by Larry Davis, Vice Chancellor of Belonging and Purpose
Creating a Culture of Belonging & Connection, is an essential cornerstone of ACC’s commitment to serve all students, eliminating disparities and increasing success in service of our unifying goal of achieving an institutional completion rate of 70% by 2030. ACC’s new Office of Belonging & Purpose works with multiple internal partners, including ACC Legal Counsel, across the District’s eleven campuses to identify groundbreaking, proactive, lawful, and innovative neutral approaches based upon research-based best practices data to strengthen ACC’s capacity to create and sustain a culture of belonging where the achieving of our unifying completion goal becomes reality.
Targeted universalism (TU) and purpose oriented strengths-based frameworks are solid examples of neutral-based strategies for developing belonging support for all students. For example, Texas Senate Bill 17 (SB17) does permit the use of disaggregated data by demographic populations to identify achievement gaps, clarify and reveal the barriers or impediments feeding those gaps for each demographic group. Since we have a shared goal of helping all students achieve the unifying completion goal, TU allows us to investigate the ways that ACC’s data shows how different students are situated by need within the various systems of ACC that impact and shape our student outcomes.
The data will show some common needs, as well as distinct needs of underserved, privileged, and middle students in relation to starting strong, enrolling full-time (or closer to FT), or meeting basic needs in order to achieve ACC’s unifying completion goal. From the data clues, ACC can appropriately scale a range of common and customized services to provide each student with what they will need to reach the completion goal. Every student will receive what they need, based upon how closer or further they are from achieving ACC’s unifying completion goal.
Purpose-oriented strengths-based frameworks involve helping students, faculty, and employees identify and cultivate their interests and strengths through opportunities or activities that allow them to acquire the knowledge, experiences, and relationships necessary to pursue their aspirations with imagination and integrity. Since TU and purpose-oriented strengths frameworks are designed and implemented based upon ‘situatedness’ or need and strengths, these strategies are not prohibited by SB17.
SB17 generally means that higher education institutions cannot have a DEI administrative office, mandatory statements, or training. Most of the questions we receive involve understanding the exceptions for limited and appropriate DEI initiatives for academic courses, student organizations, short term speakers or performers, and activities that enhance academic achievement or postgraduate outcomes that can be designed and implemented without regard to race, sex, color, or ethnicity.
In conclusion, ACC TV and other college media can further our belonging and purpose culture building by highlighting more programs and initiatives that promote bridging. Bridging involves creating space to hear and see others who differ from ourselves, and it does not require agreement. It’s about creating compassionate space and practices where we can acknowledge each other’s stories and suffering that leads to more understanding of what we share—not what divides us.