Improve The Academy And Pod Network Conference Programs From 1977 To 2011, Stacy E. Grooters
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This study examines the degree to which sessions from the annual Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network Conference and articles from To Improve the Academy engage questions of diversity. The titles and abstracts of 3,946 conference sessions and 560 journal articles were coded for presence and type of diversity. A significant variation in inclusion of diversity over time was found for the conference sessions (p < 0.001) but not the journal articles. Overall, the findings suggest that the organization has been inconsistent in its scholarly engagement with diversity and should work to encourage more regular engagement with diversity by its members.