A discussion with Adrianna Kezar on integrating shared equity leadership on campus
Adrianna Kezar
The Many Voices Summit on April 21 will feature workshops led by Adrianna Kezar, dean’s professor of leadership, Wilbur-Kieffer Professor of Higher Education and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at University of Southern California.
Kezar is an expert on change leadership; diversity, equity and inclusion; faculty, STEM reform; collaboration and governance in higher education. She is well published with 26 books/monographs, more than 100 journal articles and more than a 100 book chapters and reports.
Joining her at the summit will be co-presenter Ángel de Jesus González, assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Fresno State University.
Here, Kezar discusses her upcoming presentations with the CU Boulder community at the April summit.
Can you provide an example of when leadership teams across campus took responsibility for shared equity leadership that yielded dramatic results for students?
One of the campuses we studied was able to alter its curriculum to be much more culturally responsive—altering both pedagogy and the syllabi and course materials. This involved having faculty explore their courses in learning communities and making individual changes. Faculty had the support of chairs, deans and other leaders who provided funds for seed grants, release time to revise courses and the learning community structures to help them in making the changes. The Center for Teaching and Learning also provided professional development and helped facilitate the learning communities.
In this study, we saw retention and graduation rates for African American and Latino students go up 12% as they were working on this initiative and a few other efforts to broadly support students from historically marginalized backgrounds.
What’s the current biggest challenge in shared equity leadership in higher education?
The challenge is helping people to shift from their current focus on a chief diversity officer, programs and services to a true shared-and-embedded approach where all educators see their responsibility. Having silos and conducting diversity, equity and inclusion work has for so long been considered a side project for higher education that it is hard for people to shift to consider it as normal, good practice for all educators.
The current political climate is challenging as leaders are overcomplying or complying in advance. I recommend that leaders connect with groups such as the Education Counsel for the latest legal and policy updates before making drastic changes to what’s already in place.
If you go
Who: Faculty, staff, students
What: Many Voices: Co-creating CU Boulder
When: Monday, April 21, 8 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Where: Williams Village, multi-purpose rooms
Summit schedule
The summit offers seminars for faculty, staff and students on creating culture change through shared equity leadership, creating accountability for shared equity leadership and charting progress and meeting challenges.
What do you think the opportunities for CU Boulder—a major public research university—are at this moment regarding shared equity leadership?
The opportunity is to be a model to show people who are having to cut programs, services and chief diversity officers in restrictive state and federal environments that the work can continue if it is part of the fabric of the institution and its culture, and not a side project.
Campuses are struggling to know how to maintain their commitments to historically marginalized students, and CU Boulder can be a model for how that can still happen. It is easy to target programs and services and a centralized office but much harder to target general educational practices.
What do you want the main takeaway to be for the CU Boulder community from the workshops that you and de Jesus González will be leading?
Shared equity leadership is a viable and effective approach in today’s political environment for continuing diversity, equity and inclusion work. More importantly though, even before the current political challenges, shared equity leadership was the way to actually make progress on advancing equity and closing equity gaps and creating an inclusive culture.
We will examine the research that supports its efficacy, and we will explore how to expand and strengthen the current work at CU Boulder so that it can meet the promise. Our intention is to re-energize and inspire people in this difficult time.