Origins of This Resource

In 2021, Minnesota State received a Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) grant from the Minnesota Office of Higher Education. The grant’s focus was around supporting Minnesota State’s Equity 2030 initiative through facilitating equitable teaching practices across our 33 colleges and universities throughout the state. One of the resources offered was discipline-specific faculty learning communities, where faculty could come together to develop awareness, resources, and practices that would foster greater equity in learning environments, specific to their discipline’s needs. Beginning in January 2022, four discipline-specific faculty learning communities were offered each semester or summer; an additional cross-disciplinary community was offered beginning in Summer 2022.

The inaugural cohort of approximately 70 faculty from across Minnesota State helped to develop the eventual structure offered in this book. The co-facilitators, Ed Minnema and Melissa Williams, were charged with determining what kinds of support and structure would be most effective for the project; as the initial semester progressed, it became clear that faculty both needed and wanted

• Clarity around their roles and responsibilities in “closing the educational equity gaps across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status at every Minnesota State college and university,” as the Equity 2030 initiative describes
• Specific, practical, and evidence-based resources that would help them move from concept to practice in bringing greater equity to their work as educators
• A guided process for developing a personalized plan and systematic evaluation of their equity work

From there, the concept of “just one thing” emerged as the focus of our faculty learning communities. Each cohort was provided a scaffold for their learning community, but the direction taken by each cohort and participant was highly individualized. Feedback from successive cohorts informed the continual revision of the scaffold, culminating in Summer 2023 with the design and content provided within this book.

Results

As of Summer 2023, over 250 Minnesota State faculty from across all 33 campuses survey had successfully completed an “Action Plan” for implementing an equitable teaching practice into a Minnesota State class. Participants reported significant benefit from their participation in these faculty learning communities; surveys sent six months after the end of each community indicated that

• 66% of participants had “fully” or “largely” implemented their Action Plan
• 89% of respondents from the first two cohorts agreed or strongly agreed that “the FLC prepared me to successfully implement my selected equity practice.”
• More than 90% of respondents indicated that participation had equipped them to
  • Identify equitable and inequitable practices in their classrooms
  • Address inequitable practices in their classrooms
  • Understand how structural inequities show up in existing campus practices and policies

While measuring the explicit result in improving student outcomes and eliminating outcome disparities for students has been challenging due to the highly personalized and discipline-specific nature of these faculty learning communities, what seems clear is that participants are empowered, motivated, and actively working toward bringing evidence-based, equitable teaching practices into Minnesota State classes, where over 300,000 students are enrolled annually.

Expanding the Work

Tailoring the Material to Your Needs