by Ryan Barone, Colorado State University
With roots in psychology and disability studies, Universal Design (UD) has been rarely applied to the work of student success at scale. Amanda Kraus defines UD as “the design of products and environments to be useable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for modifications or specialized design.” What would it look and feel like to apply this thinking as we design and implement educational environments and cultures in the service of equity and opportunity gap closure?
Building on the work of Tia Brown McNair et. al. in Becoming a Student-Ready College, UD student success work brings to the center of our effort’s students with multiple minoritized identities. If we center the educational experiences of our limited income, racially minoritized, first-generation students who have disabilities, are undocumented, trans* and queer, and we create a student-ready college experience for them, we may begin to see opportunity gap closure at scale. Engaging equity and justice as described by D-L Stewart in Language of Appeasement requires us to unequivocally state, and then demonstrate via resources allocation, that we think and care differently (and more) about institutionally underserved students than we do overserved students.
While myopic zero-sum thinking is undesirable, in a moment with limited (and perhaps decreasing) resources, leveraging universal design thinking for student success requires us to ask questions such as:
- Which demographics of students are currently consuming most of our time, energy, and resources (think about student conduct, fraternity/sorority life and other clubs and organizations including student government)? How do we disaggregate PLUSE, climate, and culture assessments and act on the needs of the minoritized for cultural change?
- What data do we have in the system of record so we can disaggregate outcomes, which data do we need to newly include (sexual orientation and gender identity), and which data might we never capture in our systems of record but still need to attend to informally and qualitatively (undocumented students, students with disabilities)?
- How are traditional data reporting expectations regressive in terms of equity and justice for student success (for example IPEDS unduplicated headcount reports on race/ethnicity compared with campus/system-based duplicated race/ethnicity reports which may bolster n’s for small sub-populations and illuminate new inequity)?
- Finally, how are we functionally rationing access to high-impact practices such as undergraduate research and artistry by reserving these experiences for students with the privilege of leisure time to volunteer? Functionally, how do we re-create high impact experiences in and out of the classroom through the lens of UD and (re)design from inception to equitably serve students with multiple minoritized identities?
Engaging student success, educational equity, and opportunity gap closure through the lens of university design requires the prioritization of time, energy, and resources. Engaging these up-front costs, in terms of capacity building and equitable resource allocation during challenging financial times may seem scary. However, not only is it likely to save institutions and systems money in the long run compared to uncoordinated and reactive one-off activities, universal design thinking and investments represent the courage we need if we are to truly realize our espoused aspirations around equity and justice.