Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

From 2019 to the present, the CTL staff has grown from 2 staff members to a small, capable, diverse team that includes 3 staff, 4 graduate student assistants and 8 CTL Scholars. This team of 15 represents Brandeis schools and disciplines. It comprises 3 black colleagues and more than 50% people of color. This kind of diversity is intentional and essential to how the CTL advocates, enacts and models equity.

The CTL’s programs and services are responsive to the needs of all members of the Brandeis teaching community. While the CTL’s work has consistently incorporated equitable teaching/learning practices that reduce systemic inequities in education, the unequal burdens of systemic racism on our black students, faculty and staff have become even more visible in the CTL’s programming since March 2020. For example,

• The Hybrid Teaching Institute began by acknowledging the need to provide equitable teaching and learning experiences in a primarily online context where black students and black faculty face greater risks with less access to resources than non-black students and faculty. A primary focus of the Institute was on three aspects of teaching where more equitable practices can be applied to combat the systemic disadvantages to black people in higher education:
  • Course structure and class meeting structure that are visible, transparent and accessible,
  • Engagement with students that offers compassion and support,
  • Equitable assessment of students’ work and learning that that encourages student self-assessment

More than 500 Brandeis teaching community members directly engaged antiracist practices in these 3 areas during the Institute. Each participant spent approximately 6 hours considering these issues, (4 in live meetings and 2 in preparation for meetings). This reflects a commitment of nearly 3000 hours of time by Brandeis teaching community members during the summer of 2020 developing anti-racist, equitable teaching strategies they are now applying in fall 2020 courses.

• Nine Evidence-Based Teaching Practices that Reduce Inequity in a Partially Online Context is a document shared on the CTL website that informs all its programming. The document offers nine teaching practices based on a survey of research publications that address structural inequities in higher education, particularly in partially online contexts. It also includes an annotated bibliography and additional resources.
• The CTL’s Teaching Continuity webpage specifically names the problem of systemic inequity in higher education and offers resources for combating it.
• Three Leading Practices for Online and Partially Remote Teaching responds to requests for essential advice from the Hybrid Teaching Institute about practices that teachers can use to reduce systemic inequities in higher education.
• The Brandeis Accessible Syllabus Template was developed in 2019 through a collaboration among the CTL, Student Accessibility Support, Communications, and the School of Arts & Sciences. It offers a template that incorporates not only the required digital accessibility components but also the transparent, accessible structural components that can help to combat systemic inequities that traditionally make course syllabi less useful to black students, underserved students and students with accommodations.
• Student-centered, Accessible LATTE Shell A was designed collaboratively among the CTL, Rabb School, Communications, Student Accessibility Support and Library. It incorporates equitable teaching/learning design and accessibility of materials into its structure. While this is not the default LATTE shell provided by ITS, hundreds of courses will be adopting this shell in the fall 2020 term as a result of encountering it in the Hybrid Teaching Institute.
• CTL Graduate Assistants received training from CTL Partners Carol Damm (Rabb) and Sarah Ferguson (Communications) and subsequently assisted 121 Brandeis teachers in structuring 1 or more of their course shells more equitably and in making their course materials more accessible. The training materials were shared with Arts & Sciences Digital Assistants who helped at least 100 additional faculty/instructors with their LATTE course shells.
• Brandeis Core Assessment Fellows have supported Arts and Sciences faculty (18 to date) teaching Core courses across the disciplines with a focus on how to assess them. The CTL assisted Arts and Sciences in designing an evaluation form to assess learning outcomes including DEIS and DJW course outcomes.
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning – The CTL supports scholarship of teaching and learning projects that focus on teaching/learning strategies that equitably support black and underserved students in college. Through this scholarship, the practices and their impacts are analyzed and shared for the benefit of the Brandeis teaching community as well as external higher education colleagues. Equity-minded scholarship of teaching and learning supports our larger institutional values and goals around social justice and inclusion in education.
  • The CTL’s executive director is the principal investigator of the Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education project (TILT Higher Ed), a national project since 2010 that advances equitable teaching and learning practices that reduce systemic inequity in higher education.
  • Short-term Grants to Support Teaching have funded community-engaged projects that support Brandeis faculty and students in educating within and beyond Brandeis about social justice and inclusion, including:
    • Emilie Diouff’s Suitcase Stories project that reflected the experiences of black immigrant students
    • Derron Wallace’s Boston Public Schools project to study black students and the impact of online learning on their families with the goal of reforming policy.
    • Anita Hill and Dan Kryder’s project to promote education around gender-based violence.