Equity Champions
The Equity Champions Program is built upon a fundamental concept: we cannot expect educators to serve our students and create equitable environments without offering welcoming, comfortable and supportive spaces for our own learning, sharing and growth.
The program brings educators together in communities of transformation, where instructors regularly meet to discover, learn, share and support one another. The program seeks to build relationships between educators and explore student success from the dimension of key conditions for thriving, such as belonging.
Participants in these communities of transformation have the opportunity to apply easy-lift, high-impact, evidence-based practices shown to improve student success, to gather real time student feedback on the key conditions for thriving, to explore the larger contexts in which this work occurs, and to empower efforts to support student success in the classroom and beyond.
Key Learning Conditions
The Equity Champions program is centered on the six evidence-based learning conditions that have been shown to support more equitable classroom outcomes for all students, as highlighted by the Student Experience Project:
- Social Belonging
- Trust and Fairness
- Institutional Growth Mindset
- Self-Efficacy
- Identity Safety
- Social Connectedness
Qualifications & Expectations
All instructors teaching at least one course during the fall 2024 term are eligible to apply. Each Equity Champion will receive a $500 stipend, pending acceptance into the program and active participation.
The expectations for community participants are as follows:
- Availability to meet for orientation meetings and weekly virtual community meetings.
- Willingness to implement evidence-based practices to improve belonging and student success in at least one of your concurrent semester courses.
- Use of a validated online survey tool (ASCEND) to gather formative feedback from students that can be used in real time to improve the student experience in your class(es).
- Commitment to engage as a full member of the Equity Champions community of transformation, working together to explore and confront difficult issues, sharing ideas and supporting each other in our work.
Project Team
The University of Louisville’s Equity Champions program is being developed collaboratively by:
IL Barrow (Delphi Center), Caroline Boswell (Delphi Center), Crystal Bradley (Delphi Center), Jocelyn Fetalver (Kent School), Jeff Hieb (Speed School), Danny McDonald (Delphi Center), Edna Ross (College of A & S), and Robin Zahrndt (Delphi Center).
The program is modeled on the Equity Champions program designed by the University of Toledo.