Into the Future

On Friday, November 18th I had the pleasure to visit the White House to be apart of a conversation on “Advancing Postsecondary Diversity and Inclusion”. This was an all day event that included university reps from students to presidents, and staff of the department of education. I found out about the opportunity through my involvement with the National Society of Black Engineers and it was a great opportunity for the NSBE members in attendance as well as the other students who I met and quickly bonded with during the convening.

The day started out with three panel sessions:

1. Leadership Reflections: Building a Culture of Diversity and Inclusion
2. Research-Based Practice and Strategies
3. Equity by Design with the Student in Mind

The panel sessions talked about various efforts universities, faculty, and students were taking to increase awareness of diversity and inclusion on their respective campuses. Interesting information was shared regarding the fact that students of color persistence in higher education increases when there are people who resemble them, resources available, and support systems in place. Each panel session had a corresponding breakout session in the afternoon.

The breakout session I attended was the “Equity Design Lab: How User Experience Strategies Can Lead to Student Success” in which we discussed ways to address issues students may have by viewing the issue from the students’ perspective. It was interesting working with various people and gaining various perspectives on how to address the problems handed to us.

I had two major takeaways from this experience. The first takeaway is the idea of persistence. A lot of times we talk about increasing minority enrollment and matriculation but fail to focus on the number of students who start higher education but don’t finish for various reasons. So for those students who don’t finish – what can we do in order to mitigate or completely eradicate those hurdles that keeps minority students from completing the race or completing it slower than their white counterparts.

The second takeaway was the fact that at this convening – one that may not happen under the next presidential administration, took place with students involved and sitting at the table. As an aspiring faculty member, I found this to be extremely helpful in understanding how conversations about this topic takes place and the level of importance that is placed on the topic under progressive direction.

Given the results of the most recent presidential election, there seems to be a lot of fear of funding for educational research. While we won’t know for sure if this will happen and/or how long it’ll take to experience any potential negative feedback from the lack of funding, my hope is for higher education is that it doesn’t give up in the fight of making higher education accessible for all who are willing to come and put in the work to succeed. Each student has their own unique challenges that makes receiving higher education more difficult to attain versus their wealthier and/or more privilege counterparts. They say be the change that you want to see – if I want to aid in the movement of increasing minority participation in higher education what better way to start than to enter the system and affect change?