Professional Development is paramount in striving for Equity and Excellence

This article is a continuation of the Equity and Excellence story from May 5, 2017.

 

Part of the Title V Grant has been used to build the LOFT for faculty and staff professional development on campus. Learning Opportunities for Transformation is housed on the fourth floor of the Learning Resource Center. To help faculty on campus to create syllabi and classes that have more equitable outcomes, the Course Redesign Institute and New Faculty Institute were created for faculty to participate in on campus.

 

“Through the Course Redesign Institute, I’ve seen an impact on syllabi when I’m doing evaluations,” MacNeil said. “I’ve seen how faculty have changed their syllabi to be more geared through an equity lens and not have the type of language that sends students away or that tells them ‘no’ or things like that.”

 

Participating in the NFI helps new professors at Mesa College to build connections with other faculty, said Mathematics Professor Mohammed Ebrahimi-Fardooee.

 

“[With the NFI] it’s almost like you have friends all over the campus that you can rely on and you feel connected,” he said. “If there is something happening on campus and you want to do a project in a multidisciplinary area, you know who to contact.”

  

Equity, Excellence Efforts toward Student Success

 

Larry Maxey, dean of Student Success and Equity, said he feels that equity is important in relation to student success – both in terms of graduation and transfer rates for minorities.

 

“Equity for me means that in the outcomes of our students we would see, proportionally, students of color achieving at the same level as the majority,” Maxey said. “The goal of equity is to shrink the gaps between the groups of students that are proportionally achieving success and those students that are disproportionally not achieving success.”

 

Viewing equity as something that begins with the campus culture, Maxey said that instead of dismissing a student as not being “college ready,” the faculty and staff at Mesa College strive to “meet a student where they are.” By this, he said that the administration and faculty are working to adjust college courses to help to engage misrepresented groups.

 

“Equity is a establishing a culture, which this campus is doing an excellent job of, of supporting all of our students, no matter where they are,” Maxey said. “We look at things from a college deficit perspective, meaning what can we do, as a college, to support every student, no matter where they are.”

 

Stay tuned for weekly articles highlighting students, faculty and staff who are working toward the goal of making Mesa the Leading College of Equity and Excellence. For more information about Student Success and Equity at Mesa College, contact Dean Larry Maxey at (619) 388-5940, or via email at [email protected].

Tags: Equity and Excellence