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- Queensborough is partnered
with the University of Southern California's
Race and Equity Center
to participate in an eight week Equity Institute.
What makes the Institute really unique
is that it's an opportunity to have a focused conversation
about addressing inequities on campus
by a team of 20 colleagues.
- The disappointment I think that sometimes I feel
during orientation is the realization
that maybe some of these students
will not walk across the stage at graduation.
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That is why I wanna do this program
and what I wanna be able to have an impact on.
- I heard an interesting thing about empathy,
we used to define it as the ability
to put yourself into someone else's shoes.
And then yesterday for the first time I heard,
yeah but before you do that,
you have to take your shoes off.
So with equity, I'm trying to do the same thing.
Is trying to take my shoes off
and just absorb all the information.
- We're focusing on opportunity areas.
The first opportunity area,
is the retention of our black and Latino male students.
Queensborough is not graduating
our black and Latino male students at the same rate
that we're graduating other populations of students.
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- We talk about numbers,
but at the same time,
we have to do more than just talk about the numbers,
we have to actively do something to keep those numbers up.
So that opportunity to be at the forefront,
shaping the way that we move forward
was definitely an incentive for participating.
- Another one of our opportunity areas
is focusing on process barriers.
Any action plan that gets implemented
that is going to help us retain our students,
is going to help all of our students.
By focusing in on key populations,
we're improving the system so that it works better
for these students, but in so doing,
it works better for all students.
- With every kind of layer of complication
that we have in our system, I think we lose students.
And we often don't have the opportunity
to understand why those students are leaving
or struggling because they're having such difficulty
communicating with us.
So I hope that part of this work will be making ways
that students can more easily communicate back
to the institution, what they need
and that we can make it actionable.
- We want to serve our students,
we need to hear their voices.
- Another area that we're focusing on
during the Institute is strategies to diversify our faculty
in a way that would allow our students
to see themselves fully represented
in the faculty who teach them.
- Black males and Latino males,
do these students see themselves reflected back
when they're in a classroom?
That is something that we really need to address.
- That we retain faculty of color,
so that diversity that we currently have
should be cherished.
Not only do I want faculty to be retained,
but also provide an environment where they're thriving.
- The fourth one is looking at opportunity programs
for our students of color and what the campus can do
to really maximize those programs,
to really fully reap the benefits.
- Being able to collaborate with colleagues
to this level is gonna be pretty amazing.
- We spend a lot of time in a college in our silos,
but to build really true sustained connections
is one of the things that this creates an opportunity for,
and I think that's how,
it's how you put the community in community collage.
- The best ideas come from diverse groups,
diverse ways of thinking, diverse experiences,
diverse backgrounds.
So I think it's super exciting,
there aren't many opportunities on a college campus
to work across those silos
and really engage folks in a common cause.
Each of the groups will develop an action plan
to address the opportunity area
that they've been assigned to study.
To really create sustainable change on our campus
and really move the dial
as it relates to the inequities that are present.
- When I read through the description of the program
and I saw that the expectation is,
not just that you will come up with ideas
or read material or engage in conversation,
but rather that you would, at the end of it, have a project.
That experience within itself, is kind of priceless.
- So I'm really excited to take part
and I'm mostly excited about the action part.
I love talking about stuff,
but I really like when we can actually put it into action.
- I'm very excited about the group that's been assembled
because I think that they are,
coming from all different parts of the institution
and lots of different knowledge bases,
but those are the people that we need
to be able to make change.
To really have the kind of effect
that we want on our student outcomes.
- It's not just good enough to say, oh I checked the box
and I attended four high-impact practice institutes,
what we need to look at as what have you put to practice?
- We invite the entire Queensborough community
to follow our progress.
There'll be multiple opportunities for community members
to engage with both the participants and with me
and ask questions about the Institute, what we've learned,
what we plan to do, how we plan to move forward.
What we do will make the difference.
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