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So Triesman made one very simple change, he said, "From now on,
everybody in this calc lab has to study in teams."
And it wasn't like the white team, the black team,
the Asian team, it wasn't like Survivor, you know.
But the idea was, we're going to study in teams because
that's a better technique, why?
And he wasn't using the language of stereotype threat
at the time, this was actually before the term was even
being used, but it was the same concept.
The idea was, that once you took the pressure off of the person
to have to represent, to have to carry all the weight on their
own shoulders and instead spread that burden around.
So that you're responsible for this piece, you're responsible
for this piece, I gotta know this piece, we'll all help
each other learn it.
Elementary teachers call this jigsaw learning, we're going
to work together on a project and we don't all have to all
know everything, we just all have to do our little piece
of the pie and bring it together for one comprehensive whole.
That one little change at the end of the year,
the black students were outperforming the white
and the Asian students in that class.
Just with one little change.
Georgia Tech had a program for many years, they had to modify
it now, for fear of a lawsuit on the basis of so-called reverse
discrimination, but the program they had for many years took
students of color who were coming in a little bit less
"qualified" in terms of test scores, giving them a five week
challenge class in calculus prior to the enrollment
fall of freshman year.
The idea being that they weren't quite as prepared, they hadn't
had the same opportunity through no fault of their own
but they had real promise and real potential,
they would bring them in, give them five weeks of intense
bombardment of hard material, not remediation.
Not remediation which starts with a deficit model,
the idea that you're damaged and we have to fix you,
this was not assuming they were damaged.
And in fact the message of this program was, the system
is damaged the system didn't give you what you need,
we're going to do it and you can make it.
A very different kind of mind set, and after five weeks of
being bombarded with stuff these kids have never seen before.
Calculus over their, you know, their heads are here,
and this is about right here, but they rose to the occasion,
at the end of the year, they were doing better than other
students at Georgia Tech who had been admitted through normal
"meritocractic means."
So what it suggests is that we can create classroom
environments, we can create campus environments especially
if we reach out to the larger community and we get other folks
involved in that process.
Because again, you all could do everything right in this school
in terms of recruitment, admisson, evaluation standards,
classroom management techniques.
You could do everything right, and yet, if folks of color come
and they feel uncomfortable in the larger community,
then it can undermine everything that the school does.
So it's got to be a joint effort.
It can't be just one or two institutions, it's got to be
this school saying, hey, this is what we're going to be about
and we want you to be about this too.
Meaning the business community.
We want the K through 12 schools to be about this too,
and we'll work together.
We'll have programs together and try to separate, knock down this
seperation between town and gown that often happens
in college towns.
Alright?
Trying to break down that wall, break down those barriers
and say, you have to be a part of this, because you being
a part of it helps us fulfill our purpose and our mission.
Which brings me then to the last thing I want to mention about
what we have to do beyond really looking critically
at our evaluation standards and our classroom management
techniques and the degree of isolation and all these things
I've talked about previously.
Seems to me when schools want to know what to do,
although I understand the question, I do find it odd.
Because it seems to me that schools ought to already know
what to do, by just looking at their mission statements.
This institution, like every other college with the exception
apparently of Pomona College, which oddly enough doesn't
have a mission statement.
I know why they don't have one, I was told it was because they
don't want to box themselves in to a particular mission.
They were quite content to just be the top ranked liberal arts
college in the United States, according to the always accurate
US News and World Report.
So they were quite happy when I was there at Pomona,
they just had their median SAT score was a 1430 and that was
actually higher than any Ivy League school.
Higher than really any liberal arts college I've ever heard of,
and that was all, their mission was that, you know, there was
no mission statement.
But I know you all have one, and I know that virtually all state
institutions do and most, really everybody but Pomona has one.
And what's interesting is, when you ask somebody what their
mission statement is I've only found one person in all
the years that I've been asking that question that actually
can repeat it.
I've only met a few people who have really even looked
at it since they came to the school.
And I've found almost no one who has had a plan
for operationalizing it.
What do I mean by that?
What I mean by that is, if you have a mission statement
that is the definition of why you exist.
It is the description of your purpose.
And if that mission statement is like most and has all
of this flowerly rhetoric and I know it does.
Just like I know the websites got more black and brown folk on
them than really exist, I know the mission statement has more
beautiful words in it than actually manifest in terms
of policy, practice, and procedure.
I haven't looked at yours in the five years since I first came
here, but I'm sure it's beautiful, because all schools'
mission statements are.
They talk about the need to create lifelong learners
in a global environment, sometimes right even about
committed to diversity in a global environment.
To meet the challenges of the future.
How close am I?
I think I'm pretty damn close.
Some of them even mention social justice.
Shhh, a few, not many, Jesuit schools and a handful of others,
they mention that, they have a commitment.
But they all imply a commitment to equity and diversity whether
they say it explicitly, and a lot of them do.
But even if they don't say it explicitly, it's clearly implied
by the mission statement.
It's clearly the underlying logic, and yet, there are very
few schools that have begun to think about how they
could operationalize it.
What do I mean by that?
I mean, very simply that if you're going to have a mission
statement that defines the purpose for existing,
it seems to me that every policy, every procedure,
every practice on that campus should go toward the ends
of that mission.
And anything that contradicts that end should be eliminated,
which is to say, that if you want to be a member of this
community, this or any other community of higher education,
that you either demonstrate a commitment to that mission
or you do not come.
In other words, yes, I'm saying that in order to be a student
to a college or a university, one of the things you ought to
be asked, before you get in, irrespective of your test scores
your grades, your letters of recommendation, or whether
your daddy went there is here is the reason we exist.
What does this mean to you, how have you lived this commitment
previously in your life, what have you done in league with
this commitment and what will you do once you are here.
And if you don't have a good answer, there are lots of other
schools you can go to, and if you lied to us and get in,
that's fine, but before we let you graduate,
you will demonstrate a commitment to this mission.
And if you don't, you will not finish here, there are plenty
of schools to which you can transfer which then brings us
to faculty and staff.
Because if you want to teach at an institution that has this
mission, I want to know what this mission means to you,
how you have lived the commitment to that mission
in your previous professional experience, and how you intend
to do it now.
And if you cannot answer it, there are lots of other schools
where you can teach, and if you get in to that job because
you lied and made it sound like it was the most important thing
in your life and then you do not over the period of
four or five years demonstrate a commitment to it.
In your particular discipline or on the campus as a whole,
there are lots of other places you can seek tenure,
but this will not be the place for you.
And people say, well, that's a litmus test, well, yeah, it is,
it's called a mission statement, that's the reason you're there.
You would not join a church that you fundamentally disagreed with
nor would they want you.
Why would you seek to join an institution of higher learning
with which you fundamentally disagree.
And if folks don't like the mission because it's too liberal
too progressive, too radical, that right-wingers can set up
their own schools.
They got the money, if they want to do it, they want to set up
a mission that just says we just want to have a bunch
of white people with a whole lot of money, they can do it.
And if you want your mission to be, you know, because what are
the policies, the thing, I was on 20/20 last week,
and one of the segments before my segment was this thing about
schools that let in children of the well connected wealthy folks
if their grades are terrible.
They call them developmental admits, alright this idea that
they're not really qualified to be here, but they're going
to bring us a lot of money.
That's not the mission, the mission didn't say, our mission
is to bring in people who will help us build buildings
in 15 years.
That's not the mission, that's not the reason the school exists
and so anything that does that, that's not the reason for,
it doesn't say, our purpose is to bring in folks with the
highest test scores and the best grades and the best research.
That's not the mission, the mission does not say,
our goal is to go up the US News and World Report rankings
every year.
But that's what schools obsess about in most cases, and I can't
tell you how you operationalize it, but it seems to me that
every policy, every practice, every procedure
in the institution should be subjected to that
single evaluation standard which is how does this help us
live our mission?
Or how does it get in the way of living our mission?
And if this policy, practice, or procedure does not fit in with
the purpose for which we have announced we exist, it goes.
And if we're not ready to do that, than we are not serious
about moving beyond diversity, we are not serious about
creating equity, we are not serious about fundamentally
transforming the institution.
Here is the other I know that, and then I'm going to take
questions, I do these work shops and ya'll are lucky that we had
too many people, because I would have done it here.
Sometimes when I have workshops, I'll come in late and I'll make
myself all out of breath, like I'll go run around the building
before I come in.
And then I'll come in out of breath and then I'll have like
a piece of paper, and I won't show them what it is.
I'll wave it and I'm really excited, and I come in
and I say, I'm sorry I'm late, great news.