The Vermont State Educator – February 2024

As you likely know, part of the phased-in Gen Ed requires diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) outcomes in the Gen Ed, starting in Fall 2024. With the endorsement of the Faculty Assembly Gen Ed committee, the CTLI is offering paid opportunities to support this work through the generous support of the Castleton Title III grant.

Please apply with a team of colleagues or apply as an individual (to be assigned to a team) to develop course-level outcomes, content, and learning experiences for your Gen Ed course(s). Selected teams will take an Inclusive Teaching course and then use what they’ve learned to plan their fall Gen Ed courses.

If you would like to join a team, but do not want to self-form a team, please use this form to indicate your interest, and the CTLI will facilitate the forming of teams from the individuals who sign up.

As of February 5, there is funding still funding for 8 people to participate (24 slots have been filled).

The CTLI applied for a new round of funding for a project titled “Prioritizing Access Through ‘Face-to-Face Plus’ Expansion + OER Adoption,” and we were notified that our application was approved for $216,261, the bulk of which is allocated for faculty stipends. The grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.

Please apply as an individual by 12noon on February 21 to convert a course to the F2F+ modality. Selected individuals will take a 4-week synchronous course in June 2024, during which they’ll map out the outcomes, assessments, and learning activities for a F2F+ course then design lesson plans for teaching in the F2F+ modality. Additional support will be provided for effective integration of technology. Faculty who have participated in this program in the past are eligible to apply, as long as you are converting a new class that you haven’t previously converted.

There are stipends to support 40 faculty between the two Davis Educational Foundation-funded opportunities for F2F+ classes.

The CTLI applied for a new round of funding for a project titled “Prioritizing Access Through ‘Face-to-Face Plus’ Expansion + OER Adoption,” and we were notified that our application was approved for $216,261, the bulk of which is allocated for faculty stipends. The grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.

Please apply as an individual by 12noon on February 21 to convert an existing F2F+ course to no- or low-cost textbook/materials for students. With support of librarians and CTLI staff, you will explore existing Open Educational Resource (OER) materials to adapt or adopt; if no relevant materials exist, you will have the opportunity to create your own (or some combination of adoption, adaptation, and creation). Faculty who have adopted OER in the past have appreciated the ability to customize content to suit their outcomes, students, and interests. Students appreciate the emphasis on affordability.

There are stipends to support 40 faculty between the two Davis Educational Foundation-funded opportunities for F2F+ classes.

Although it may come with great individual freedom, college also comes with a number of unwritten rules, both cultural and academic. These rules may seem, after years in the academy or growing up in a family of college-educated people, completely commonsense. Yet, to first-generation students, they are anything but. To help students familiarize themselves with both the cultural and academic rules of college, instructors should be as transparent as possible about their expectations in every activity and assignment. In a pilot study of 1180 students, McNair, Finley, Winkelmes and colleagues (2016) found that greater instructor transparency increased students’ academic confidence, sense of belonging, and mastery of the skills that employers value in new employees. Gains were seen in all students as a result of increased transparency. The effect, however, was much more significant for first-generation and low-income students. To make assignments more transparent, instructors should ask themselves and then report to students their answers to the following three questions:

• Task: What do I want students to do?
• Purpose: Why am I asking students to do this?
• Criteria: How will I evaluate their work?

Ultimately, this transparency promotes equity in the classroom by allowing all students in on what Winkelmes calls the “secret, unwritten rules of college”(Berrett, 2015).

The rigor of most college coursework requires the development of effective study skills. Instructors should not assume, especially in lower-level courses, that all students have the necessary study skills to succeed. Instead, instructors should be explicit in the classroom about how to best study for particular assignments and types of content (Hodges & White, 2001).

Because first-generation students are more likely to isolate themselves academically and socially, they often miss out on the benefits of group study. To prevent this, instructors should organize formal study groups that incorporate all students. The level of supervision given to these groups may range. Instructors may choose to have a student who successfully passed the class previously or a graduate student participate in student study groups to provide information or record attendance. It may be suitable to include study group attendance and participation as part of a course participation grade. Particularly positive results have been observed when faculty show an active interest in such groups.

Grading rubrics make explicit the criteria by which complex assignments are evaluated. Using rubrics to assess student performance promotes equity in grading, expedites necessary communication with support services, and helps students pinpoint learning deficiencies to allow for more targeted improvement efforts (Stevens & Levi, 2005). Rubrics can also serve as formative assessments, which allow instructors track student progress and adapt learning activities to meet students’ content or skill deficits. Lastly, when given in advance of an assignment, rubrics assist students in focusing their efforts for an assignment (Stevens & Levi, 2005). This makes rubrics particularly useful for first-generation students.

First-generation students may not be familiar with the procedures of discussion in academia. Instructors should take opportunities throughout the semester to model an ideal discussion. Indeed, because discussion may vary across disciplines making your expectations about in-class discussion transparent will be beneficial to all students. Along with modeling, instructors may take the opportunity to have a “meta-discussion” with students where, all together, students analyze a recent in-class discussion in order to reflect on speaking time, turn-taking, and evolving perspectives.

Given the “invisibility” of first-generation status, these students often lack role models. Instructors must incorporate first-generation experiences into the curriculum in the same way that we attend to other forms of diversity. In disciplines where reading and discussion take up most of class time, texts by first-generation authors should be assigned, and discussions should, where possible, center the experiences of first-generation students. In all disciplines, instructors should be explicit about available accommodations or support services available to first-generation students.

The problem of educational retention and attrition among first-generation students persists even after these students receive their undergraduate degrees, which explains why first-generation students are less likely to enter doctoral programs than their peers (Choy, 2001; Hoffer et al., 2003). This, in turn, creates a pipeline issue for first-generation college faculty, given that terminal degrees are a pre-requisite for most faculty positions. In other words, first-generation college students have difficulty locating a first-generation role model on the faculty, which in turn makes it harder to recruit and train first-generation faculty. Whenever possible, then, professors who identify as first-generation students should make their first-generation status explicit.

While beneficial to all students’ academic achievement and degree attainment, first-generation students in particular benefit from close interactions with faculty, both in- and outside of class (Filkins & Doyle, 2002; Smart & Umbach, 2007). Kim and Sax (2009) show that greater frequency of positive interaction between first-generation students and instructors translates into greater academic, social, and emotional gains. To achieve this, instructors might schedule one-on-one conferences with students, make office hours mandatory a certain number of times in a semester, or invite students to come early to class or stay behind to talk. If a class is too large to support these types of individualized interventions, an instructor may nonetheless promote closer relationships with students through personal surveys handed out to all students at the beginning of the semester or by sharing appropriate personal information about herself.

 Interaction with faculty in a research context shows a particularly significant positive effect on college GPAs and degree aspiration for all groups (Kim & Sax, 2009). Therefore, faculty members should consider what opportunities may exist for collaborative research with undergraduates and which students take advantage of such opportunities. As Davis (2010) states, the “symbolic impact of being able to say, ‘I know Professor Smith,’ cannot be underestimated (197). Students will feel more integrated into campus life and more supported overall.

When Pappano writes that first-generation students “may not have grown up with the edifying vacations, museum excursions, daily doses of NPR and prep schools that groom Ivy applicants,” she is essentially referencing the amassed cultural capital of students from families with college-educated parents. Indeed, much of what is commonly considered to be hallmark of an educated person is instead the cultural capital accrued from being a member of a privileged class, race, gender, etc. (Gardner & Holley, 2011). For Doug Lederman (2013), it is this difference in cultural capital that divides first- and continuing-generation students. In their book Rethinking College Student Persistence (2013) Braxton and colleagues show that greater levels of cultural capital translates into greater engagement and social integration. In the classroom, then, instructors should avoid assuming that students will know certain culturally-specific information, such as the albums of The Beatles, or that they will have had culturally-specific experiences, such as travel abroad, because these represent a particular social (class, race, gender, etc.) position. Rather, instructors should look to include privileged cultural elements from a variety of communities and cultures. This disrupts the sheen of universality that accompanies elite Western culture. At the same time, instructors can help students gain cultural capital that will serve them in other classes and later in life. Lederman, for instance, cites a Wofford College program, Novel Experience, that pays for students, in small groups, to eat dinner at a fancy restaurant. Joined by a professor, the students discuss a previously assigned novel while getting to know the professor, their classmates, and the ins and outs of fine dining.