Overview
This page serves as an on-going repository of work completed towards the Access and Inclusion Plan. This plan is intended to be a living document to guide our work towards an equitable, diverse and inclusive college culture.
If you have recommendations for action items we can document on this page, please e-mail your recommendations to accessinclusion@sfcollege.edu.
Access
Identify policies, procedures and practices that create barriers or inequitably disadvantage certain populations and work with appropriate college staff to eliminate these barriers.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Eliminate barriers to participation and achievement."
- Revise institutional systems and processes to provide access, welcome, and inclusion for diverse students, faculty, and staff.
Action Item: The fees due date is the date students must pay fees not covered by financial aid or they will be dropped from their classes for the upcoming semester. This practice was disproportionately impacting students with the highest challenges for ability to pay. Advisors described a repeating cycle of students being dropped, re-adding, and then being dropped again. This made it difficult for students to get the course schedule they needed, more adversely affecting those with families, jobs, and other life obligations. Previously fees were due 6-weeks before the beginning of the semester. During the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 academic years, the fees due date was progressively moved closer to the start of the semester and evaluated after each move. The movement of the fees due date to two weeks prior to semester start has reduced the percentage of students being dropped at the fees due date from approximately 21% to 9.1% in Fall 2020.
Action Item: The college application was reviewed looking for language that may be hard to understand and areas where our application was overly complicated. The application has now been streamlined and updated to improve the application process and lower the overhead of submitting a college application.
Inclusion (Diversity, Respect and Culture)
Ensure the college mission, vision, goals and strategic plan reflect the diversity, equity, and inclusion values of our campus community.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Eliminate barriers to participation and achievement."
- Revise institutional systems and processes to provide access, welcome, and inclusion for diverse students, faculty, and staff.
College-wide Strategic Planning: Members of the Access & Inclusion Advisory Committee participated in the annual strategic planning sessions. Their influence is evidenced by the clear outcomes documented in the process that are related to diversity and equity. In addition, the Dean of Access & Inclusion actively participated in the development of the updated college values and strategic plan with a goal of ensuring the college’s priority for equity and diversity are clearly evidenced in our new five-year strategic plan.
Ensure the college’s physical environments, classrooms, websites, and printed materials represent our diverse population.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Eliminate barriers to participation and achievement."
- Revise institutional systems and processes to provide access, welcome, and inclusion for diverse students, faculty, and staff.
Action Item: Creation of the Access & Inclusion website. This site contains information about the Access & Inclusion Advisory Committee as well as initiatives, resources, and links to affinity group pages.
Action Item: The LGBTQ+ Resource Center was established at the start of the 2021 school year. This center provides a welcoming space for LGBTQ+ students and allies to gather and share resources.
Action Item: The library has curated reading guides which highlight the diverse voices and a diversity of lived experiences of individuals in our community. Resources include books, film, and links to local and national resources. Many of the books and films are available digitally for remote access.
Action item: The Department of Student Development and Leadership audited its instructional materials. The SLS 1101 textbook was edited extensively to include imagery of more diverse individuals.
Provide professional development for faculty and staff on issues of equity and evidence-based practices for creating institutional and systemic change.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Create professional development to support a culture that meets students where they are and inspires them to thrive."
- Create a robust professional development program that focuses on pedagogy and high impact practices appropriate for a learning college.
Action Item: Racial Equity Institute workshops have been offered to SF employees and to the community through community education. In Spring 2020, three workshops, including two Phase 1 workshops, had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. The Measuring Racial Equity workshops were moved online in April 2020 and we will host the first online Phase 1 workshop in March 2021.Participants represent a variety of organizations in our service area including the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce, Alachua County School Board, Bradford County School Board, City of Gainesville, Alachua County, Gainesville Police Department, Alachua County Sheriff, United Way, Community Foundation, the University of Florida and others. The University of Florida and Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce have also sponsored Measuring Racial Equity workshops for their members & employees.
Workshop | # Held | # Unique Participants |
Measuring Racial Equity: A Groundwater Approach | 9 | 629 |
Racial Equity Workshop Phase 1 | 1 | 35 |
Total | 10 | 664 |
Action Item: DiversityEdu asynchronous courses provide faculty and staff with a core understanding of concepts related to diversity and equity in an academic environment. The workshops are implemented through a Canvas course in the spring of 2020. There are two available courses, one for all faculty & staff and one focused specifically on academic searches and hiring. As of March 2021, 353 employees have completed the Faculty & Staff course and 18 employees have completed the Academic Searches and Hiring course.
Action item: Center for Academic Technologies (CAT) provides professional development for faculty & staff. As of May 2021,- Over 300 faculty have completed the Accessibility and Copyright Primer training
- Over 2,000 instructional videos have been captioned in the past four years. (I stopped counting at 2,000)
- Twenty-nine faculty have successfully completed CAIP (Certificate for Accessible and Inclusive Practices) over the past two years
- Over 250 faculty have completed CODI (the Certificate for Online Design and Instruction) over the past five years, which includes a module on accessibility
Provide resources for staff and faculty to use in educating students on equity and diversity.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Close performance gaps."
- Address individual implicit bias as well as systemic challenges to equity.
- Leverage technology to fully support students across a diversity of styles, preferences, and abilities.
Action Item: Purchased Race Power of Illusion video series as a follow up for participants in the REI Phase 1 Racial Equity workshop. Includes a three-year license for use in courses and in student professional development activities.
Action Item: Lawrence W. Tyree Library has created multiple resource pages including anti-racism resources, black history month, and LGBTQ+ resources.
Provide resources for hiring authorities to be more effective in recruiting and hiring diverse faculty and staff.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Create professional development to support a culture that meets students where they are and inspires them to thrive."
- Create a robust professional development program that focuses on pedagogy and high impact practices appropriate for a learning college.
Action Item: Diversity Edu for Academic Hiring & Searches workshop provides hiring authorities and search committees with an understanding of how to conduct academic searches to improve diversity in hiring. The workshop was implemented through a Canvas course in the spring of 2020 and made available for all hiring authorities and search committees during the 2020/2021 academic year.
Equity
Produce an annual equity report that can be shared with the college administration, Board of Trustees, and the community with current, historical and trend data as well as goals for improvement.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Close performance gaps."
- Assess and improve achievement of access, retention, learning, completion, and labor market outcomes using disaggregated data.
Action Item: The college produces an annual Educational Equity Act Report.
- Educational Equity Act Report 2018-2019
- Educational Equity Act Report 2019-2020
- Educational Equity Act Report 2020-2021
Action Item: The Access & Inclusion Committee maintains the Access & Inclusion Plan Progress Report. This page was developed to provide an ongoing and up to date report on progress towards the Access & Inclusion strategic plan. This page will be updated as additional actions and results are available.
Accountability
Establish a process to provide on-going evaluation of the campus climate including views of students, faculty and staff.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Close performance gaps."
- Assess and improve achievement of access, retention, learning, completion, and labor market outcomes using disaggregated data.
Action Item: The National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates (NACCC) was conducted in Spring 2019. This survey focused on students’ experiences with race at the college, in the local community, and throughout their lives. The overview report from the survey can be viewed on the Access & Inclusion webpage. Based on these results the Access & Inclusion Advisory Committee along with college leadership adopted the following priority recommendations.
- Provide professional development for faculty and staff that emphasize racial learning and racial literacy and productive conversations about race and racial inequality.
- Assess instructional and other student-facing materials to determine the extent to which they are inclusive of diverse voices and experiences and improve them according to assessment results.
- Design and deliver structured opportunities, both in and outside of the classroom, for students to learn about their own and other racial groups.
Action Item: The ViewFinder Campus Climate Survey for administrators, faculty and staff was planned for Spring 2020. Because of the move to remote work in the spring due to COVID-19 the survey implementation was delayed to Fall 2020. The overview report from the survey provides a comparison of results from SF's survey as compared to other similar colleges. The Access & Inclusion Advisory Committee is currently reviewing the survey results and developing priority recommendations for based on these results.
The plan is to survey students and employees every other year, alternating years. This will give the college a full year to implement a response to the survey before conducting the next survey.
Develop an equity dashboard that can be used by programs, departments, and faculty to identify and close gaps in participation and achievement rates.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Close performance gaps."
- Assess and improve achievement of access, retention, learning, completion, and labor market outcomes using disaggregated data.
Action Item: The following reports have been created on the Equity tab in the SAS Reports Portal.
- Enrollment Explorations - This report allows explorations of enrollment data by race/ethnicity, gender, age, full-time vs part-time, and country of origin. Data can be filtered by dual enrolled, first time in college, residency, veteran status, and degree type.
- Program Track Explorations - This report allows further exploration of enrollment data by program enrollment.
- Graduations by Degree, Ethnicity and Residency - This report provides information about graduation rates. Data can be filtered by race/ethnicity, gender, veteran status, residency and degree type.
- Graduations by Degree, Ethnicity and Residency - Explorations by Program - This report expands on the graduations data to allow exploration by program.
Collaborate with college leadership to develop evaluative systems to ensure progress on equity goals.
Alignment to college's strategic plan:
Equitable Experience, "Eliminate barriers to participation and achievement."
- Revise institutional systems and processes to provide access, welcome, and inclusion for diverse students, faculty, and staff.
Action Item: This is an on-going process. Recommendations from the Access & Inclusion Advisory Committee are presented to the college leadership and collectively constructed to achieve the maximum progress on equity goals.