April 2024 — Graduate Admissions, SEL Webinar, Pullias Lecture...and More!

Promoting Equity in Higher Education

April 2024

"Connecting Research, Policy and Practice on Admissions"

Guest Editor Julie Posselt, Professor of Higher Education

Dear Colleagues,

Since the Supreme Court handed down its ruling against Harvard and UNC, the Pullias Center has been conducting research, informing the national dialogue and helping individual postsecondary institutions adapt to our new legal reality. Our work has occurred amid overt and subtle attacks on academic freedom and diversity in higher education.

This April newsletter will give you a snapshot of findings from a rigorous comparative ethnography my team has been conducting. It involves observations of admissions committees operating under state-level bans on affirmative action. They are examples of what Lauren Foley calls “resistant compliance” and reveal divergent ways that people interpret and act on ambiguous laws.

We also highlight work the Equity in Graduate Education Consortium has been doing to support universities in understanding the ruling and refining their admissions processes while maintaining mission-driven diversity commitments. A central part of our strategy has been creating safe spaces for dialogue, connections and community that too often are overlooked as factors in the motivation to keep going through times like these.

Warmly,

Julie Posselt

Professor of Higher Education, USC Rossier & Pullias Center for Higher Education

Associate Dean, USC Graduate School

Director, Center for Enrollment Research, Policy & Practice

Styles of Race-Neutral Holistic Review: Lessons Learned from Two Programs

By Jimmy Aguilar, Julie Posselt and Gloria Anglon

In the fall of 2022, with a decision from the Supreme Court about race-conscious admissions looming, our team sought to uncover for both researchers and practitioners how public universities bound by state-level bans on affirmative action try to advance diversity and inclusion while complying with the law.

With that in mind, we embarked on a rigorous comparative ethnography focused on the styles of race-neutral holistic review in two STEM PhD programs with existing state-level bans on affirmative action.

Learn More

The Power of Purposeful Discussions in Times of Change

By Kristyn Lue and Julie Posselt

At the Equity in Graduate Education Resource Center, we knew that the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on race-conscious admissions could lead to what recent Pullias Lecture panelist Liliana Garces and her colleagues have coined “repressive legalism” — the tendency for people and organizations to take a more restrictive approach to implementing law than what is required, out of fear of litigation.

The need to revisit admissions processes to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court ruling presented an opportunity to bring rigor, equity, and transparency to the process. However, when repressive legalism is at play, professionals may be distracted from the possible actions that can be taken. Although partners of the EGE Consortium, the IGEN Alliance and the broader community may be committed to diversity in principle, repressive legalism put the realization of this commitment at risk for this year's admissions cycle.

Learn More

SPOTLIGHT

Donate to the Tatiana Melguizo Memorial Scholarship

Fund Memorializes Dr. Melguizo's Long-standing Commitment to Community College Students

A new scholarship honoring Dr. Tatiana Melguizo has been established by the University of Southern California and the Pullias Center for Higher Education.

The ‘Tatiana Melguizo Memorial Scholarship Fund for Community College Transfer Students’ honors Dr. Melguizo’s commitment and research supporting community college students and ensuring their success. A highly-accomplished professor and a leader in the fields of education and economics, she passed away in January 2024.

The scholarship fund will be used to support incoming USC undergraduates transferring from local community colleges.

Tax-deductible donations to the scholarship fund are now being accepted.

45th Pullias Lecture Welcomes National DEI Scholars

USC Pullias welcomed more than 100 people to the in-person event held at the California Science Center, and featuring national DEI scholars and researchers Royel Johnson, Eddie Cole and Liliana Garces, and moderated by USC Rossier Dean Pedro Noguera.

Read the Rossier article here, and watch the recording of the Lecture:

Watch the Lecture Recording

"Starting Shared Equity Leadership: Insights from Research and Practice" — A Delphi Award Webinar

Slated for Wednesday, May 1, 11:00am PT — Register Now

Are you interested in learning more about how to start implementing Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) on your own campus?

In addition to hearing from Pullias Center’s Adrianna Kezar and Elizabeth Holcombe, participants will hear from representatives from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the University of Minnesota who have used our research to start SEL on their campuses, and will share their experiences, answer questions, and offer advice for others looking to start SEL.

Panelists:

Representatives from the University of Colorado, Boulder, including Sonia DeLuca Fernández, Senior Vice Chancellor for DEI

Representatives from the University of Minnesota, including Malinda Lindquist, Associate Dean for DEI

45th Pullias Center Receives $400,000 Grant From ECMC Foundation for SEL Research

The Pullias Center for Higher Education and Principal Investigator Adrianna Kezar have received a multi-year, $400,000 grant from the ECMC Foundation to continue their ground-breaking work on Shared Equity Leadership (SEL).

SEL is a collaborative process where leaders work together to support both individual and organizational transformation, contributing to a change in organizational culture.

The 2024 Delphi Award Application Now Open

Join the elite group of 12 institutions that have already received a $15,000 Delphi Award for Their Support of VITAL (contingent) faculty.

Apply Now

Pullias Researchers at AERA — Starts Today

Attending the AERA conference in Philadelphia? Be sure to check out the dozens of presentations from Pullias researchers. See our schedule here.

NEW PUBLICATIONS

A new Case Study for the Change Leadership Toolkit is now available featuring the University of Georgia's Engineering Education Transformations Institute.

Villarreal, C., Posselt, J. R., Hernandez, T. E., & Rudolph, A. L. (2024). Bridging the Gap: A Sequential Mixed Methods Study of Trust Networks in Graduate Application, Admissions, and Enrollment. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 30.

Hernandez, T. E., & Posselt, J. R. (2024). “They Don’t Really Care”: STEM Doctoral Students’ Unsupportive Interactions with Faculty and Institutions. Education Science 14 (4), 392.

Bickerstaff, S., Melguizo, T. (2024). Developmental Education Reform as a Civil Rights Agenda: Recent History and Future Directions for California. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, UCLA.

Zheng, J., Lue, K., Lo, P., & Park, J. J. (2024). “We are the majority”: An AsianCrit perspective of the racialized experiences of Asian American college students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000562

Huerta, A. H., Salazar, M. E. & Dizon, J. P. (2024). “No Space for Humanizing Us:” Men of Color Identifying Institutional Needs at a Rural University. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 26(1), 85-107. https://doi.org/10.1177/15210251211058636

The Equity in Graduate Education Consortium Team

MORE NEWS

Adrianna Kezar has been awarded the prestigious 2024 "Exemplary Research" award from AERA' Division J. The Award will be giving at this week's AERA conference, and you can learn more here .

Royel M. Johnson and Adrianna Kezar were quoted in a Diverse: Issues In Higher Education article about the Postsecondary Student Success program.

Royel M. Johnson and Shaun R. Harper are releasing a new book titled “The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools” slated to release this summer and available for pre-order.

An op-ed co-authored by Kristyn Lue and Annie M. Wofford, titled "The Why and How of Equity-Minded Mentoring", was published in Inside Higher Ed.

Postdoctoral scholar Kristyn Lue was selected as a semi-finalist for the AERA Division J 2023-2024 Dissertation of the Year Award.

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Promoting Equity in Higher Education

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The World's Leading Research Center on Student Access and Success in Higher Education