2024
TEACHxWSU
Becoming a Student Ready College
TEACHxWSU 2024
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On October 25, the WSU Teaching Academy hosted lead author Tia Brown McNair for a morning, virtual keynote address and workshop on the book, Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success. Faculty, staff, and graduate students were invited to this and a full schedule of events for the day.
Participants gathered to watch the keynote together at WSU Pullman, Everett, Vancouver, Spokane, and Tri-Cities. For in-person attendees at those campuses, lunch was provided for those who registered by Oct. 22; light breakfast options were available early in the day.
Early afternoon workshops were led by local experts at Pullman, Vancouver, and Tri-Cities. Participants systemwide attended with others at their campus, or were able to join any session virtually. Discussion groups rounded out the program.
Resources from TEACHxWSU 2024
The following resources on becoming a student ready college were highlighted during TEACHxWSU 2024 presentations. These resources are also available on the Teaching Academy’s Canvas site.
Prepare for TEACHxWSU 2024
TEACHxWSU 2024 participants can download the Becoming a Student-Ready College from WSU Libraries at no cost.
The book is this year’s selection for the WSU Teaching Academy One-Read Book Club. That virtual, asynchronous effort is intended to help participants develop skills in a challenging world of distributed team and time pressures.
Rather than looking at how well students are prepared for college, the book explores what universities can do to prepare for their entering students, and what policies, practices, and cultures need to be adjusted to be student-ready. Through TEACHxWSU and the book club, the academy will help to participants recognize how and why to build a community ready to explore and discuss how to create institutional value and facilitate student success as a student-ready college.
Conference Agenda
Keynote Address and Workshop
9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Keynote Presentation: “Are you a Student-Ready Leader? Our Shared Responsibility for Advancing Student Success and Belonging”
Presented virtually. Join an in-person watch party at your campus.
This keynote address will be presented by Tia Brown McNair. What are promising strategies for building and sustaining a student-ready learning environment that seeks to educate the whole student and embraces student diversity? How do we strengthen individual and institutional capacity to become more student-ready leaders to achieve strategic goals that align with institutional values? How can we enhance collaborations across divisions to fully prepare all students for work, life, and productive citizenship? This keynote will utilize key principles outlined in Becoming a Student-Ready College to provide a roadmap for achieving higher levels of student engagement, retention, and completion by centering community, belonging and inclusion.
This keynote address will be presented by Tia Brown McNair. What are promising strategies for building and sustaining a student-ready learning environment that seeks to educate the whole student and embraces student diversity? How do we strengthen individual and institutional capacity to become more student-ready leaders to achieve strategic goals that align with institutional values? How can we enhance collaborations across divisions to fully prepare all students for work, life, and productive citizenship? This keynote will utilize key principles outlined in Becoming a Student-Ready College to provide a roadmap for achieving higher levels of student engagement, retention, and completion by centering community, belonging and inclusion.
Afternoon Workshops Choose Your Own Adventure
WSU Pullman: 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Critical Pedagogy and Student-Centered Approaches to Education
Presented in-person and virtually from the Lewis Alumni Centre at WSU Pullman.
In this interactive session led by Lisa Guerrero we will discuss the foundational elements of critical pedagogy and ways to dismantle educational inequity in the classroom. We will further explore strategies you can implement toward building student-centered teaching approaches and creating learning communities that are inclusive on multiple levels. Using various exercises, we will consider how to be intentional in how we think more equitably about: institutional literacy, integrating diverse knowledges, creating the learning environment, learning outcomes, and assessment.
In this interactive session led by Lisa Guerrero we will discuss the foundational elements of critical pedagogy and ways to dismantle educational inequity in the classroom. We will further explore strategies you can implement toward building student-centered teaching approaches and creating learning communities that are inclusive on multiple levels. Using various exercises, we will consider how to be intentional in how we think more equitably about: institutional literacy, integrating diverse knowledges, creating the learning environment, learning outcomes, and assessment.
WSU Tri-Cities: 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Pedagogy That Encourages Students to Bring Their Whole Selves
Presented in-person and virtually from Floyd 223 at WSU Tri-Cities.
This interactive session led by Anna Plemons and Elly Sweet will explore principles for instructional design that makes space for students to bring their whole selves to class. In Becoming a Student-Ready College, McNair and colleagues (2016) suggest that an asset-based approach to understanding student learning requires that universities consider how changes to institutional structures and instructional practices might better serve the new majority students of the 21st century. The facilitators will share lessons learned from SACNAS which runs the largest multidisciplinary and multicultural STEM diversity conference. SACNAS has a tagline about “bringing your whole self to STEM” and offers a model for how higher education institutions can create intentional and inclusive instructional space where faculty, staff, and students can thrive while also expanding and enriching the research enterprise.
This interactive session led by Anna Plemons and Elly Sweet will explore principles for instructional design that makes space for students to bring their whole selves to class. In Becoming a Student-Ready College, McNair and colleagues (2016) suggest that an asset-based approach to understanding student learning requires that universities consider how changes to institutional structures and instructional practices might better serve the new majority students of the 21st century. The facilitators will share lessons learned from SACNAS which runs the largest multidisciplinary and multicultural STEM diversity conference. SACNAS has a tagline about “bringing your whole self to STEM” and offers a model for how higher education institutions can create intentional and inclusive instructional space where faculty, staff, and students can thrive while also expanding and enriching the research enterprise.
WSU Vancouver: 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Building Belonging
Presented in-person and virtually from WSU Vancouver.
This interactive session led by Elisha Hardekopf and Sheila Gray is designed to be safe, brave, and welcoming where participants will explore the characteristics of spaces that create inclusion and belonging; to learn the behaviors that support and prevent belonging; and to set action steps to build inclusive spaces where each campus member, student and employee can thrive.
This interactive session led by Elisha Hardekopf and Sheila Gray is designed to be safe, brave, and welcoming where participants will explore the characteristics of spaces that create inclusion and belonging; to learn the behaviors that support and prevent belonging; and to set action steps to build inclusive spaces where each campus member, student and employee can thrive.
About Our Presenters
Tia Brown McNair
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is a Partner at Sova, a company that facilitates transformative change through actionable strategies and practical implementation support. She also serves as a Senior Consultant with AAC&U, where she was the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers. In her senior leadership position at AAC&U, she oversaw both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices (HIPs), student success, and campus climate, and directed AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on HIPs and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers. She is the co-author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition). McNair is the editor of Strengthening Campus Communities Through the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Framework published by Routledge in June 2024. In May 2023, McNair received an honorary degree from Franklin Pierce University for her national work to dismantle a false belief in a hierarchy of human value and for her efforts to advance racial equity to support the success of all students. NASPA, the association of Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, named McNair the 2024 recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Award.
Sheila Gray
Sheila Gray creates impact through her work in the WSU Vancouver offices of Student Involvement and Equity and Diversity and also in her role with Building a Community of Equity (BaCE) Program. She is Campus Director of Student Involvement and BaCE Core Team Leader and Workshop Facilitator. She has overseen rapid growth in student engagement and a proliferation of student clubs following the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter nearly tripling in the past year. Quick to take on additional roles to support and uplift students, Gray established the Equity Development Program for student staff members. Modeled after BaCE, the program helps build a sustainable campus culture of equity, inclusion, and belonging, and enriches the experience of student leaders in their personal and professional development. In 2023, she received the Chancellor’s Award for Staff Excellence which recognizes and salutes the dedication and commitment of a staff member in advancing the mission of WSU Vancouver.
Lisa Guerrero
Lisa Guerrero is the Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusive Excellence for WSU Pullman. She has been an active advocate for equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice since joining the WSU faculty in 2004, and is a professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies in WSU’s School of Languages, Cultures, and Race. She provides equity-minded leadership for the WSU Pullman campus by helping to identify and develop best practices and evidence-based approaches towards building equity and inclusion in various areas including: faculty and staff recruitment and retention, teaching and mentoring, curriculum planning, and critical pedagogy. Her scholarly research focuses on race in literature and popular culture, and social justice history and theory.
Elisha Hardekopf
Elisha Hardekopf is the Director and Facilitator for the WSU Vancouver Building a Community of Equity (BaCE) Program. In this role, she leads and coordinates enrichment sessions to impact WSU Vancouver’s strategic priority in Goal 4: to promote an ethical and socially just society that provides welcome, inclusion, belonging and the opportunity for all to thrive. Prior, Elisha served as director of admissions for various career and technical schools around the country. Her background in performing and teaching the arts, especially in underserved school districts started her lifelong mission: to empower individuals to increase community success.
Anna Plemons
Anna Plemons is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs and system Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion officer at WSU Tri-Cities. She is also a tenured faculty member in the Digital Technology and Culture department. Anna oversees a host of offices and programs focused on student success, with a special focus on inclusion, diversity, equity and access. She previously taught creative nonfiction in the California prison system and has written about that experience in Beyond Progress in the Prison Classroom (2019).
Elly Sweet
Elly Sweet is the Academic Director for the College of Arts and Sciences at WSU Tri Cities. She is also an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences. She focuses her work on collaborative projects geared toward intentional action to accelerate STEM student success.