Heather Shea:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW I’m your host, Heather Shea. Today, we’re talking about using assessment practices for social justice and I am thrilled to be joined by Drs. Gavin Henning and Anne Lundquist. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in, alongside, or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the social medias! Today’s episode is sponsored by Anthology. Is your goal to engage in effective assessment, boost data fluency, and empower staff with strategic data collection, document analysis, and use of results for change? No matter where your campus is in the assessment journey, Anthology (formerly Campus Labs) can help you figure out what’s next with a short assessment, you’ll receive customized results and tailored recommendations to address your most immediate assessment needs.

Heather Shea:
Learn more about how Anthology’s products and expert consultation can empower your division with actionable data by visiting campuslabs.com/SA-Now. So, as I mentioned, I am your host Heather Shea. My pronouns are she her and hers. And I am broadcasting from East Lansing, Michigan near the campus of Michigan State University. And MSU occupies the ancestral homelands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Peoples. Now let’s get on with our conversation. So first let’s meet our our guests today as each of you introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about the ways in which your work and scholarship has intersected with both assessment practice and social justice through your career. Anne, I’m going to start with you. Welcome.

Anne Lundquist:
Great. Thank you, Heather. And good to see you, Gavin. I’m Annee Lundquist. I use she, her hers pronouns and I’m, I’m a white cisgender third generation able-bodied woman. And I live in Tucson, Arizona right now, which is the traditional homeland of the Tohono O’odham Pasqua Yaqui nations. For me, this has been a journey. I started out in student affairs and Res Life, first-year programming, Dean of students. But I’m also a yoga person, a Yogi, and I’m a poet. And so a lot of these different ways of knowing have sort of come together for me. And this intersection — and Gavin, I’ll talk a little bit more about this in a minute — is continuing to evolve for me. So I’ve been an assessment practitioner for quite a while. I currently do work at Anthology formerly Campus Labs. So I talked to campuses particularly about student affairs assessment almost every day. So I’m excited to see this conversation evolving and growing in the field and to be able to talk with you about it today.

Heather Shea:
Thank you so much for being here Anne. Gavin, you and I have known each other for a really long time, but our audience may not know you. Thank you so much for being here.

Gavin Henning:
I’m excited to be here. My name is Gavin Henning and I use he him, his pronouns and I’m actually living and working in Henniker, New Hampshire, which is the traditional lands Abenaki, Pennacook, Pokanoket, and Wabanaki Confederacy nations. But I have a connection to Michigan State. So that’s another reason why we feel connected and obviously, and Anne having a connection to Michigan, like we’re all Michiganders in some way or another. So I’m a professor of higher education and doing like college, which is a small, private liberal arts institution in central New Hampshire, where I direct the master of higher ed administration program, as well as a doctoral program. Now I started doing assessment back in 1997 and then started doing it full-time in 2000. And so I’ve been doing assessment for a really long time, to be honest, I really hadn’t thought about social justice, equity inclusion too much, partly because I’m a white heterosexual cisgender man, I didn’t have to.

Gavin Henning:
And so there was really no need for me because I, there was never an issue of my personal life until I got more involved in ACPA. So being in leadership positions in ACPA, and actually that’s how Heather and I met with your commission chairs long, long, long time ago. And then we both were on the governing board and through those, those roles with ACPA became more and more of an advocate for diversity equity and higher education and being in leadership roles, I began to learn a lot more about it and realized there was some opportunities for connection and those really came together. And we’ll talk about this in a little bit when Anne and I had a conversation a few years ago so it’s now really kind of two different — Anne I talk about the silos of assessment and diversity equity inclusion work. And that’s kind of what’s for me until like everything kind of just happened together almost serendipitously. And I’m glad it happened that way.

Heather Shea:
Well, I know this is going to be a fabulous conversation and I’ve had conversations with both of you individually, but maybe not three of us haven’t talked altogether. So I’m also excited about that too. So Gavin, when you started thinking about this and exploring this topic, how did, how did this come together with Anne, like how did you start doing this? Socially just, equity centered assessment work together.

Gavin Henning:
Yeah, it was pretty hard organic. It actually goes back to you at dinner conversation that she and I have had in Philadelphia at the NASPA 2017 conference. And so Anne was representing Anthology or Campus Labs at that point. And they do a member meeting on the Sunday of the NASPA conference and I was involved with CAS at that point. I think it was president elect for CAS. And so I was going to represent CAS at that member meeting. Just talk a little bit about some of the new products CAS was developing as well as some of the collaborations that campus that Campus Labs and CAS were working on. So Anne and I met for dinner the night before just to kind of talk through what are the key talking points. And then, you know, once we got those out of the way, we kind of talked about assessment, cause that’s what assessment people do whenever they have free time.

Gavin Henning:
And I’m can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was probably around the one paper from from Eric Montenegro and Natasha Jankowski on culturally responsive assessment. And I think we started talking about that. And then Anne had said, well, I’m doing this session at ACPA next week on bias-free assessment. And we were kind of talking about what are the similarities or differences? And we’re like, we were wondering, are they the same? Are they different? And so she said, well, why don’t you join me next week to do this presentation? So like, sure, I’ll go, I’ll do it. And the presentation was at eight o’clock in the morning and the room was filled. And so it was pretty clear that there was some interest in the topic. And then actually a couple of months later, I was invited to write a chapter for the new Contested Issues in Student Affairs book that Peter Magolda and Marcia Baxter-Magolda working on.

Gavin Henning:
And the focus was really about equity, safety and civility from different vantage points. And so they asked me to write about equity assessment from an equity, civility and safety perspective, rather than talking about how do you assess those programs? I wanted to dig a little bit deeper and really the conversation that Anne and I had really promoted me to look a little bit deeper and kind of explore some of the underpinnings of assessment and really kind of learn about what some of the limitations are. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit regard to culture and actually some, some research paradigms. And so I think all of these pieces came together around the same three or four month period. And when I came up with this, when I was reading about this idea, when I called deconstructed assessment, Anne and I began wondering, is there like this continuum of this framework that we could create — really more to help us understand, but we knew it’d be helpful for other people. So we kind of both went on to our own ways doing research learning more, you know, and what a lot deeper into the indigenous ways of knowing an indigenous paradigm. I kind of did a little bit more on universal design so we keep on learning more, but then we keep on coming back together and kind of sharing what we know and the kind of building this this knowledge base that from that, that one organic conversation back in March of 2017.

Heather Shea:
So it’s fascinating to me because I’ve, I’ve been involved in assessment initiatives on my campus. And, and like you just said it seems like they’re two separate conversations happening simultaneously, and yet those two things don’t come together. Anne, when you talk about assessment, both with folks who are doing it on their campuses and then with people who you’re engaging with and at NASPA and ACPA, what are some of the terms and language that comes up and how do we know that there’s a different, like, what are the difference between bias-free assessment versus assessment and socially just or equity centered? I mean, we, we can talk about the continuum a little bit here.

Anne Lundquist:
So there’s, there’s so much here to unpack. First of all, I’ll self disclose. I have an MFA in creative writing poetry before my PhD. And so I’m always like I’m really thinking about words and language a lot and like, you know, a word as a placeholder and, but it represents so much more. And it’s also only one way of knowing, communicating verbally or in the written language. So first of all, what you said is very true. There’s this like assessment bubble is what we think of it as, and in this like diversity equity and inclusion bubble. It in there, there’s scholarship, there’s the people and practitioners, there’s the colleagues on the campus that are often, you know, collegial and friendly with one another, but their work doesn’t always intersect and overlap. They’re unaware of each other’s even terminology and language. So one example when we do this, pre-conference at NASPA and ACPA, we ask people to stand up and sort of place themselves along a continuum around their diversity equity inclusion, what we call skills, knowledge and competencies and their assessment competencies.

Anne Lundquist:
And it’s just very interesting because assessment practitioners are sort of still in this learning mode around diversity equity and inclusion, and the DEI folks are really expert, you know, their trainers and they’re like, “Oh, I’m terrified of assessment.”, You know? So it’s just interesting to watch even those cultures. Right. what I’ve noticed is that first of all, there’s no real terminology. If you tried to do a Google search, if you try to do a lit review it’s tricky because people are using lots of different language. So in the evaluation field this idea of having equity-centered evaluation, you know, that’s sort of a lot more longstanding for, I think, higher ed, student affairs in particular. It’s definitely been very separate. So I think we’re all kind of learning as we go the continuum where Gavin and I sort of landed and we’re, I don’t know.

Anne Lundquist:
I think this is very fluid still is that, you know, on one end there’s causing harm, right? There’s actually like I’m unaware, I’m unintentional. I, I don’t think, I don’t even know these two things have anything to do with each other. And therefore by my practice, I am actually causing harm through my assessment work. And then on the far end of the continuum are things like I’m actively using assessment, not just to conduct climate studies, but to actually dismantle systems of power and oppression to really unpack and look at privilege. I’m actually using it for social justice decolonization and in the middle, there’s all kinds of practices along the way. And we’ll, we’ll kinda talk a little bit about what some of those are, but I think the field is kind of exploding right now with people trying this on for size in all different ways on campus. And I’m excited to see that.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, yeah. At Michigan State University, as, as both of, you know, cause I’ve talked with you about it, we, you know, we are really trying to, I think come up with some larger strategic planning initiatives around DEI, as well as around assessment. And, and it’s, it’s striking to me sitting on one of the subcommittees, that’s looking at student success and composition, how even just the way that we collect and report on data you know, can be in that kind of harm-causing versus like what metrics really matter and count. And then how do we gather better data to make better adjustments or recommendations to upper administration? But I think all of that is based around a culture on the campus, right? Whether it’s an assessment, a culture of assessment, I know we here or whether it’s an inclusive culture. So Gavin, you talked a little bit about this idea of unpacking the culture, you know, what do you mean by that? And what is an equity centered assessment culture look like?

Gavin Henning:
Sure. And just how Anne’s background or MFA informs her work during this. I have also a master’s degree in sociology. Then I got after my master’s at higher ed administration and that I always kind of take a look at sociological view, but all the work I’m doing. And so once we began talking about this, I really, I wanted to dig deeper into this idea about what, what impact does culture have, because it really is kind of, we don’t think about it, you know, culture that the norms, the values, the assumptions, the beliefs the biases, the language that we use, and there are multiple layers of that, there’s institutional culture, and even within an institution there are multiple cultures at the department level at the program level. You know, we certainly know in higher ed, the culture in student affairs is very different than it is in academic affairs.

Gavin Henning:
And that causes some challenges, even geographically. You know, I think about, you know, big and back in Michigan and that the term pop versus soda out here, their, their language is different. Some of the assumptions and what we began talking about is what undergirds all of those assumptions. And there really are systems of power and oppression. You know, we think about the image we present as this, this iceberg above the water are the things that we can see. We can hear the language, we use some of those norms, but underneath are all those systems of power and oppression. So heterononormativity, cisgenderism, white supremacy, all of the isms. And what’s problematic is that though systems of power oppression, unconsciously impact our culture, which then impacts how we implement assessment. And so in many ways, we’re doing this unintentionally, you know, so we’re not doing it to harm, but we’re causing harm.

Gavin Henning:
And as we talk about a lot in higher ed, just because there’s not intention doesn’t mean there’s not negative impact. And so we realized we really needed to dig a little bit deeper from the surface and move below just procedures and Jan MacArthur talks about this as well. She’s one of the first to talk about socially justice assessment is that you have to look beyond procedures. If we’re gonna make, we’re gonna actually use assessment for social justice. And we’re just looking to do socially just assessment. We can focus on those procedures and do it in an equitable way, but if we’re actually gonna use assessment as a vehicle for social justice, we need to really dig deeper and look at that culture so we can change some of those systems of power and privilege. So we can actually be conscious of how those systems are power and oppression, impact the language we use in surveys, the biases we may have when we do interviewing. So that really, you have to unpack that to really kind of dig a little bit deeper and make sure we’re not continuing to perpetuate those systems, that power and oppression through our assessment work.

Heather Shea:
That’s really helpful. Yeah, I think it’s been interesting having served in student affairs administrative leadership roles on a couple of different campuses and just, you know, as you all are talking about this kind of thinking about like, well, what was that institution’s culture around both assessment and inclusion, like, and how might those two things have complimented one another. And I think that when we get back to kind of the idea potentially of assessment causing harm or marginalizing students who are already marginalized… Anne, can you talk a little bit about how some assessment practices on some campuses might, might create systems that further marginalized students that are already marginalized? Either because they just aren’t counted. It’s one of the assumptions that I guess I’m making for example, you know, collecting data on who identifies as LGBTQ on our campus doesn’t happen. So we don’t know. And therefore then programs and systems and, and resources are allocated without that knowledge unwittingly marginalizing that population. So tell me a little bit more about how those assessment approaches might, might create that on our campuses

Anne Lundquist:
So much here. And I think we’re learning more all the time. One of the ways I organize it in my own head is what are the overall assessment things that I don’t Gavin spends a lot of time when we do presentations on this talking about, he mentioned procedures and methods, we’re even just unconscious about that. We tend to gravitate towards quantitative approaches. We have ways in higher ed that we privileged sort of this Western way of knowing. We don’t really capture, lived experiences of students. We talk about the small “N” or the outlier , I mean, just the way that we approach it and it often we just end that we’re supposed to be objective, right. I tend to probably lean initially more as a qualitative researcher than a quantitative, but I also know, even there, we get very procedural.

Anne Lundquist:
We have, there’s a lot of procedures around qualitative research. So it’s not that we want to throw that baby out with the bath water and that there are ways in which procedures can happen, but it’s really who’s at the table when the decision about procedures are being made? What assumptions are we just skipping over and moving to the data collection process before we really spend time on, on our old approach, like we talked at the beginning, here were three white people talking about equity and inclusion. I recognize that when, when I do that, and I think there’s a place for that in the sense that I may have an area of expertise I can develop where I can encourage and talk to other white folks about my experience and therefore help them become to be more comfortable. There’s things that I can’t do as a white woman.

Anne Lundquist:
Right. And so that’s where the stakeholder involvement and recognizing my own privilege and inviting others into the conversation in ways that doesn’t further marginalize them, but the data is actually empowering. So there’s all of these things that are throughout the whole assessment process, but then when we get into the traditional assessment cycle itself, right determining outcomes, collecting our data, analyzing the results, using the results for change. There are many practices that are emerging Ciji Heiser, now Dr. Ciji Heiser from Western Michigan University director of assessment there. She, and I just wrote a blog post and we did a worksheet that we can put in the resources. And we, we tried to unpack some reflection questions and some things to think about at each space around the assessment cycle. So, I mean, just a couple of quick ones and Gavin can add others are just what approaches where we’re gravitating towards.

Anne Lundquist:
And is that mindful? Or is it just sort of habit, right. Are we looking at other ways of knowing indigenous methods looking at universal design thinking about qualitative approaches and not just leaping to the survey. And then when we get into our data collection, it has to do with, are we inviting students to the table? Are we really thinking about it from their point of view and not just them, as I know we don’t use the word subjects anymore, but we say participants, you know, just even our language is really a very much like I’m in charge here in in, you’re doing a thing that serves me. And if we’re really talking about student success and using assessment, not just for social justice, but for the success of our students, which is a social justice activity we need to probably unpack and rethink all the ways that we’re going about that.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, Gavin, can you go a little further on the different ways of knowing piece? Cause I think that’s fascinating too. Yeah.

Gavin Henning:
Well, both Anne and I talked about this, the work of Sean Wilson and how Sean Wilson transformed our way of thinking and actually a friend, a colleague, a colleague of ours, Leslie D’Souza who’s actually up in Canada was the one who introduced me to Sean and he’s originally Canadian, but now he lives in Australia and his book that, Anne just showed his dissertation. He wanted to look at, I think he’s, I can’t remember what tribe he’s from I will look it up again. But he really wanted to take a look at understanding indigenous populations. But when he started using Western approaches, he realized very quickly that they were in conflict with each other. You know, he said even from the IRB process, because in the IRB process, in, you know, here in the United States and in the Western world, you, everything is about anonymtizing having an uprising, your, your subjects, your participants, you have to hide their names, you have to protect them. And what Sean sayings like that is antithetical to, to an indigenous way of knowing because there’s not one person that knows anything, knowledge is shared, knowledge is created, collectively knowledge is shared.

Gavin Henning:
And so actually I’m doing a disservice if I don’t name the people I’m talking with, because it’s their knowledge that they’ve co-created that they’re sharing with me. And so that really was kind of the first step for him saying, I’ve got to think about it a different way. And the book is really accessible. It’s like 140 pages long. We’re actually, we added into our doctoral methods, part of our quantitative methods course just to get students to think about things a little bit differently. And it totally transformed the way I think about research and assessment, especially this idea that no one person can hold that knowledge that it’s held by the collective and not just a collective of people is held by the universe. So Sean talks about this connection between people, the cosmos, the land. And if, when, you know, when I began to look deeper into the indigenous ways of knowing the connection with land is really important because the land is connects the people and even the, the sense of time.

Gavin Henning:
And so there’s, there’s a lot of things that to learn just from an indigenous perspective, and then even within indigenous perspectives, there’s there’s variation. And it, we can also take a look at universal design, a very different way of thinking about learning how people gather knowledge. And I think there’s some different ways that we can pull in other information, just how Anne and I are pulling in some other disciplines from our past degrees, we have to really pull in other, other ways of knowing outside of Western higher education to really be able to do this work.

Anne Lundquist:
Yeah. I was just going to add too to Gavin. And when we do a talk on this, I mean, just another quick example that kind of resonates with people. We think about learning outcomes, right? We have a learning outcomes framework and it’s probably been inherited. It was set set by committee at some point in time, and then there was a faculty vote on it. And then now you’re teaching your course and it’s you take learning outcome “2b” and put it on your syllabus, right? It’s not very inclusive. You don’t know where it came from. It isn’t feeling very authentic and even then the epistemology behind the framework itself. So we have started this hierarchical Bloom’s taxonomy that we are used to, and we, you know, first we remember them, we understand then we right up up the hierarchy. There’s a great piece by Marcella Lefever.

Anne Lundquist:
I’m switching from Bloom’s to the medicine wheel. And what she does is she unpacks what that means in terms of just the language itself. So even in her domains, she has a, it’s a wheel and she has spiritual domain and others like intersecting with one another. They’re not a hierarchy. And then also just the verbs, the word choice, it’s things like meditate on, or be aware of. I mean, just, you know, even in our non-cognitive Blooms, we’ve pretty cognitive. So what we then put forward is then what we measure. And then we say, Oh, these students didn’t do well. And we may have been omitting whole areas of what how people see the world, how they learn and what, what matters to them. And we’re signaling through our assessment process, the very things that are most important to you. We’re not even gonna measure it. Like it doesn’t, it doesn’t even matter to us. So that’s another unconscious way. We think we’ve done all this great assessment work, but we could really be causing harm in that process and also missing a whole lot about our students.

Gavin Henning:
Well, and I think we can even interrogate our own Western way of knowing, as Anne mentioned, we really rely on quantitative approaches, particularly in assessment and that’s because higher education assessment has come out, came out of evaluation, which is very quantitative and we pretty much apply quantitative methods. Now, when we started doing assessment work in the late nineties and higher, there were no models, they were no guides, there were no books out there. And so we just tried to, we used what we knew, which were, you know, quantitative methods and this whole assumption that we can be objective. We have to challenge that because we realized that we really cannot be objective. And so even when using quantitative approaches, that has that underlying assumption, and there are a lot of other, other underlying assumptions such as this idea that all our students have the same experience.

Gavin Henning:
We know that they don’t. And so their limitations and you know, that the methods we used because they’re based on this this more positivistic paradigm that we use in higher education. Now, if we begin to look at different paradigms is to take a look at more interpretivist paradigm, which I think we use a lot qualitative, but even moving through and applying critical theory, applying post-structuralism and then eventually moving towards some transformative paradigms, which really thinks to look at research in action and using research for change, not just improvement, but for change. That’s how we can really change even our Western way of knowing and be a little bit more open and really move towards this idea of social using assessment for social change

Anne Lundquist:
And, you know, to get really heady on this. I mean, it’s really, all of those things are sort of this neo-liberal capitalistic compliance, right? So if we really unpack that with our academic self what we’re, we’re imposing onto our students, all of these values in other circumstances, particularly in student affairs, we’re spending all our time trying to deconstruct or unpack or, you know, advocate against, right. So to me, it’s just sort of like, there’s this cognitive dissonance that we’re able to hold somehow. And for me, the more I’ve learned and the more we talk about it, it’s like, I can’t, I can’t hold those things anymore. I need, I need to figure out. And it’s very uncomfortable in the beginning. I mean, I guess … Gavin and I will mentioned this a minute, but where I’m writing a, co-authoring a book chapter, we’re talking about individual awareness and in the very beginning, my knee jerk response was “well, I better learn everything there is to know about this.”

Anne Lundquist:
I’m going to read all the books I’m going to … right? Which is a way of knowing, and it’s been very good, but it’s actually been more valuable to me as I’ve deepened my own knowledge and taking responsibility for that to sit with other people who have other ways of knowing to learn from folks who are trying on different practices, in different cultural contexts, on different campuses that are different from my own. And I, you know, at first I might not quite understand it, but as I, as it sits with me, I’m finding more and more ways where, you know, I it’s, it’s easier for me to challenge some of these assumptions that I just thought were like immovable, you know, especially when I was doing my dissertation, I’m like, what do you mean? You know, this has to be this way. Right. And maybe it doesn’t. And so I think that’s we try to teach our students that all the time and I think it’s, we need to probably be doing our own work in that way as well.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. I absolutely agree. I think one of the things that, what you’re all talking about brings up for me is, you know, what are the mechanisms and what are the metrics that ended up becoming the conversation and, and why do those things matter? Like what’s motivating this very positivistic quantitative approach. And is it because it’s easy or it’s and then, and then it’s like, well, wait a second, should this be easy? And the other, the other part that also just really resonated with me having just completed my own dissertation process and writing a feminist narrative inquiry was I can’t, I can’t take my own story out of that story, right? Like the, the role of the researcher, the lens on which I looked at the experience because it, the other part of it was that I wrote about a shared experience that I was also a part of, I think is another key piece of it.

Heather Shea:
And so as, as student affairs educator, who is on our campuses, you know, we are a part of that learning journey and that learning environment as well. And so us kind of attending to our own need to be engaged in that process as much as much like we had, no. How does it embed it in my experience versus just me looking in on what students are experiencing.

Heather Shea:
So when I think about some of the things that student affairs like administrative leaders, right? So the, the ABPs and the VPs who are saying to departments, you know, we need to promote assessment. We need to also promote inclusion, social justice. I like to hear a little bit about, you know, not only just that we’ll get to the kind of the day to day, but like, what does it mean to promote this broadly in a, at a university level or at a divisional level? So that the people with whom they’re engaging and then of course the students who are participating feel like the assessment is, is for social justice versus just kind of a performative mentality. So, Gavin, do you want to pick up that thread? And, Anne of course jump in,

Gavin Henning:
Yeah. I’ll start it. And Anne can add in, I think, Heather, what you just mentioned about your, the way you approached your dissertation is one of the things that Anne and I talk about this idea of readiness, because it just as Anne talked about, we have some assessment, people who are great about assessment, they’re ready to do assessment. They’re not necessarily ready for DEI and vice versa for DEI folks. And I think we both have realized that, you know, this is a journey for us as well, is that, you know, I’ve become more ready. I’m far from there yet in terms of my, on my knowledge base and my experience, and even comfortability with diversity equity inclusion. But we can’t even begin to look at assessment for social justice until we address individual readiness and organizational readiness. And so some of it, and, Anne I talk about, and one of our book chapters, one of the first steps to start with yourself is really beginning to understand your own identities, the intersection of your own identities.

Gavin Henning:
And when we Anne and I started talking about that, that’s what I became, came to this realization that like, Holy cow, I can’t believe what I haven’t thought about this for the 20 years that I’ve been doing assessment, how much damage have I done? How much power and oppression have I perpetuated? Because I haven’t challenged the, just the basic processes we take for granted. And so I think there’s some readiness there. Some of it can be through reading. Some of it can be through conversation. It’s, it’s a journey, but just starting someplace to understand your role in all those work is helpful. So you don’t even need to go into these different ways of knowing just doing some exploration around yourself is helpful. And I think there’s also some organizational readiness because some, there are some organizations which are really ready to do assessment work.

Gavin Henning:
Some are really ready to do DEI work. Some that are not ready for either of that, but you can’t do both of those together until you built some of that readiness. And so I think some of that’s creating space and taking stuff off of people’s plates so they can learn more about that because we really can’t do a good job about using assessment equitably, let alone assessment for social justice, if people don’t have the knowledge and skills to be able to do that. And you know, there, I think there’s some other things that are probably not as important in our daily work that we could take off our plate and add in these higher priority things, because really thinking about using assessment in this way to change higher education that has long-term benefits for not only our students, but for the society in general. And so I think that’s really one place to think about it.

Gavin Henning:
And the other thing, Brian Bourke talks using inquiry approach, which I’m really I’m really intrigued about. And I’m starting to use this on my own campus too, for our institutional assessment committee is really going back to the roots of assessment about what’s working. What’s not working think about inquiry asking questions. So it really helps move the conversation from I’m doing assessment from in a transactional way. I’ve got to gather data to collect data for accreditation, to demonstrate effectiveness, to get money, whatever those transactions are to really understanding what’s working, what’s not working and be able to transform our organizations. And so simply just shifting our frame of reference and thinking about inquiry, I think is helpful. And then this can be super overwhelming for folks. You know, people are like, I can’t, I’m scared to even do assessment. I came to think about doing it in a social just way, start small and we’ll, and we’ll talk about this in terms of specific strategies, but one is take a look at the demographic items you do in a survey.

Gavin Henning:
We’re not suggesting get rid of surveys to their benefits, to doing surveys. They’re just not the end all be all. And there’s some purposes for that. We just need that kind of bracket what those like those purposes are, but take a look at how do we actually, how do we define gender? How do we define race and ethnicity is gender “male, female, and other,” which obviously is sex, not gender. And then you just have one other option for other, and then even then race and ethnicity. choose one out of these five options. You know, we know that’s not how people are, you know, and that even if we allowed them to check as many boxes that they wanted, that really doesn’t even represent intersectionality, we can let them write in their own identity, but that causes some challenges from an assessment perspective.

Gavin Henning:
But who knows, for some instances, that may be the best approach which I’ve done and some evaluations. So there were small scale. But it’s having those questions and thinking thoughtfully about that. So even just starting with demographic options, that’d be a really good place to start. And as I mentioned, involve students, this is one of the easiest ways to do social, to do assessment in a socially just way, because they’re going to give us different perspectives. I’ve been out of college now, gosh, like 35 years, I think. And so it’s very different now. And so I think just involving students in different steps in the process, it helped us think very differently about it.

Anne Lundquist:
Well, I was thinking about a couple of things there. One is that I think Heather tied this whole conversation back to student success is a way that gets the, I think the institutional conversation, the need for you know, compliance strategic planning, accreditation, all of that in with the, the wheelhouse of student affairs. Right? So, cause we’re all committed and we’ve known that. And I think it’s interesting, even in my work with Campus Labs you know, the early conversations a few years ago were more like trying to convince academic affairs colleagues or institutional folks that what we do matters, like that was sort of top of mind and using assessment to do that. I feel like COVID and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and all the other social movements that are rising right now for us have just sort of like blown that off the table.

Anne Lundquist:
And people are like, I’m coming back with a clear deck and it’s like, okay, wait a minute. What, how are our students doing, which students are suffering are already marginalized students, even further marginalized, what are we going to do about like those real conversations and questions are not just student affairs folks, but it’s presidents asking those questions. It’s chancellor’s meetings, it’s accreditors making sure that you report out on the outcomes for equity, not just, you know, enrollment patterns. Right. So I just think if as student affairs folks, we can take our best strengths as student success advocates and just apply those logically to the assessment process. And I think we’ll find a conversation that’s institutionally meaningful and relevant right now. It’s definitely a door.

Heather Shea:
Oh, true. Yeah. So true. I it’s so interesting that you brought that up because we were just at this college student success conversation which incorporates mostly focused on the academic side of the house talking about student success and the provost had just recently at MSU commissioned a survey of undergraduate students to understand whose and how have various students been disproportionately affected by MSU’s you know, pretty abrupt pivot in the second week of August to completely online school for undergraduate students. And so I was looking at the survey questions and I was like, wait a second, we’re missing the out of class engagement. And we know on the student affairs side of the house, anecdotally that our students are, are looking for ways to, to dial in to communities to feel that sense of belonging, but all of the questions were about, you know, did they have the academic resources that they needed to be successful? How were their classes utilizing technology or how many different apps were being required for different classes? And I’m like, okay, those are questions, important questions too. And we also needed to know about the community connections and sense of support and mental health issues. And then look at those different populations as well. So the demographic point that you made also Gavin is so key. Cause if we’re just tying it at to the institutional, to the student information system, there’s information, we don’t collect about students’ identities. So, and we…

Anne Lundquist:
And, Heather we do a survey too, that is and I I’ll give it to you to add to the resources, but we designed it at, at Anthology. And we surveyed students who are currently enrolled about how they were feeling before like last spring and when the pandemic first hit and now both about their reenrollment intentions, but also their co-curricular experiences. So just writing a white paper about that. So I’ll I’ll send that to you. But we found the interesting thing. I’ll just put this back on the dynamic. There was, we did ask students to either self identify around gender, race, and ethnicity. And also we had some prefigured categories and they could check all that apply. And it’s interesting because we then face the same dilemma ourselves, which was to say, we took a look at the data and then we’re saying, what is it, how is it meaningful to dis-aggregate this?

Anne Lundquist:
And when I disaggregate only by gender, like, what does this actually, what, why am I doing that? And what does that telling us and what is valuable to report out? We ultimately decided from a national survey that we couldn’t find something meaningful, but our advice to campuses is if you’re on your campus, we’re telling you a trend. You can take that you can go find out for your own campus, cause it’s gonna differ at MSU than it is at a community college than it is at a small private. So it’s not actually helpful. We can, we can be the marker to point to some broad trends, but go back to your own data on your own campus and find out the lived experience for those populations of students.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. I just want to say, I dug into your website and looked at a bunch of different options and different survey samples. And, and what I love about the Campus Labs Anthology portal is that you have people sharing their information across campuses. So it’s fantastic to be able to also have that resource as well. So, Anne, can you talk a little bit about some of these day-to-day practices then … we’ve been kind of weaving those in, but what are those those folks who are, who are in charge of assessment within their department and maybe not the divisional level, but more of the department level how can they become more aware of equity in their daily assessment practices?

Anne Lundquist:
Well, I think the first piece is what Gavin mentioned, which is start with themselves and sort of both individually like think about identity, privilege, power, positionality, whatever that means for where you are in your campus. So, and do do your own work and, and, and engage with others in conversation. I know Gavin and I are part of some some case studies that NILOA the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment has published. And one of those is Wake Forest. Their student affairs assessment committee, I believe it is …they spent a whole year in self study. And so I thought that was a really interesting approach around equity centered practices. So they broke up into some smaller groups. They looked at their own data, they gathered resources, and then they went back and they, they tried really hard, I think, to rethink what they had been doing, maybe habitually and how that might differ.

Anne Lundquist:
So I think maybe starting with a plan like that, not being overwhelmed as Gavin said, but then maybe looking at like one project by, you know, that’s something that’s either been done longitudinally before, or that has always been done. And step back into some reflection questions. This blog posts that we, Ciji and I wrote has some reflection questions in it. So ways to, to say to yourself am I thinking about the framework that this is embedded in? You know, if it’s a learning outcomes assessment what did we do with it? How did we ask the demographic question or did we not? And how thoughtful were we in that process? What was our approach to dis-aggregating the data? Did we disaggregate it? If so, why and which, by which variables was it relevant? Sometimes we actually do more harm there because we ask questions and we tend not to do anything at all.

Anne Lundquist:
It’s not even relevant to the topic. Right. So and then other times when it would be very relevant, we omit that and now we can’t, we can’t compare different ways of thinking or different lived experiences. So I think those are some of the things I would also say, especially at a department level or divisional level, finding out and attaching to that larger institutional conversation and just bringing the student affairs perspective around equity to the table, because I think people are ready to hear it now. I think retention, persistence, student success accreditation, those are all top of mind right now. And so looking at what you already have, as Gavin says it may not be collecting new data. It may be going back to existing co-curricular data, that, and conversations that you’ve had with students and bring that to bear alongside the academic classroom, remote or otherwise experience.

Gavin Henning:
And the one thing I would add is the shifting our question. So assessments typically about what. What’s happening? what’s working? Shifting to — and I think I’ll steal it from Simon Sinek, start with why, why is that happening? So if we’re just aggregating data and realize that some student populations are either not succeeding, however, we defined it the same as others. Why is that happening? We can’t stop with the what, because if we’re really going to use assessment for social justice, we need solutions to the problems, not just description of the problems. And so I think that’s where assessment can be really powerful as helping us come up with those solutions. But we need to know why something’s happening the way that it is. If students are not learning remotely the same way they are in, in class. Why is that happening? Is it access to resources?

Gavin Henning:
Is it the learning is different? Is that the instructors are not prepared to teach? Because each one of those requires different solutions. And so we can’t provide a solution, an evidence-based solution without gathering, answering the why question. Otherwise, we’re going to do what we typically do. We see the data and we make anecdotal, well, we should do this. We should do this. It’s not based on evidence at all. And so if we really want to be as effective and efficient with the resources we have to serve our students best, we need to answer those “why” questions that use assessment data for that.

Anne Lundquist:
I think one other thing I would add, Heather, I’m working with a campus right now. It’s their institutional strategic plan that I think this is relevant at the division level or the department level. They are actually, the president at this campus is actually wanting to strategically embed the equity conversation. So she had already hired some folks to work on diversity, equity, metrics and outcomes. And so instead of going those two different ways, right, we’re writing a strategic plan, we’re working on diversity and equity. We’ve been collaborating together. So the director of diversity and equity, the president and I meet together and their institutional research office is right at the front end of that conversation to say, what are the metrics? What data do we already have? So we don’t reinvent a wheel and how are we going to measure success in these areas?

Anne Lundquist:
So that’s, I just think an example of starting at the beginning to say, what are we aiming towards? What are our goals, the “why,” and then not create all these other separate processes, but really create what equity is not an extra thing. It’s not an afterthought. It’s not something different than we do. It’s not like item five in the strategic plan. It should be embedded through everything that we do. And so what are the ways that we haven’t structurally done that so far? And can we think about, and that will actually clear some space to do deeper work, right? Because we’re not sort of caught up in all these bureaucracies that are maybe overlapping or redundant. So I think it will open open opportunities for us.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I will say, I think when I, when we had this conversation at the institutional level about what questions we are asking, I think one of the positive things was that receptivity that you all spoke about. But then also this idea that we, we need to all be working towards that “why,” and then we collect the data then, okay, what are we going to do with it? And I know our folks in our undergraduate education office are very interested in if we collect data, how do we put that into some kind of actionable plan so that we’re addressing the needs that students are really experiencing. So I like that. I like that question a lot. So please tell me, you all are writing something about this. Because it sounds to me like the resources and Gavin mentioned this, I think it’s kind of funny when you look back at like how, how recent the literature on assessment and student affairs really is. But as far as I know, where does inclusive equity centered assessment research live right now? And, and, and do you have some resources that you can point to? And I know you all are, are working on a project as well. So Gavin, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah.

Gavin Henning:
So Anne, myself, and then some folks from the National Institute for Learning Outcomes and Assessment (NILOA), Natasha Jankowski, Jeannine Baker, and Eric Montenegro, who actually Eric is now working with Credential Engine are working, are co-editing or co co-authoring a book on equity minded, equity centered assessment. We’re still trying to define the title, but it’s going to be something like “assessment as essential for student learning and success: designing for transformation.” That’s what it was in the proposal, who knows what it’s going to end up in. But essentially our goal is to publish a one-stop shop. So if you really want to get started, where do you go? And, you know, and, and I are aggregating all these resources that are, you know, our folders are going to be bigger and bigger, bigger. It’s always going to overwhelming.

Gavin Henning:
And so we’re trying to hone that down. And so the purpose of that book is really to be able to provide some background of why this is important and why we’re looking at equity and assessment is important. What are the conversations happening in the different parts of higher education? And then what’s the scholarship like around what’s the current state of scholarship to be able to help identify where that’s happening and what are the different ways to approach this. And then the rest of the book are our case studies. So examples of people putting this in practice, that’s the biggest challenge right now. People are like, I get the concepts, but it’s too theoretical. What does this look like in practice and how is it doable in practice? And so that’s where that thing is coming in fast. So we’re kind of, co-authoring some of the foundational chapters, and then the case studies are coming up from other folks who are doing this kind of work.

Gavin Henning:
And the reason Anne and I connected is because CAS, Anthology, and then NILOA collaborated on case studies. And then when we were doing this, I think we were probably attending one of the assessment conferences and talking about this. And we said, it just seems like people need something. You know, the sessions are packed every single time. It doesn’t matter if it’s the last session of the day, the first session in the morning it’s packed, as people would really want this information. And so we figured the time was pretty right for that. But while that, while we’re still working on that, we’re hope, our hope is that we’ll be out at the end of 2021, or at least early 2022 for the student affairs conferences the NILOA equity webpage which will, I know Heather will put in the show notes, great resources. There, there are a set of what I call equity responses on the best paper to read as the culturally responsive assessment feast by Montenegro and Jankowski, which really kind of started a lot of this in higher ed assessment. And then they invited a lot of folks to actually provide responses. Anne and I wrote one a couple of years ago and people just adding more and more, so their great perspectives about equity and assessment,

Gavin Henning:
And then the, the case studies are there as well. And they’re adding more, more case studies about, you know, what are people doing on their campuses around that? There are some other resources in terms of like some key documents that then you can share that. I think if people want to get started, here’s some things that really take a look at. We also have some recorded sessions. So the benefit of COVID is that every single conference went virtual and a lot of them were free. And so, Anne and I presented at most of them, I think on this topic. And so we can share some of the links to those. If you’re more of a, you know, an I are readers, but if you’re a more a watcher or listener we have some recorded sessions which really kind of give it a foundation.

Gavin Henning:
Obviously there’s sort of the continuum of some of that work. And then finally, if you are interested, we we are keynoting the Institute On the Curricular Approach for ACPA, which actually starts on Friday. But our keynote is next Friday, the 11th, but registration is still open. If you want to learn more about the curricular approaches to Student Affairs, and they’re adding in some equity conversations in there. So Anne and I will be sharing some of our thoughts in a couple of weeks. So those are the key ones I have, but I know Anne’s got a ton more,

Anne Lundquist:
Well, I’ll add just a couple more to, and we’ll, we’ll make sure that Heather’s adding them. At Anthology we’re trying, we Gavin and I, we did a survey a couple of years ago. It’s out of date now we’re going to probably redo it. But we did some webinars and we also recorded some podcasts with some great folks with Gavin and I facilitating just on this topic. So that’s on a webpage. I would also highly recommend all of Bensimon’s work at the University of Southern California Center for Urban Justice. She and others colleagues have got the equity scorecard. So if you’re really looking at metrics and how this is not California specific, but the current state of California is very focused on this in ways that a lot of us could learn from in terms of how funding is allocated around equity outcomes.

Anne Lundquist:
And so their work is shows, models, and ways to approach that. And then NSSE has some things on like dis-aggregating data and inclusive data sharing. And so there’s a, there’s several resources that when you drill down into one specific thing people are starting to really develop resources in these different areas. So we’ll share everything that we’ve sort of unearthed here with you all. And we, we see ourselves always, I think as facilitators of just an ongoing dialogue and a conversation, and every time we present, we learn new things that are fascinating and, and another aha moment happens for us. So we are, we invite people to email us or be in touch with us as well.

Heather Shea:
I love it. I just flipped through the documents that you all added and the references that you put in the Google doc which will add to the show notes. And, Oh my goodness, this is a treasure trove of, of resources. So thank you so much for sharing that with our audience. And yes Keith Edwards says, you know, cohost here on Student Affairs NOW was thrilled that we were going to have this this podcast episode out this week because of ICA and because of you all keynoting. So thank you for your work with that as well. So I wish we had more time for our conversation and it always goes quickly. But as we conclude, as you know, the podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, and really quickly, I like to hear what each of you are pondering questioning or troubling now. Gavin, I’ll start with you.

Gavin Henning:
So for me, it’s I want to try to think about how do we move to a national movement or national strategy around equity centered assessment, and what does that look like? And because there’s certainly an interest in that but how can we build something more on a connected approach to this? So it’s not just happening in pockets. And so we’re trying to figure out how could we actually do this and how can we collaborate with other organizations to really kind of move this forward, because there’s certainly a need. There are huge discrepancies in life opportunities for individuals with college degrees compared to students, with individuals without college degrees, there are societal benefits to all of this. And so there’s really no reason not to do it, but it’s trying to figure how to it on a, on a at scale beyond what’s happening in individual departments or even at some campuses. So that’s what I’m kind of thinking about right now.

Heather Shea:
Anne, Same question to you.

Anne Lundquist:
Yeah, for me, it’s I’m, you know, I, I’m in dialogue, I’ve always worked remote since I started working for Campus Labs, but then now everybody’s remote, right? So I’m talking to student affairs folks in their homes and, you know, since last March and on through, and for me, it’s, it’s really, how do we reinvision student affairs. And I think we need assessment to do that because I think that was already a conversation that was happening. Right. You know, what’s that, what is our relevance? What really “counts” as I’ll use air quotes as student affairs, what is the co-curriculum? But you know, the pandemic for sure has definitely kind of blown that open and I don’t think we’re going backwards. So what does going forward look like? And so what does it mean to restructure you know, roles, jobs, what’s the pathway and the pipeline for young professionals entering the field?

Anne Lundquist:
It doesn’t look the same as when all of us probably entered. And so how can we help kind of unpack some of the structural barriers that might’ve been there before and really rethink student success? I mean, to me, that’s what it always comes back to. Gavin mentioned it, you know, the college degree is still the pathway that we, that is needed in this country, at least at this moment in history. And so how do we make that a more equitable, both access experience and experience while they’re there. And then how do we really help students move into meaningful lives, you know, after they’re not with us anymore. And I just, I’ve always thought about that as a student affairs practitioner, but just really feels really I don’t know, more, more imperative than it has in the past.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Thank you both so much for your time today. As guests on student affairs now, thanks always to our sponsor Anthology. And for those of you watching or listening, you can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the Student Affairs NOW newsletter, or you can browse our archives, our growing archives at www.studentaffairsnow.com. If you subscribe to the podcast on everywhere, you can get your podcasts invite others, share it on social, or if you feel so inclined, leave a five star review. This helps keep conversations like this, reaching more folks and building a community. Again, I’m Heather Shea, thanks to the fabulous guests and for everybody who’s watching and listening, make it a great week and be well, everyone.

Websites: 

Anthology (Campus Labs) web page

 NILOA Equity resources

 USC Center for Urban Justice Equity-Mindedness and Equity Scorecard

 AAC&U Step Up and Lead for Equity

 AAHLE Intersection journal focus on equity (2019)

 University of Arizona Inclusive and Functional Demographic Questions

 NSSE Tips for More Inclusive Data Sharing and Analysis web page and webinar

Intercontinental American Indigenous Research Association (iAIRA)

Books: 

Shawn Wilson (2008) Research is Ceremony; https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/research-is-ceremony-shawn-wilson

Podcasts: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sja-podcast-series/id1455665272

Videos: 

AALHE Case Studies: https://youtu.be/Qk4NdY89I0M

AALHE Using Assessment as Tool for Equity and Inclusion: https://youtu.be/8ikrcyCMVnw

AI Fireside Chat with Case Study Authors: https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/1_7jrk6swo

ACPA2GO – several webinars

Student Affairs Assessment Leaders (SAAL) webinar: Socially Just Assessment as a Tool for Equity and Inclusion 
Link to primer resources (Drive folder with diverse articles relating to equity-centered assessment): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JCxX_iwoNyH37DZyQfla0qKak5aRbIHk?usp=sharing

Article/Book citations:  

Bensimon, E. M. (2005). Closing the achievement gap in higher education: An organizational learning perspective. New Directions for Higher Education, 2005: 99–111. 

Heiser, C.,A. Prince, K., and Levy, J. D. (2017). Examining critical theory as a framework toadvance equity through student affairs assessment. The Journal of Student Affairs Inquiry. Vol. 2, Issue 1. file:///C:/Users/alundquist/Downloads/1621-examining-critical-theory-as-a-framework-to-advance-equity-through-student-affairs-assessment.pdf

Hughes, J.L., Camden, A.A., Yangchen, T. (2016). Rethinking and updating demographic questions: Guidance to improve descriptions of research samples. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research. Volume 31, No. 3.

Lefever, M. (2016). Switching from Bloom’s to the medicine wheel: creating learning outcomes that support indigenous ways of knowing in post-secondary education. Intercultural Education, 27:5, doi: 10.1080/14675986.2016.1240496.

Jan McArthur (2016) Assessment for social justice: the role of assessment in achieving social justice, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41:7, 967-981, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2015.1053429 To link to this article:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1053429 

Montenegro, E. and Jankowski, N. (2020). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis. NILOA. https://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/A-New-Decade-for-Assessment.pdf 

Rose, J. and Richmond, N. (2020). IR’s role in addressing racism and supporting social justice. Association for Institutional Research. https://www.airweb.org/resources/publications/eair-newsletter/article/2020/07/29/ir-s-role-in-addressing-systemic-racism-and-supporting-social-justice

Shotton, H. J., Lowe, S. C., & Waterman, S. J. (2013). Beyond the asterisk: Understanding Native students in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Wall, A. F., Hursh, D., & Rodgers, J. W. (2014). Assessment for Whom: Repositioning Higher Education Assessment as an Ethical and Value-Focused Social Practice. Research and Practice in Assessment, 9 (Summer 2014), 5-17.

Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony. Fernwood Publishing: Halifax and Winnipeg, Canada.