A customized guide about liberatory design thinking processes that have been tested within college settings to support changes that enhance equity in policies and practices within institutions. This research is based on case studies of several institutions, including focus group interviews with the campus design teams and an analysis of artifacts.…

In this publication, the first in the "On Shared Equity Leadership" series, we describe how broadly inclusive and collaborative approaches to leadership are necessary to achieve equitable outcomes. We term this approach "shared equity leadership" (SEL), in which equity becomes everyone's responsibility and multiple campus…

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests against racism, students have returned to campuses, virtually and in person, with a renewed commitment to social justice, racial equity, and institutional accountability. This mindset provides an opportunity for colleges and universities to partner with students to advance progress on diversity, equity,…

This publication is for faculty, administrators, and other academic leaders who are poised to mount comprehensive STEM reforms to improve student learning and success, particularly for students from underrepresented groups. Based on the experiences of eleven colleges and universities in the Keck/PKAL STEM Education Effectiveness Framework project,…

For the past 20 years, numerous reports have called for change and reform of undergraduate education to improve student learning, persistence, and graduation rates for students in STEM. Many change efforts have been started but few have reached the transformational level of entire programs, departments, or colleges in the STEM disciplines. In…

Student success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a major concern in higher education. While overall 6-year graduation rates are around 60% nationally (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016), only about 40% of students who enter college intending to major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree within 6 years. Studies…

This study examines a major shift in the professoriate from tenure track to a non-tenure track faculty (NTTF), with two-thirds of the faculty now being off the tenure track. While some studies suggest negative outcomes as a result of students taking courses with NTTF, none of the studies examine the working conditions of the NTTFs. This…

Government agencies, foundations, business and industry, and other important higher education stakeholders continue to invest in important and deep changes they think are necessary for the vitality and health of higher education particularly interdisciplinary teaching and research. But we know little about how transformational changes happen,…

Background: The number of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF), including both full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) positions, has risen to two-thirds of faculty positions across the academy. To date, most of the studies of NTTF have relied on secondary data or large-scale surveys. Few qualitative studies exist that examine the experience, working…

This article reports on a case study of 25 departments comparing those that have put policies and practices in place to support non-tenure-track faculty to those that have not to determine whether this impacts faculty willingness, capacity, and opportunity to perform. Four departmental cultures emerged related to differential outcomes. (Contains 2…

This article focuses on the nature of power dynamics that faculty and staff grassroots leaders encounter as they attempt to create change. I identified five distinctive types of power dynamics--"oppression," "silencing," "controlling," "inertia," and "micro-aggressions" from the most overt to more subtle and covert forms. Staff experience multiple…

The study advances higher education leadership and change scholarship by examining a mostly unexplored area--the convergence between grassroots leadership with top-down leadership. The study is framed by two theories: tempered radicals framework and distributed leadership. Three common example of convergence are described as well as strategies for…

In academia, there are two different worlds, one inhabited by tenure-track and the other by non-tenure-track faculty. In the first, people encourage faculty to become involved in a series of important reforms that increase student success, completion, and learning. In this first world, people envision faculty simultaneously increasing their…

In this study, we build on two recent works (Gaston-Gayles, Wolf-Wendel; Tuttle, Twombley, and Ward, 2004; Slocum & Rhoads, 2008) that examine faculty and staff work with student activists, but expand the scope to include new questions such as why and how they partner with students, the impact of institutional context, and what role it might play…

In this document the authors provide practitioners offering education Independent Development Accounts (IDAs) with information about whom to partner with in a postsecondary institution. The authors gained this information through interviews, focus groups, and case studies with higher education and IDA practitioners. College campuses can sometimes…