Gavin Henning:
It’s even beyond thinking about how do we make sure our assessment practices are equitable and fair, but even more exciting, how can we use assessment to actually advance equity? And that to me is the really exciting piece, because it leverages assessment from something that measures effectiveness and provides opportunities for learning to actually a tool for increasing diversity and equity inclusion on campus.

Keith Edwards:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today, We’re talking about the new book, Reframing Assessment to Center Equity. I’m joined by four folks who contributed to this great new resource. And I’m so excited to learn from each of you. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of fire education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode and our panelists or browser archives at studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is brought to you by Stylus, the publisher of this book, visit Styluspub.com and use promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping on all of their resources. Today’s episode is also sponsored by simplicity. A true partner, simplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him, his I’m a speaker consultant and coach. And you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation. I’m so excited to have all four of you here. Let’s begin with some introductions and a little bit about you and your connection to assessment and Ciji. Let’s start off with you.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Hey, thanks for having us. So my name is Ciji Ann Heiser. I’m the director of assessment marketing and communications at Western Michigan University. I also serve as an assessment evaluation coach for a company that really focuses on racial equity and healing developing capacity coaching. So in my day job, I get to do amazing things like strategic planning. And how do we embed equity in that work or inclusion in that work or diversity in that work? We usually try to pick one and focus on it, because if you achieve it, you’ve already done something great, right? So I get to do strategic planning, program evaluation data is and general assessment work. And so with the marketing and communications piece, we really try to focus on inclusive communication, fostering belonging, through all of the things that we share and communicating with compassion.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
We also take really seriously our responsibility to convey the promise of student affairs and student life, to students and parents, and how we demonstrate and keep that promise using evidence and evidence backed practices. So that’s kind of my day to day work. I have the privilege and joy of getting to intersect with equity through either centering stakeholders in my work. So I think about different initiatives like men of color initiatives or first generation college students study abroad trips and how I really worked with them to be co-producers. I just brought assessment expertise that they got to design and co-create everything with me because it was their lived experiences that I was trying to measure and show to others. And so that was kind of the beginning, my equity journey. And, and now I think one of the biggest pieces of the equity and assessment journey is the grand challenges project that is focused on leveraging data to advance equity across the country. It’s a strategic plan that is really focused on how do we help individuals grow? How do we help, how do we help develop institutional cultures that value that intersection of equity and data? And how do we start to look at some national agencies like measurement tools and accreditation to keep pushing that idea of how you can use information to create more equitable outcomes for our students.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Awesome. I’m so glad you’re here. And I think you mentioned that co-creation, which is, I think a theme we’re going to come back to here in a little bit. Joe, welcome. Tell us a little bit more about you.

Joe Levy:
Yeah. Hi everybody. My name’s Joe Levy, I’m he, he him his pronouns. And I work as the executive director of assessment and accreditation at National Louis University, which is a medium size private, not for profit Hispanic serving institution in the Chicago area. We have a couple campuses in Chicago, including one downtown and within my role, the three primary areas underneath me are credit for prior learning prior learning assessment assessment of student learning, both academic affairs and student affairs and accreditation, and you know, they overlap a lot, especially in thinking about strategy and prioritizing and centering students. And you know, I I’ve very much taken approach with accreditation. You know, I looked at Linda SU’s, you know, betterment mindset and betterment approach as opposed to a compliance mindset. And, and really when we are thinking about betterment and, and centering quality assurance you know, then we’re not necessarily looking to the external bar that’s being set by somebody else, but really looking at, you know, putting our students in the center, what are their needs, what, you know, how can we better serve them and, and having that be our priority and kinda north star.

Joe Levy:
Then I have the privilege of working with Ciji. She’s the chair for the student affairs assessment leaders organization. And I’m one of the board members there and have helped historically doing some professional development work and currently lead our open course on assessment, which is a that we do every year, which is just an incredible experience to be able to work with, you know, thousands of people who just want to learn more about assessment and provide them with tons and tons of resources on how to do so. And over the past couple years, the module that has gotten the most attention and most requests, and we’ve probably tried as hard as we can to keep it updated is module five on, on critical approaches to assessment work. and it’s been so great to be able to pull in information from the field and work to feed people’s interests and, and give them practical examples of how to do this work.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And we’ll get links to that and, and more information and show notes for people to share. And I’ve seen that too, in my, in my work and consulting with different folks and with the, the curricular approach for this equity based assessment, really the interest level is, is so deeply there. People really want to connect that Divya. Thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit about you.

Divya Bheda :
Thank you for having me, Keith. Hi everyone. I’m Divya Bheda and my pronouns. Are she and hers. I am the director of educational assessment at ExamSoft, which is part of the turnitin family. I’m also an independent consultant and speaker and you know, coach in higher ed. I’ve been doing equity work, social justice training for over a decade. Now close to 15 years. I came to the us as an international student and my lived experiences here as an international student, I already finished a masters in India and public relations and communication came here, got a second master’s in educational leadership and then did my PhD in critical and social cultural studies in education with a focus on program evaluation. So that’s my entry into assessment. I come from program evaluation. My lived experiences and as an international student were made me realize that there’s a lot that can be done around meeting students where they are at and where their needs are.

Divya Bheda :
And so my dissertation was focused on how to build responsive organizations. And so the idea of equity, the idea of social justice is it’s just been like, I’ve been exposed to it. And I used to read all this literature in my courses and I’d be like, oh, that’s what’s happening to me. Oh, that’s my lived experience. And here I have a name for it. Right. Because before otherwise you would internalize it and think, why am, why is this happening to only me? Why is nobody else having an experience? Because I was in a, I was one person of color in a, in my program or, you know, so there was a lot of, I couldn’t find the people who were having similar experiences, so you internalize it. So I think I come to this whole experience of equity and assessment wearing my, that international student hat and wearing my colleagues, like bringing my colleagues along, because I know even in today there are lots of folks who do in student affairs in the faculty arena who do a lot of unpaid labor, right? Like there’s unrecognized, unacknowledged labor around student success, around student development, around building equity, who don’t get recognized, who don’t have the time to write, who don’t have the time to be present in terms of their voice. And so I just want to say thank you because my influence my thinking is influenced by their work. And so I, I kind of bring that lens to everything that I do. So thank you for having me again.

Keith Edwards:
Beautiful, welcome. Thank you. And Gavin, tell us a little bit about you.

Gavin Henning:
Yeah, so I’m Gavin Henning. I use he, him, his pronouns I’m professor of fire education at new England college, which is a small, private liberal arts institution in central New Hampshire, where I direct our master of science and higher education administration, as well as our doctor of education programs. Prior to my time being a full time faculty member, which now I’m in my 10th year. It’s hard to believe I spent 20 years in higher ed administration, 13 of which were in assessment in institutional research. And really someone that, that the, what influences me in terms of this assessment piece is I’ve been doing assessment for a really long time. But I really learned more about equity when I became president of ACPA college student educators international and realized as somebody who has a lot of privileged identities, what I was not, what I didn’t know it was a huge learning experience.

Gavin Henning:
And so I had that, that background and had been doing the assessment piece. And then in 2017, when Eric Montero, Natasha Janowski published the piece, that cultural responsive assessment that really opened my mind to this intersection and really excited me, because I brought couple those two elements together for me. And then I’ve had the privilege of working with a colleague Anne Linquist I’m presenting on this topic even, or, and even talking about it and our thoughts have evolved over time. And we’ve had the opportunity to write a couple book chapters as well as some articles. And then really a lot of that culminated in this book. Once we got connected with Eric and Natasha and Jeanita Baker and said, we really need to pull the folks together who are doing this work. And so that’s really kind of the, the how that the beginning of the Genesis of that.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Well, Gavin, as you, you just mentioned you’re one of the editors along with some of the folks you just mentioned, help us get a 30,000 foot view of this topic and this book maybe a little bit about the why the what and the how.

Gavin Henning:
Yeah. So I, we, there’s a huge diversification in college student population. We’re seeing a lot more students from different ethnic and backgrounds as well as adult students, but there really continue to be disparate educational outcomes. You know, if we look at 6 year graduation rates, that’s just one example. If we national center of education statistics, public some data in 2019 where Asian American, 74% of Asian Americans are graduating in six years for white students, 64% for Hispanic students, 54% Pacific Outlanders, 51% black students, 40% and American Indian, Alaskan natives, 39%. And so huge differences. And then NCES also published some data in 2021 looking at the, some of the income levels. So for bachelor’s level students, people who just have a who have a bachelor’s level degree, they make a medium that’s $55,700 per year, compared to those who have just a high school degree, $35,000.

Gavin Henning:
So that’s $20,700 per year difference. Imagine this over 10 years, that’s over $200,000. Imagine this difference over a 40 year career, that’s close to a million dollars and imagine being able to invest just some of that and how that would grow exponentially. And when we look at the impact of generational wealth on poverty and how poverty is very different for different for different ethnic groups, there’s a huge impact that college graduation can have. And that’s just one example. And so while colleges and universities have created some, some individual programs such as bridge programs and mentoring programs to help create some equity and they tried to level out some of those outcomes, it really hasn’t been working like we’ve hoped it would wipe. And I think there’s a really interesting opportunity when we look at assessment and equity, because assessment’s never been connected to equity.

Gavin Henning:
They kind of evolve separately in higher education. And when right now, when we talk with people and we say equity and assessment, they think about assessing DEI programs diversity equity inclusion programs. And we’re actually talking a little bit about even something broader than that. And it’s not, it’s even beyond thinking about how do we make sure our assessment practices are equitable and fair, but even more exciting, how can we use assessment to actually advance equity? And that to me is the really exciting piece, because it leverages assessment from something that measures effectiveness and provides opportunities for learning to actually a tool for increasing diversity and equity inclusion on campus. And so there’s a, lot of opportunity there and we’re really excited about with the chapter authors because they bring all of that to bear all of their experience into that book with a lot of different examples and case studies. So that’s kind of really, I think the why and the what, and hopefully the the book will talk a little, share a little bit about the, how

Keith Edwards:
. Yeah, there’s a lot of really great theorizing and philosophizing, but also really great examples and case studies and recommendations and suggestions and a lot of really new and innovative strategies. Divya you wrote a powerful chapter in this Why section about called the assessment activists, a revolutionary call to action. I’d love it. If you could tell us a little bit about equity in and through assessment, as well as your call for activism.

Divya Bheda :
So, so the foundation for, for the chapter Keith is, is what Gavin was talking about, right? It’s this idea that the bridge is our students backs any progress that we make around social justice, around equity, what, whatever delays there are in that work is going to be impacting our students negatively. And so that is where that power, like there’s a call to action and that’s what the chapter is all about. And when you ask the question about in versus through, if we are working towards assessment towards equity, we have to have a strong understanding of what that is, right. And which means that we have to embed ourselves in the literature. There’s so much of scholarship around this work. Black feminist scholars have been doing this critical work for years. And so we need to embed ourselves to understand that vision. What does, you know, overlapping oppression look like?

Divya Bheda :
How systemic is it? What do we have to unpack in the way we are? And in the way we practice and do things to be able to reach that goal of student success. And I like to define student success, not just as student learning and graduation rates, but also the journey of education, right, is a student having a good, positive, uplifting experience of the education system. And so that’s so, so do we want to achieve equity as a goal? Then we need to understand all the nuances to that equity. We need to understand the literature that, that it’s based on that idea of equity and the same thing. When we think about through equity, like through assessment, we have to think about in our assessment practice, right? How are we making sure that that practice itself is equitable so that when we engage in assessment, if our tools kind of, you know, further entrench and reify, the same things that we are trying to dismantle, then there’s a problem because we will never expose what needs to improve or what needs to change to achieve that goal that we are trying to achieve.

Divya Bheda :
So it’s both, and we want to achieve equity. We want to work towards it as a goal, but we also want to embed equity and social justice principles in our work, which means for all of it, we have to intentionally have social justice in both. Building on that. I also wanted to share. So the, the, what I offer are some key ideas. And I think the foundation under it is intent. We have to be intentional in trying to find community where. And so this book is an opportunity for folks to come together, you know, read it, build like learning communities, but find community of like-minded people, people who hold us accountable, we want to organize intentionally. So it can’t be armchair activism. Right. And we need to think through, okay, what do we want to change in our practice? What do we want to change in our climate survey?

Divya Bheda :
The way we do it? What do we want to change in terms of meeting introductions? What do we want to change in terms of the first class? What do we want to change in terms of student orientation? Right. We have to be intentional. We have to accept that it’s going to be recursive, because what we think is achieving equity may not achieve it. So then you realize, oh, oh, I, I made this mistake and actually it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to work out. So we need to take two steps back, do it again. So it’s going to be recursive. And we have to, I think, and this different people have different viewpoints, but I think we have to own being an activist. And what I mean by that is that we are advocates for equity, right? So we can’t see ourselves only as assessment professionals. We have to see ourselves as equity champions. We have to see ourselves as doing that work. And only when we are able to say that or recognize that for ourselves, even if we are scared to say it publicly, because it’s a very political environment right now, , we will find like-minded souls or they can find us because otherwise you can be alone and you may not be able to grow because we only grow in community. So

Keith Edwards:
Well, for those of you just listening to this, you’re missing the head nodding and agreement by your colleagues as you’re going along, which is wonderful to see. And I’m hearing this, that equity and social justice is both a product and an end point, but also a process that we want to get there. And you’re talking about activism and being strategic and being intentional and being thoughtful so that we’re effective in our work getting there. So I really appreciate that call to action. And I think anything less than a call to action that really kind of undersells your argument in the case that you’re making let’s shift to talking a little bit more about the, how Ciji and Joe you wrote about advancing equity through assessment. I help our listeners folks watching this think through how they can do this in their practice. I think many folks are listening saying of course, or, or I’ve never thought about it like that. I’m really excited. Tell me what to do. so Ciji, can you help? What would be a good assessment practice? How can people put these brilliant ideas and perspectives and reframes into action?

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Yeah. I just want to respond to a couple of things and like I was vigorously head nodding and like you were physically restraining myself from being like, yes, I really excited about what I was hearing. And I think that a couple of things like, yes, this practice has been happening for so long. Maybe not specific to assessment in higher education, but there’s 30 years of literature and lived experience and culturally responsive evaluation right from black and brown practitioners who have been doing this work all along. So we in many ways are standing on the shoulders of giants and the center for cultural responsive evaluation assessment is out in Chicago. I would encourage anybody to look up their website. There’s some fantastic projects, like nobody knows my name, where these two men of color actively dug back into the research to excavate the voices of women of color who had been contributing to the profession.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Kind of like we named earlier where it was like, there are people who’ve shaped my journey along the way, and although they’re not here, I want to thank them. So it’s like a very formal way of that. And so it’s, it’s very powerful and, and beautiful. And I also just want to echo the idea of our tools and I think as practitioners, one of the things, and we’ll, we’ll get into more detail here, here. So I’m jumping ahead, but the tools and methods that you use, either silence or uplift, lived experiences and voices. And so when we’re thinking about intentionality, this applies to standardized tools, right? Standardized tools were created by humans and grounded in research, but that doesn’t mean that that research was conducted on diverse populations.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Correct. And we really have this like draw to want to be apolitical and a neutral and subjective. And I like, we really just need to like package all of that up and take it to somebody who can help us unpack it because it’s really in its tight little box and we really need to disavow ourselves with some of those notions when it comes to assessment, especially when it comes to student students in continuous improvement equity. And so tools are really critically important. But to answer the how question really want to start by reminding all, all of our listeners that good assessment practice really focuses on continuous improvement and asking questions that matter. Right. So when we’re talking about the intersection of equity and we’re talking about the intersection of equity and assessment, we’re not talking about in addition to assessment practice, we are just centering equity as that question or that continuous improvement practice that really matters to many of our stakeholders, especially when you examine the shifting demographics over the last 20 years of higher education students.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
And so we really want to encourage everyone to really think critically and engage in what was just named as intentional, right? This intention, intentional reflection about what’s your power as a practitioner, what’s your positionality and your lived experience as a practitioner. How does that shape the questions that you ask? How does that shape, how students may or may not open and honestly communicate their authentic experiences with you? How do you facilitate spaces that allow others to operationalize their agency? I can’t give Joe agency, but I can create a space where he feels empowered to leverage and use his agency to advocate for change. . How do you collaborate specifically with the people that you are evaluating their learning and trying to demonstrate learning? How do you work with the people most closely impacted by anything you might be looking to improve or change to get them to weigh on it, weigh in on it at every point in the assessment process.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
And how do you do this? And, and we’ve already talked a little bit about the methods, but how do you do this with the assessment cycle? How do you do this with strategic planning? How do you do this with program evaluation? So that’s kind of one of the big things we want to encourage you to think about for these dimensions of power, positionality agency, collaboration methods. And so a concrete example is that when you are doing assessment work, you have the power to shape the narrative about what students strengths are, as opposed to orienting that data and that report around student deficits. You also have the chance to leverage data, to close outcome gaps and help your audience or your stakeholders hyper focus on the work they need to do. You also have the chance to advocate for equity and student success, because oftentimes as the assessment practitioner, you are living with that data in a really intimate way, you are really embracing that data.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
You’re spending a ton of time with it, you’re reporting on it. You’re looking at it from lots of different angles. And so I’ve had people say to me, well, well, who am I like? I don’t run that program. Who am I to recommend action items? And I’m like, who are you not to? if you have the most experience with that data, if you see a call to action that is clearly present from your analysis, then that needs to be one of your core points that you communicate with care. Because if you’re communicating to another human, who’s done a lot of work, right? . But that is that I view that as a responsibility of, of the role in the work. And so it’s getting more specific about data collection and analysis. When you’re thinking about the collection or the tools that you use, you really want to give critical thought to what will best showcase the students experience and support decision making.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
This is often where we start to hear that question about n and I’m really excited. I know Gavin has tons of thoughts here, cause we talked about this before, but you know, if you are collecting data and you’re trying to convey a sense of what a student who is transgender or transitioning might look like in the college environment, maybe you don’t have an n a 500, or maybe you don’t even know what your population in n and is because you don’t have a systematic way of collecting that on your campus. So maybe you follow that up, that data, that quantitative data point with a case study with a student who’s willing to showcase their lived experience in a protected fashion, right? we want to keep their journey safe for them. We don’t want to cause ’em harm, but how do you balance, right?

Ciji Ann Heiser:
How do you balance that desire for quantitative rigor with cultural responsiveness and that nuance of the lived experience? So we want to be thinking about the role of methodology and data collection and how, what, what impact that has on knowledge construction and how we report and interpret findings. And so we’ve named this real tension in assessment with respect to like bias and subjectivity, but sometimes when we pay too much attention to that, we have, we run the risk of reinforcing dominant structures that have been shaped and maintained by privileged populations. So we need to start to deconstruct those structures specifically really consider student culture in the selection of your methodologies, ask them how they want to share their experiences with you. It’s, you know, they’ve grown up taking surveys, engaging in social media, right? Like they know our tools, it’s not a surprise.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
It it’s not a secret. Right. and so ask them how they want to talk about their learning, ask. ’em What they think will be the best way for them to showcase their learning to others, ask them what will get them to reflect more deeply on what they’re gaining what tools they use. Is it a video blog? Is it a written blog? Is it a paper? Is it, what, what is it, what is it for you that works? Because it’s really important. These, these choices shape who is heard and how knowledge is produced for larger audiences. And so any chance we can, we can use methods to disrupt you know, dominant ideologies or perceptions around different groups we should absolutely do. So. some concrete strategies as to whenever possible used mixed methods or multiple methods really pick specific outcomes, right? We’re not trying to measure all things at one time using mixed methods, pick something solicit feedback from the stakeholders who are at the center or co-create with them, if you can create paid boards of student assessment experts, and then, you know, really start thinking about assessment plans, no report should go without recommended action items and who, and then you can, you know, kind of co-create that action plan with whoever the departments are that you’re working with.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Right. When we think about data reporting and sharing again, this is where like power, positionality and agency are all relevant for data interpretation. And especially when we’re thinking about leveraging that data and who we’re sharing it with to advance equity. So we want to consider the intended and unintended outcomes. We want to consider disaggregating data. You want to lean on your stats, nerds, like, you know, I, I vote for anybody. Who’s like a Katnis Everdeen fan. I volunteer tribute like stats are my friend. I love my stats, but reach out to your students who are like grad students. And they just want to practice with some things really try to consider within and between group analysis, right? All like one black woman’s experience is not every black woman’s experience. . And we do a bit of a disservice when we just keep naming things in that way.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Like we desegregated the data, but we stopped there. We didn’t add any nuance. So where, when you can, you know, reach out to people, have those more technical skill sets. And I would also say invite stakeholders to reflect on your findings. This isn’t, this doesn’t have to be a focus group, but this can certainly be like, does this accurately capture your story and have them weigh in? And, and they can provide so much nuance and explanation for the data as is. And I think it’s always really important to be robust and transparent, and that goes back to good assessment practice and then to promote action as, as we named earlier, really position yourself as an advocate, be brave. It is hard work but you’re already being brave by trying to encourage people to make data-driven decisions. Right. You might as well just do it to advance equity. Yeah. And then be really inclusive of relevant populations as collaborators to help motivate action. I’ll I’ll stop there. Cause I know Joe, that’s

Keith Edwards:
A lot of really great concrete suggestions. I think I, if you’re an assessment professional, that can be great to integrating your work if you’re not an assessment professional, but doing assessment as a part of your job. I want to encourage folks to like find something integrated in find something more integrated in. We want to avoid this perfectionist mindset where it has to be all or nothing. Right. Integrate some of this in Joe. What would you add here about some of the things that folks can use to better in foster equity, in and through their assessment was calling on us for,

Joe Levy:
Yeah, well, I would add, you know, just going back to Div’s point that we, we have this responsibility and, and combining with what Suji shared, you know, assessment is about asking the right questions and it’s really important for us given the history of higher education the history of us society that as we’re operating with us based institutions to think about, well, who’s asking the questions and what questions are you know, what perspectives are shaping those questions and what students and identities perhaps are the default in mind, right. You know, it’s still interesting how a lot of times when people think of a college student, the default they have in their head is 18 to 22 year old. When in fact working adults have had been the majority for years. And we still have many institutions that are still thinking of a certain identity and perspective in mind.

Joe Levy:
And so we need to engage with our students and we need to collaborate them to determine what are these critical questions? What are the ways in which we are recognizing diverse ways of knowing and learning? What are the ways we’re not, where are we falling short and how can we have guidelines to, for setting these priorities? I mean, Ciji mentioned earlier that one of the aspects that can sty me this work is, is that where to start, you know what I mean? There’s so many identities. If we’re going to disaggregate data, do wedisaggregate everything? Do we always everything for every data point or do you know, do we look for specific identities and who sets a priority and is that enough? Is that okay? So we need to talk about that as an institutions, we need to name those and set priorities and, and, and to have plans and then integrate those things.

Joe Levy:
You know, that’s something I’ve worked with institutions that different pockets will make commitments with external organizations and partners, but then never share that, or that was, you know, with, with one college or this one program. And, and even though we set, you know, institutional targets around specific student populations and, and graduation outcomes, we never share that with the rest of the institution. And then program evaluation is not using those established benchmarks. But largely we can be working with students to help balance the power dynamics and keep them, and their perspective at the center and really discouraging people going with their gut. We have too much data, you know, the, the idea of, you know, that we need to collect more data. Nope, , we’re fine. We got tons. We need to start using that data and we need to start using it a lot more intentionally and using it as a way, you know, back to Divya’s point of, we have this opportunity to use assessment, to elevate marginalization and equity issues that exist with, with program evaluation, with assessment with our student populations that sometimes institutional leadership is so concerned with certain metrics and rankings that they’re looking at this aggregate number, which could be okay or could be decent next to the school, down the street, but it’s still a disservice to all of our students.

Joe Levy:
Right, right. And, and our populations. And there’s so much more we can be doing with, with how to approach those questions. And, and even then thinking about conceptually our, our learning outcomes and, and what that’s represented, the language that’s written in is that even understood by students or even contextualizing for them, that we have these frameworks and these connections from, you know, course learning outcomes, all the way up to university learning outcomes and how student affairs activities fit in. We can be doing a much better job prioritizing and working and partnering with students to use their language and, you know, not that we’re. So instead of having to translate things to students, we start with them from the beginning and use their language so that they understand what skills, knowledge, and abilities they’re going to get from a student activity or an internship experience or their capstone class, and largely letting them into the process so that they can be our partners in this process. So that we’re not just using them as subjects of study, but

Keith Edwards:
This is the co-creation. We mentioned very early on

Joe Levy:
Actually partnering with them to be co-collaborators in their learning experience because that’s what they should be doing.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful. Wonderful. There’s again, so much more, I’m a little overwhelmed with all the things that maybe we could be doing. But let’s add a little bit more, because the beauty of this is people can back it up and re-listen, they can pause the video and re-watch it. They can come back to it and all of our podcasts, the transcripts are available on the site. So you can come back to this. Right. but Gavin and, Divya. What, what would you add to this? What, what jumps to mind is more things that we can integrate into practice Divya.

Divya Bheda :
So I want to share with those folks keep including you for anyone who’s, you know, who gets a little overwhelmed listening to social justice work, right? Because there’s just so much like you are it’s, it’s like peeling and onion, right? like you, the more you peel, the more your eyes burn and you are crying and you realize like how bad it is and you still have to continue cutting the onion you know, but it is like, we are so entrenched in these ways that every time we peel there is like loss and there is because it’s not familiar and this pain. So just know that it’s not an all or nothing game that we can make progress. I want to share that. Then I want to share two other things. So one thing that I talk about in my chapter and it’s a tweet and I dont know who the original you know creator of the tweet is, but Kayla Reid tweeted in 2016, she defined like an ally.

Divya Bheda :
She said an ally, a for always center, the impacted L for listen and learn from those who live in oppression. The second L is leverage a privilege and the, and the Y is yield the floor. Right? And I talk about this in the chapter as well in my chapter. And it’s this idea going back to Ciji and Joe’s point center, your students like in, you know, invite student voice begin from their lived experiences, create opportunities. Again, like I say, like I’m one woman of color on this panel right now and are there ways in which we can bring other colleagues of color on and, you know, get them to have the voices, get students to have their voices. So wherever we have privilege, we, we invite people along as Gavin pointed out in the beginning, like how he’s trying to bring people together and, and showcasing their work.

Divya Bheda :
So there’s always room to learn. So I wanted to say that. And the second thing that I want to say in response to everything that Ciji and Joe mentioned about the, how is it’s something that I’ve written quote written in the last chapter, but it’s this idea it’s like, it’s a tentative framework that we’ve offered to, to the readers it’s around this idea of you have equity arenas. So when you think about assessment doing the work, whether it’s in the classroom, whether it’s in, you know, your student success, programming or school to college transition, college readiness, wherever it may be, whether it’s in academics or student affairs, think about those are different arenas. Your syllabus is an arena. Your program evaluation is an arena. Your teaching is an arena, right? Your programming student programming is an arena. If you think of those as arenas.

Divya Bheda :
And if you think of all of us as equity actors who have an opportunity to act on equity, then think about the anchors. And the anchors is where like the, the meat is your anchors that I’ve shared four anchors basically. So one is community. So find your community of people who give you ideas and help you get moving. The second thing is time, right? To what Ciji and Joe was saying, they were like, do this and do this and do this. And the first question that comes like, but how like there’s no time, there’s this deadline. and it’s, and even in the classroom, and we say, get to know your students. I don’t have time. I have so much of stuff to, you know, I can’t extend a deadline. I can’t do this. And I can’t do that. We have these meetings and we have accreditation.

Divya Bheda :
And I would say like, if we can get off that hamster wheel and really again, why are we doing this? Right. Take a step back. We are doing this for student success. So if we are doing this for student success is all of this stuff really important on the left side. Like I’m circling my hands if anyone’s not listening and not watching, but, or do we want to pay attention to, to what’s important. And then focus, focusing on that. Why will really help you anchor that time and say, I want to spend 10 minutes getting to know my students, you know, in these ways. And at least do do that to then influence my curriculum and my syllabus, all of that. So this that’s the second one commun. So community time communication to Ciji and Joe’s point , you know, that such an important part. We don’t communicate so many things about intention, about impact, about use.

Divya Bheda :
When we complain like nobody’s, you know, nobody is engaged. Nobody’s taking our surveys because we’ve not communicated that we use your surveys to make this improvement. And so what you say has impact, right? So communication and communicating with each other, right. Expectations around deadlines. Why is it important and what, what happens if you plagiarize? How does this impact other students or, you know, things like that. So communication. And then the last thing I go back to, again, there is foundational literature by native and I’m a feminist. So I’m going to say feminist scholars, that’s that’s who shaped my work, but by native scholars, women of color scholars, immigrant scholars, black scholars, Latinx scholars, there’s just so much of research work. If you start reading, oh my God. Like, like I said, you’ll have those aha moments of, oh, now I see exactly what’s happening. Or now I see how my own thinking and approach to this building. This survey design is problematic. So just that reading and being in community and learning from each other is so important. So yeah,

Keith Edwards:
I would, and I, I want to highlight something that I think you’re pointing to, but has come up throughout this conversation from the very beginning is avoiding perfectionism where we’re talking about compliance versus betterment perspectives on doing this, all of these tools, all of these ways, all of the different ways we could disaggregate the data, right. It sort of feels like you can go around the rabbit hole, but you know, Temo OUM points out that perfectionism is a key component of white supremacy culture. and sort of, we have to get it right and have all the answers before we move forward. Let’s push past that and let’s do this thing and add this thing and next time we’ll do this and we’ll add it in. And that betterment mentality to avoiding perfectionism, I think, is something that, that I’ve heard from all of you in different ways. Gavin, what would you add here before we, we move to our final question as we’re already running out of time.

Gavin Henning:
so I’ve got three things, first of all, set up the system so we can do this work. I think disaggregation of data is the most basic thing we should do is in necessary almost all the time. But as we learned on my campus, I’ve set sent on our data equity team that we don’t even have the good data for that. You know, we only, we realized when we started to disaggregate our graduation data, we only had 60% of our students were, who had we had, we only had race and ethnicity data for 60% of our students because that came from the application process. And I can understand why some students wouldn’t want to share that. And then also our, we have sex, we don’t have gender. And so even the disaggregation of data can be limited by the structures we have. And so we need to examine that and figure out how to change those.

Gavin Henning:
And so we’re having discussions on our campus of how we gather the data in addition to the application process. So we can get more data for more students, but also broader data. Right. And I think examined the unexamined there, what I really didn’t think a lot about until I read more about indigenous knowledge systems is how the Western paradigm or least the European paradigm has built into our education system and just our focus on cognitive learning primarily, and in terms of more so in the classroom, but how writing is the primary way we have students demonstrate their learning and just how limiting that is. And there are just multiple dimensions of learning and of our holistic self are not built into the, the us. And I would even say the British higher education system. And so do a little reading about an indigenous knowledge system, because once I did that, it really kind of blew my mind and like, oh, wow.

Gavin Henning:
Like there is a lot more out there that, and, and the way our, our systems are set up, we’re not exposed to any of that. And so we’ve have to do that ourselves. And then also in regard to examining the other exam and assessed our practices and our policies, not just our programs and our outcomes. Cause I talk about this as being deconstructed assessment because the power and oppression is built into our systems. They’re built into our structures and we can to really use assessment for, to advance equity. We want to take a look at assessing actually some of those practices and policies, you know, quick example is the late fee for students who don’t pay their bills. So on my campus, students cannot actually register for a class and start the class until they paid their full bill. And we also add these late fees on.

Gavin Henning:
So first of all, think about the fact that if you have even a small bill, you can’t register that’s inequitable. And the other issue is we keep on adding these late fees on, you know, the whole concept is that we provide this penalty that will for that students will pay their bills. Well, let’s just take a second to think about this and take what my, what Anne calls an equity pause, which students are not paying those bills. Well, our students who don’t have the money to pay the bills, so not only are we dispossessing them of the education, we’re bearing them in more debt. And the one thing that really upsets me most about US higher education, it’s one of the few commodities that you can pay for and you don’t get anything until you get the degree . And so that in and itself is, you know, a structural limitation. And so really think about how do we begin to examine these unexamined pieces and there’s these, these oppressive systems aren’t set up intentionally, they’re just embedded into our society in the way we think. And then the last thing is really exciting. What we talked a little bit about already, don’t be overwhelmed. Thinking about equity itself can be overwhelming thinking about assessment for most everybody, except the, those of us on this, on

Keith Edwards:
For most student affairs professionals, assessment can be overwhelming. Yes,

Gavin Henning:
That’s right. So that’s, but that’s a ton. And so I think just start with awareness of the three PS, your power, your privilege, and your positionality. And as CJ said, how that it can impact all the work we do, not just our assessment and just start small, and then you can continue to build on that. Keith, as you had mentioned as well.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Well, we can tell you’re a great teacher, Gavin, because you took all of this and cooked it down to the three piece. Really easy to remember. Easy. Not that that’s all easy to do, but it’s, you’ve really helped us think about this. Well, we, we are running out of time, which we knew we would. But this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW and we like to end by inviting our guests to share just what do you think about or pondering or troubling. Now it might be related to something someone said here or this conversation, or it might just be something in, in higher education in your world that you’re really pondering. And also if folks want to connect with you and you’d like to offer up a place where folks can connect with you, you can go ahead and add that in as well. Joe, we’re going to start with you. What are you troubling now?

Joe Levy:
For me, you know, I’ve had the good fortune of working at a number of institutions that have served adult learners. And so the thing that troubles me is the vast majority of institutions that do not and the fact that things like credit for prior learning and prior learning assessment are not common in higher Ed blows my mind 39 million students have left without a credential. Yeah, it started higher. Ed did not get a credential 39 million and we could easily be working to center students, acknowledge their lived experiences through established things like that have professional organizations like kale that provide resources and tips and, and, and handbooks and guides for students. And so many institutions just are not doing it that it’s it’s shameful and you know, so much more we can be doing to truly center our students instead of holding up our, our systems or, you know, as, as Gavin pointed out, it’s, you know, we need to be evaluating our processes, not for process sake, but for, for students. And is this truly serving and putting the students at the center? Cause if not, that’s what we should push to the side. Yeah. We should prioritize these things that are truly serving our students. Active lately. I’ve been active the most on, on LinkedIn feel free to connect with me there during conference season, that’s when I’m most active on Twitter. so happy to engage there as well.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. I just yearning you have, it is so close. It is right there. We could do it and we’re not just like, oh, I, I feel the frustration. Ciji, what are you troubling now?

Ciji Ann Heiser:
So I’m a first gen student and I grew up in like abject poverty as the daughter of a single mother. And I had a period of time where my partner who grew up pretty much the opposite end of that spectrum on like the upper 1%. And I were driving back and forth to New York from Michigan, like seven and eight times in a series of months for some family health things. And when in all of that commuting, we were going back out to this rural area of New York where I grew up and he was like, I didn’t realize how expensive it was to be poor. Yes. And that was like a moment for him. Correct. Right. And so for me, I really, you know, to, to follow Gavin’s lead on like the three things that I think about that I’m pondering is like first this is individual. Healthy Whole humans are not terrified by the idea of dismantling white supremacy. they see that it causes harm and they want that to stop for other humans

Keith Edwards:
And it causes harm to them as well. Yeah,

Ciji Ann Heiser:
Correct. Yeah. Right. And so how do we help each human who also happens to be an assessment practitioner, right? , you know, all humans in general though, truly how do we help each human be on their own journey to understand their path and the systems structures that they’re abiding within and how to disrupt that? When I think about systems, so it’s individual, it is processes and it’s like systems. So individual that’s that level systems it’s things like what Joe and Gavin have hinted out of. Like students also will stop out, be trying to get their transcripts so that they can continue somewhere else and have to pay to get it. So not only do I not have an ROI, but I’ve have to give you more of something I already don’t have, which is how I got in this situation to get what I did accomplish from you and how that’s just really counter to the mission of education.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
So why are we doing that? And so, you know, there’s lots of movements to, to get rid of that. And I think that those are the types of things that assessment can really help to unearth as to examine which processes we engagement assessment itself, being one of those processes that can cause harm or can advance wholeness and wellness for humans. And that last part is again, those systems, right? So we think about where’s our power there’s often power and accreditation program review. So instead of just saying DISE your data by academic program, it’s what is the expectation that they are doing something with that? So I think that’s where we can go further, especially in like the accreditation realm is like, it’s not enough to just look at the numbers and have a discussion. What is the action plan that follows? And that is what you will be held accountable for in the next accreditation cycle. So I think about what are the systems at play that can really support moving us in this structure of equity.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful. Gavin, what do you want to add? What’s troubling you these days,

Gavin Henning:
Thinking about the anacedence to this work and what Ann and I talk about in terms of individual organizational readiness as somebody who has holds a lot of privileged identities, I had to do a lot of self work to get to this point and really kind of battle myself and try to understand, you know, what, what, in what ways have I potentially caused harm in the way I’ve been doing assessment? because I haven’t been considering these and I’ve all and I never stepped out outside of my positionality. And so I think there’s some that can be some difficult work because we can come, you know, confront some really troubling things. And so I think there needs to be that individual awareness first and that individual readiness. And, but the next thing is how do we scale this up? You know, because as we’ve all mentioned, this is about systems and we had, we have to dismantle the systems, but we also have to create systems that will engage in equity centered assessment.

Gavin Henning:
And that’s not easy. You know, our office may be on board, but our department might not be, or our division might not be , you know, I think student affairs folks are going to be a little bit more ready than some of the academic affairs folks that I, that I talk with. But how do we really do some organizational development? So we can build that organizational readiness because if we do this in pockets, it’s not going to be successful. , you know, or at least on a minor level. So we really need to figure out how to scale that. So that’s, what’s really kind of troubling me is how do we do this? Cause as you said, Keith, people are going to be on board with this. You know, there are very few people are going to say, no, I don’t agree with this. And you know, now they’re coming up with different Nolo is coming up with some examples case studies, the book has some examples, there are more and more things coming out. So there, now people are going to say, now I can see how this is done, but then the next step is how do we scale this up to really make some big change? So those are the things that, that I’m concerned about at this point. And probably the easiest way to reach me is at my email address, which is or if you forget that, just go to the new England college website, click on directory and just search for Gavin because I am the only Gavin at New England College.

Keith Edwards:
That’s the of being that place.

Ciji Ann Heiser:
I forgot to share my contact information.

Keith Edwards:
Go ahead, go

Keith Edwards:
That’s great. Well, and Gavin you’re reminding me of something. I heard J Reverend Dr. Jamie Washington say a long time ago, I’m hearing people who are using the words, but they haven’t done the work. And I think that’s something to explore. It’s not just having the language and the lingo and being up to date, but you’re pointing to a lot of the self work and reflection, engagement, and, and really unlearning. Right. That’s really the task tax there. Divya. What are you troubling now?

Divya Bheda :
I’ll actually share my contact details first and then I’ll get to it. Sure. So you can reach me on LinkedIn again. That’s a safe spot to always reach me. And what I’m troubling actually are a few things. So one is I’m, I’m troubling the profession in terms of education as a whole, right, as educators, what do we need to do? How do we need to prepare our graduate students to be the next generation of educators? We want assessment to be a skill that everyone has, but we, it shouldn’t be, oh, we have only time for assessment. We don’t really have time for equity or we have time only for equity. We don’t have time for assessment. , it’s a, both, and it’s not an either or, and so we need to really be doing some intentional to all the graduate programs out there, to all the graduate students out there.

Divya Bheda :
If you are not actively building your skills, because you don’t want to come in as a faculty member or as a student affairs staff member leader, and then say, oh, I don’t know how to engage in program evaluation in a way that matters to our students. So make sure you find your community, find us, reach out to us so that you can make a difference and you can do it as a collaborative. So that’s one. The second thing is I want to go, you know, take off at that collaborative. You don’t have to do this alone again. higher. Ed is built on siloed thinking. It’s built on capitalist structures on that perfectionism, Keith that you talked about. , it’s, you know, it’s, it’s built on this idea that you have to do things this way to be recognized. We give individual accolades, individual performance improvement, individual, everything.

Divya Bheda :
It doesn’t have to be that way. So if we can come together where we do things where there’s power in numbers, that’s really important. So find that community where you can exchange ideas and take the work forward. And then the last thing that I would say is this work can be really overwhelming, right? In as, as we’ve it’s hard work. So when it’s overwhelming lately, I’ve been paying more attention to my needs. And so anytime that you, you see, as you understand your power positionality, you know, the privilege that you have, look at those around you. And anytime that you can support uplift those who, who are in need, please do that. Invite people into spaces that they wouldn’t be invited to, and then pay attention. If you are a person of color, if you are dealing with spaces where you are feeling oppressed, where you’re trying to advance equity, where you’re facing a lot of resistance, know that there are other spaces out there that are 10 steps ahead.

Divya Bheda :
right. That they can give you the literature that they can give you the strategies that they can give you subversive creative, all of that information that can move you forward in ways and pay attention to your body. like now more than ever pay attention to your body, engage in that self care and share the load. Like say I need help. And so five other people need to be there. And a good, a good colleague told me this never lose an opportunity where there is student unrest build on that opportunity to move the needle even further, right?. Democracy in assessment and education is really important right now, student learning outcomes around life skills, around communication skills, essential skills, which was primarily the focus of student affairs. , that’s, what’s important right now. That’s what’s the the key thing that’s being talked about. So come together and, and make magic. Like you always do. We are here to support you. Please reach out to us.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you. Wonderful. Well, thanks. All this has been terrific. I really want to thank all four of you for your contributions and your conversations today, and the other editors of the book, and the many other authors who’ve contributed to this volume. Thanks to those of you who are here. I also want to thank our sponsors today. Stylus and simplicity. Stylus is proud to be a sponsors of student affairs. Now they’re browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles@Stylusspub.com, including this book used promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping, you can find them on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter at Stylus pub and simplicity. Simplicity is the global leader in student affairs and student services, technology platforms with state-of-the-art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution. Simplicity supports all aspects of student life, including, but not limited to career services and development student conduct and wellbeing, student success and accessibility services to learn more, visit simplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is always a huge shout out to Nat Ambrosey. The production of assistant behind the podcast who does all behind the scenes work to make us all look and sound good. And if you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list while you’re there, check out our archives. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guests today and to everyone who is listening and watching. Please make it a great week. Thanks all.

Grand Challenges for Equity in Assessment 

https://assessment.charlotte.edu/excellence-assessment/grand-challenges-assessment-project

SAAL Open Course: 

http://studentaffairsassessment.org/online-open-course 

Equity-Centered Assessment Resources

https://bit.ly/ECA_Resources