by Courtney Brecheen, Ph.D., Senior Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, The University of Texas at Dallas and Louie Rodriguez, J.D., Associate Vice President for Student Affairs, The University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas System consists of eight academic institutions and six health institutions that educate more than 230,000 students, making it one of the largest university systems in the United States. We proudly represent two campuses within this system whose mission is in part to “use its size, diversity, and quality to advance education, push the bounds of discovery, enhance population health, build stronger communities, and shape public policy for the common good.” In this blog post, we focus on the valuable role university systems can have in enhancing and institutionalizing equity in meaningful ways through direct collaboration with campuses.
The UT System is uniquely positioned to help challenge assumptions and advance the national discourse around equity because of its institutional diversity, student demographics, and geographical reach across the second largest state in the country. For example, UTEP is an open-access R1 institution situated on the US-Mexico border serving a student population that is more than 80% Hispanic, 51% first-generation college-going, and 73% Pell-eligible. In contrast, with only 14% Hispanic students, UT Dallas is a selective R1 institution serving an increasing number of freshmen and transfer students amid the racially, ethnically, and economically diverse Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Despite the differences among the UT System member institutions, we are all committed to collaborating within our campus communities and with UT System to ensure all Texans access to high-quality education. We strive to achieve this through aligned, equity-oriented policies and practices that strengthen our broader educational outcomes.
One model for system/campus collaboration
Our collaboration with UT System ranges from special projects with the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis to an ongoing partnership with the Office of Academic Affairs. Dr. Rebecca Karoff, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, regularly convenes a diverse group of student success-oriented leaders from each campus, a collective known as the UT System Student Success Guiding Coalition, to facilitate communication, idea-sharing, and—most importantly—collaboration leading to action. This steady exchange of stories of success and failure, lessons learned, and recommended practices helps to ensure that equity-mindedness guides action towards common goals—at our individual institutions and at the system level.
For example, our work as a Guiding Coalition has resulted in several high-impact systemwide initiatives including the development of three pillars of student success – finances, advising, and belonging – which are built on a foundation of equity. Within each pillar are examples of campus and system collaboration that have led to greater accountability, equity-driven changes to policy, practice, and assessment, newly institutionalized student success programs and initiatives, and investments that have made tangible positive impacts on thousands of students. Many of these could be tailored to other systems and campuses outside of UT System. For example, we are hosting the 4th annual UT System Academic Advising Institute to build a stronger network of cross-system advisors and to invest in their professional development and growth. The Guiding Coalition also played a major role in advocating for the UT System Student Success Grant Program, which funded a diverse portfolio of institutional projects to advance student success. Funded projects included establishing one-stop student success help desks on all campuses, implementing a holistic advising model for all undergraduate students, expanding mentorship and experiential learning programs, and investing in the personal development and support of students of color. Each project aligned with one or more pillars of student success to ensure that outcomes contributed to broader persistence, belonging, and completion goals.
Student-centered and student-ready
Another benefit of system/campus collaboration is that campuses can foreground student voices and realities for systems, which can often be detached from the day-to-day student experience. In working to elevate equity to the level of “systemness,” defined in NASH’s Equity Action Framework as “a practice that is implemented across the system and at depth that reflects core system priority and supports collaboration and sharing of resources across campuses,” our Guiding Coalition has cultivated a working culture deeply committed to ensuring that our system leadership stays informed about our students and the impact policies and practices have on their lives. We are also committed to pushing our campuses and the system to focus less on students’ college readiness, and more on our level of preparation to serve well the students who are entering our institutions in full recognition of their diverse assets and experiences. Listen to two of our students, one from UTEP and the other from UT Dallas, in this video:
We haven’t yet mentioned the elephant in the room for all educators in the past year—COVID-19—with its devastating impacts and exposure of systemic inequities. The collective response to COVID-19 was a major test of equity at the level of systemness. From operating our campus food pantries, coordinating outreach to vulnerable students, working with local healthcare providers, and developing creative ways to mitigate effects of the digital divide, our level of service to our students did not waiver. During a time of exasperation with inequality and failures in social justice, our system/campus partnership supported a renewed urgency to further develop and institutionalize our commitment to equity and fulfil our promise to become not only the student-ready campus but also the student-ready system.
As a Guiding Coalition, our next step is to formally engage with the NASH Equity Action Framework—a process we will begin this month—which has already sparked meaningful conversation and ideas around ensuring equitable student success outcomes. An intentional system/campus collaboration on equity will positively impact individual students, our campuses, the state, and given the number of students served by our institutions, ultimately, the nation. And, as the Equity Action Framework compels us to do, we fully intend to collaborate towards action and meaningful change.