Understanding Equity in Community College Practice

What do equity-oriented practices look like in different community college contexts? Given the increasing role of the community college in realizing equitable outcomes for students, examples of what practitioners are doing to move forward an equity agenda are urgently needed.

The diverse perspectives and issues in these chapters explicitly advance an equity agenda and offer:

• Conceptual and empirical rationales to support equity-oriented practices,

• Examples of programming and practice that support the lives and livelihoods of underserved student populations, and

• Examples of policy, programming, and thinking that emphasize the role of the community college in expanding educational opportunity for underserved students.

Driven by a change in thinking and imagination, these examples show how practitioners can--and should--tailor programming in light of larger patterns of inequality.

This is the 172nd volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.

Autorentext
Erin L. Castro is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah.

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This chapter provides an introduction to and description of educational equity. It outlines common traps to avoid when engaging equity-oriented practices in community college contexts .
Addressing the Conceptual Challenges of Equity Work: A Blueprint for Getting Started

Erin L. Castro

What is equity? I want to begin this chapter by asking what it means to think about equity in a particularly difficult social moment, one of widening economic inequality and social fracture. A seemingly obvious question, but perhaps this is why it begs further attention. Many of us routinely use the word equity, participate in and facilitate programs that aim to increase equity, and work for institutions that espouse commitments to equity. But what does equity really mean? And, conversely, what might it mean to think about equity? I am interested in how we think about equity and how this thinking influences practice: how it influences our perceptions of students, our interactions with students, and the programs we design to help facilitate their success.

Although it is rather easy to agree with broad rhetorical commitments to a more just and equitable society, the barriers to practicing equity are many. In fact, equity-oriented practices are difficult to engage because of a complex system of sociopolitical and economic relations. Thus, walking the walk, so to speak, requires a thoughtful understanding of how community colleges are situated within a larger social landscape and accordingly, how community college practice affects the scope of opportunities made available to students on campus. In their latest book, Dowd and Bensimon (2015) contend that equity can be thought of as a standard. Equity as a standard can then be used in community college practice to judge "whether a state of affairs is just or unjust" (p. 9). Thinking about equity as a standard is useful because it surfaces important considerations related to ideas of fairness. What do we believe that people deserve, and why? In the context of community college practice, what do we believe that our students deserve, and why?

Although our individual answers may slightly differ, I believe that we all want students to be successful and we want them to be provided with the tools and resources to thrive. We know, however, that not all students-or potential students-are provided with what they need in order to realize their full potential and this is really at the heart of equity. What I'd like to propose in this first chapter is that it is not only important for us to design programming around equity but also to think deeply about what equity means, what it might look like, and what it might feel like on community college campuses. Practice is greatly influenced by the way we think about equity and what we think equity means. Because equity is a contextually dependent construct, how we consider that context-that is, where we decide to look and what we decide to see-greatly matters. In fact, I might go so far as to say that vision is the most important element of engaging equity-oriented practice: to see our current circumstances for what they are and then to envision a reality-based path toward equitable change. Accordingly, my purpose in this chapter is to focus on vision and in so doing, encourage a rethinking of commonplace approaches, attitudes, and assumptions toward persistent challenges of disparity in community college spaces and to outline common pitfalls in attempting equity work.
What Is Equity (and What Is It Not)?

Popular rhetoric around difference in U.S. higher education routinely includes buzzwords such as "diversity" and "inclusion," but these terms are not synonymous with equity. Issues of diversity and inclusion are important concepts to understand, to be certain, but they are not the same thing as understanding equity. To understand equity is t

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EDITOR'S NOTES 1
Erin L. Castro 1. Addressing the Conceptual Challenges of Equity Work: A Blueprint for Getting Started 5
Erin L. Castro

This chapter provides an introduction to and description of educational equity. It outlines common traps to avoid when engaging equityoriented practices in community college contexts.

2. Why Diversity and Equity Matter: Reflections from a Community College President 15
Francisco C. Rodriguez

What roles can leaders play to create, nurture, and sustain a campus culture that supports equity? This chapter offers the candid views and suggestions of an accidental leader, who now leads one of the largest community college districts in the nation.

3. Developing Agency for Equity-Minded Change 25
Eric R. Felix, Estela Mara Bensimon, Debbie Hanson, James Gray, Libby Klingsmith

This chapter highlights the use of the Equity Scorecard, a theory-based strategy that assists community colleges in embedding equity into their institutional norms, practices, and policies, with the Community College of Aurora.

4. Pathways to Results: How Practitioners Address Student Access, Outcomes, and Equity in an Associate Degree Nursing Program 43
Jessica Pickel, Debra D. Bragg

Pathways to Results (PTR) engages practitioners in using data to close equity gaps for student groups historically underserved by postsecondary education. This chapter describes the experiences of practitioners at Richland Community College who implemented PTR to improve student access, outcomes, and equity in an associate degree nursing program.

5. Call to Action: Embracing an Inclusive LGBTQ Culture on Community College Campuses 57
Jason L. Taylor

Many community colleges are unwelcoming to LGBTQ students and this chapter provides practical suggestions to community college leaders to develop a more inclusive campus culture.

6. Do Financial Aid Policies Unintentionally Punish the Poor, and What Can We Do About It? 67
Courtney A. Campbell, Regina Deil-Amen, Cecilia Rios-Aguilar

This chapter argues that, despite intentions, the ways that federal financial aid policy is constructed and currently administered can have negative consequences for poor community college students.

7. Salt Lake Community College Veterans Services: A Model of Serving Veterans in Higher Education 77
Aaron Ahern, Michael Foster, Darlene Head

This chapter outlines the birth and growth of a veteran program in Salt Lake City, Utah, and discuses next steps in spurring additional innovations and advancements in better serving stu…