CATL announces 2018-19 Diversity and Inclusion Grant recipients

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning is pleased to announce the recipients of the Diversity and Inclusion Grants for the 2018-19 academic year, as well as their projects.

Diversity Themes in the Development of a New Empirical Research Problem Set – Brooks Depro and Katy Rouse plan to use their grant to expand efforts of diversity themes in the Love School of Business (LSB) and economics department by focusing attention on better understanding the entry of both women and minority entrepreneurs in the consulting industry. They will develop an empirical research assignment that asks each student team to code and deliver a final project using Tableau software to visualize their dataset. Each team member will also prepare a one-page memorandum discussing their findings related to entrepreneurial diversity in the consulting field, relative to a comparison industry. This project will address a key LSB goal of providing students with more knowledge and understanding of diversity-related issues in the business environment.

Interrogating Privileged Practices in the College Writing Program – From the English department, Margaret Chapman, Paula Patch, and Jennifer Zinchuk plan to interrogate privilege inherent and inherited in writing programs. Through this grant, they will: inquire about ways racism, ableism, sexism and classism may implicitly or explicitly be present in the structure (curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and hiring practices); identify ways to rectify any of these areas, and implement some of the ways identified; assess the outcomes of the inquiry and subsequent intervention; and develop and publish for future College Writing Program administrators and faculty a procedure for future investigations of the structure of the program.

Investigating and Comparing Disparities within Elon’s Engineering Program – Richard Blackmon and Sirena Hargrove-Leak will collect demographic information in the Engineering program in order to identify disparities in Elon’s engineering program as compared to both Elon as a whole and national averages. Knowing these comparisons will then inform the team as they investigate what could be changed in the new four-year degree program to enhance student learning. They plan to investigate potential areas of improvement that include, but are not limited to, the language used in materials shared with students, classroom activities, student-teacher relationships, and student-student relationships in courses and the major. The project will include data collection, data analysis, and exploration and implementation of solutions that could address problems revealed by the data.

Increasing Understanding and Diverse Perspectives through Literature – Prudence Layne, Scott Proudfit, Kevin Bourque, and Erin Pearson of the English department will work to ensure that literature at Elon, as part of the core curriculum, takes advantage of this unique capacity to increase understanding of diverse perspectives, particularly those of under-represented and marginalized groups. The working group will research best pedagogical and inclusion practices in literary studies, creating a working bibliography and resource database (with sample assignments, rubrics and video instruction) for faculty teaching literature courses at the introductory, intermediate, advanced and capstone levels, with accompanying student learning outcomes. These resources will help faculty who teach literature across a variety of formats ensuring that their courses incorporate materials, pedagogies and experiences related to diverse populations.

The Economics and Finance Gender Gap and Diversity Awareness across the Business Curriculum – Faculty in the Love School of Business Kate Upton, Adam Aiken, and Margarita Kaprielyan (Finance), and Tonmoy Islam and Brandon Sheridan (Economics), suggest the gender gap evident in the classroom is due to weaker understanding of the diversity benefits in the workplace identified by the students. They plan to identify the factors that decrease the overall participation of women in both majors. They plan to study the choice of major by administering surveys within principles classes and conducing focus group interviews with business students. The results would provide valuable insight into the perceptions of finance and economics among female students and why they may not choose these fields as their major. Through this grant, the recipients also plan to make recommendations on possible curriculum, pedagogy, and advising changes that would encourage more diversity within the majors.

This year’s diversity and inclusion grant winners were selected from a highly competitive application pool. Consistent with Elon University’s unprecedented commitment to diversity and global engagement, the diversity and inclusion project’s purpose is to develop and implement strategies to infuse the curriculum and pedagogies of the university with the best practices related to human diversity, broadly defined.

For questions about the Diversity and Inclusion Grant, or the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, email catl@elon.edu or visit our website.