At this year’s fall summit, the Partnership’s Managing Director Lisa Castillo Richmond delivered our inaugural State of ILEA address, The State of ILEA: From Planning to Implementation, providing a status update on the initiative, highlighting the work being done by ILEA member institutions, and reviewing upcoming plans for the cohort. Highlights from her address included:
- The Case for Our Approach
Illinois has the 4th largest graduation gap between Black and White students at four-year colleges & universities. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics, IPEDS, Graduation Rates 2015)
Illinois ranks 39th out of 44 states in the Latino-White attainment gap for adults and 35th out of 41 states in the Black-White attainment gap for adults. (Source: The Education Trust, The State of Higher Education Equity, 2018)
- Welcome to New Schools
o Elgin Community College, Chicago State University, Loyola University, Kishwaukee College, and College of DuPage are now ILEA partners.
o The ILEA cohort now consists of 28 public and private nonprofit colleges and universities. The breakdown is as follows: 4 public universities, 8 private colleges and universities, and 16 community colleges.
o The ILEA cohort represents nearly 217,000 undergraduates (38% of total enrollment in the state) including 44% of total Black student enrollment and 67% of total Latinx student enrollment.
- Equity Plan Update – Twenty-one equity plans have been submitted and several are forthcoming
Full drafts of members’ equity plans are due December 18, 2019, but that date is flexible based on each institution’s process. All finalized, publishable equity plans will be due to the PCC on Wednesday, March 18, and will be posted on PCC’s website on March 25, 2020. PCC will notify local media to announce the publication of your equity plans. We encourage you to post them on your institution’s website as well. As a reminder, these plans are living documents and should be updated annually as ILEA colleges and universities learn from and move forward their efforts. PCC will share a process and template for annual review and reflection of institutional Equity Plans.
- 10 common strategies have arisen across equity plans: First-year mentoring programs; New financial supports for students; Addressing basic needs and non-academic supports; Creating or better supporting student organizations related to student identity/belonging/culture; Reforming first-year courses & sequences; TRIO programs and targeted wraparound supports; Academic advising reforms; Reforming developmental education courses/placement; Creating population specific success committees and councils; and Providing faculty professional development. We look forward to a great session at the 2020 Spring Summit where these plans will be discussed as a community.
- 2019 to 2020: Planning to Implementation
o Strategic importance of data and the centrality of IR in the campus equity conversation
o Build capacity for diagnosis (meaningful disaggregation) and capacity building on data (critical analyses)
o Be open to seeing new things in the data including looking at the impact of early momentum indicators such as credit accumulation, gateway course completion and persistence momentum (term to term, year to year)
- What’s Next
o ILEA Equity Academies for Presidents and Cabinets and Faculty launching in 2020
o Deep dive meetings on specific topics related to strategies in equity plans being explored
o Use of NSC dashboards in 2020