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Ever wonder why some students disappear halfway through the semester? Do many of these students come from the same demographics? Do some groups of students seem to struggle in your courses more than others? Is this happening across the entire department? What do you do? How do you figure out what’s going on?
The Program Review Equity Training is meant to help programs answer these questions and to research what is happening with students in their courses. Using a data-centered approach to diagnosing the health of programs, this training series will help members of the faculty and staff to develop equity-centered research questions, to create qualitative studies in order to collect meaningful data from their programs’ students, and to implement student-centered solutions to close programmatic opportunity gaps.
In 2018, the CSM Academic Senate revised the program review template to make educational equity and social justice front and center, and it now asks members of the campus community to reflect on their equity data more intentionally. However, the program review data only highlights the existence of opportunity gaps, not where they come from and how to close them. This training series will not only help participants ask the difficult questions about equity in their programs, but it will also help them develop the iterative skills necessary for continuing this work.
So why do this now? Simply put, program review is just a year away. Starting now will allow programs enough time to ask a question, collect data, and interpret results in time for next year’s program review.
Components
Workshops: this training series will include a number of all-cohort, in-person workshops to facilitate the design and execution of the participants’ projects. Topics will include understanding program review data, creating a research question, designing the project, and interpreting results.
Coaching: each program will be assigned a coach from the Social Justice Research Academy, who will be a resource for participants throughout the year. These coaches will be available for one-on-one meetings outside the workshops, and because they will get to know each program more intimately, they can help program’s develop their research question, design and execute their project, and interpret their results.
Tentative Schedule
October 28, 2019 (1-3 pm): Kickoff and Developing a Research Question Workshop
December 2019 (TBD): Project Design
January 10 Flex Day: Finalize Research Project
March 27 Flex Day: Group Check-in
April/May 2020 (TBD): Interpreting Results and Moving Forward
To sign up, please email Interim Director of Equity Dr. Tabitha Conaway at conawayt@smccd.edu by Friday, October 25th.
