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Student success, which stands at the heart of the �鶹Ӱ�� experience, is tracked by the institution in multiple ways. When broken down and analyzed by various subsets of student demographics, it can sometimes reveal areas where the university must do better.

Some of these areas are best described as equity gaps. A recent use of classroom data allows administrators and faculty to see where these fault lines are and to make the necessary adjustments to close the gaps.

Two years ago, Dr. Uma Shama, professor of math and computer science, decided to use student-performance data and information regarding student ethnicity in a calculus course to look for institutional performance gaps suffered by students of color based on Estella Bensimon's equity gap data tool. Gaps, she found, and immediately Dr. Shama instituted a variety of interventions to try to close them. Subsequent data showed that the interventions had successfully closed equity gaps for students of color. 

Last year, Dr. Shama again used disaggregated data to look for equity gaps in calculus. Once again, the data revealed a pattern, although this time the results showed that white students were not performing as well as expected. Dr. Shama then extended a raft of equity interventions to these students as well.

This front-line work, now dubbed the Classroom Equity Project, is critical, she said.

“The work that faculty do in the classrooms is foundational to an institution’s equity-minded, systemic-change efforts,” she stated in an article for The Racial Equity and Justice Institute Practitioner Handbook Volume 2, which she co-wrote with Amanda Colligan, �鶹Ӱ��’s executive director of Institutional Research and Decision Support.

As she characterized this work in a broader sense during a recent interview, Dr. Shama said, “This represents �鶹Ӱ�� going from equity talk to equity walk.”

Simply described, the project uses an Excel spreadsheet as the basis for a specialized class roster for the course. It contains the students’ self-selected ethnicity, enabling equity tracking over the course of a semester. Whenever a gap of three points or more emerges, affected students are flagged and offered myriad types of additional help.

The specialized roster and analysis tools required the resources of both the Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support and the Division of Information Technology. They worked with Dr. Shama, who had the assistance of �鶹Ӱ�� racial justice and equity fellows.

Following and crunching data points for individual students and knowing what interventions to employ when needed, is not easy work. To address this, �鶹Ӱ�� offers online modules via the Racial Equity and Justice Institute’s Transformation Through Equitable Action Model (TEAM) portal, which offers a suite of equity-minded competency development materials. These include analysis of data and identifying equity issues.

Like a rising tide, the extra work on behalf of faculty and administrators has thus far lifted all boats. Or, as Dr. Shama and Ms. Colligan put it in their REJI Handbook article, “… by centering racial equity in their work, racialized disparate outcomes are decreased, and all students succeed at a higher level.”

“These tools and training give us an opportunity to look at the need for improvements,” Dr. Shama said. “Once we’ve identified where the need is, we have to find out how to best intervene; that’s where the training comes in.”

Understanding who is being left behind, in a data-driven way, is the first step in ensuring that all �鶹Ӱ�� students succeed.

“Equitable access to education and success, that’s what this is all about,” Dr. Shama said.

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