Attend an upcoming Classroom Equity Action Plan Faculty Forum:
All UMass Amherst faculty members engaged in classroom equity action plan work are invited to attend a Classroom Equity Action Plan Faculty Forum in February and April. Come and listen to fellow faculty members and departments across campus, learn about their progress, strategies, and best practices, seek advice, and get your questions answered.
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 Tuesday, April 29, 2025
3:00-4:30 p.m. 9:00-10:30 a.m.
Old Chapel, 2nd floor Great Hall Old Chapel, 2nd floor Great Hall
Rationale for the Classroom Equity Action Plan:
During the Fall semester of 2021, our campus launched our latest Campus Climate Survey. In announcing this survey, we acknowledged not only our ongoing commitment to understanding perceptions of, but also to making measurable progress on equity and inclusion on our campus. It has become clear that the collaborative engagement of all members of our campus community – faculty, staff, and students – in translating this commitment into action is the only path to living up to our values.
In the Fall of 2022, the Campus Climate Survey report and interactive dashboards were released, along with Campus Climate Survey Engagement Guides, which include resources and toolkits on different themes. The campus was invited to engage with these resources as the foundation for developing Equity Action Plans in each of the vice chancellories. For Academic Affairs, the timeline for developing these plans was announced at the Academic Affairs retreat in September 2022, and a full-day retreat for department heads/chairs, deans and other academic leaders was held at the beginning of February 2023 to launch this process.
The Academic Affairs Equity Action Plans are focused on improving equity in students’ classroom belonging and connectedness, which correlate strongly with traditional measures of student success (e.g. the PASS Project).This focus results directly from feedback from our own students, especially those from groups historically marginalized in higher education, on their experiences at the department level through the Campus Climate Survey and annual senior surveys. To begin to address these inequities, we developed a priority list of equity actions focused on classroom belonging and asked departments to assess their use throughout the courses required for their majors. We then asked departments to choose at least one equity action to advance belonging and connectedness and submit a plan for implementation, starting in the fall semester of 2023. Ideally, these actions will be targeted to the point in the curriculum and pedagogy where they may have the most impact on inequities in student retention and completion rates based on feedback from the Campus Climate and student success data from Flagship Analytics.
We have collaborated with the CTL and the IDEAS Team to curate and design resources to assist each faculty member, department and college, engaged in implementing these Classroom Equity Action Plans. We also stand ready as a team, along with collaborators from the Office of Equity and Inclusion, to assist whenever we are called upon.
The Equity Action Plans represent an opportunity for faculty to reflect on our current pedagogy and to exercise our academic freedom to make improvements that promote the success of ALL our students. The overarching goal of the Equity Action Plans is to improve equity in student belonging and connectedness in the classroom and ultimately success. These plans are expected to build upon the intentions and aspirations articulated in your strategic plan, AQAD, and EEP by formalizing a specific path to achieving them that is guided by evidence.
We believe that the priority actions presented are responsive to student feedback on their experiences through the campus climate survey and focus groups. The current state of each department/school/college with respect to these priority actions will fall on a continuum in relation to the cycle of continuous improvement [FIGURE 1]. In developing this plan, engage with your identified priority action at the point in the cycle that best matches your current state.
Figure 1: Cycle of continuous improvement cycle to be used by departments, schools, and colleges to determine priorities for their equity action plan.
An interactive TEAMS channel has been created to provide you with the resources necessary to plan and execute these equity actions as well as to provide you with a community of practice and collaboration.