Faculty Impact on Black Student Success

Project Description:

The Faculty Impact on Black Student Success project had an overarching goal to use a data-guided approach in exploring what factors have a significant impact on Black students'success in college courses. Initially, the study explored the impact of faculty ethnicity on these students'success rates and how it varied by each faculty group. Preliminary findings seemed to show a significant difference in students'success rates in courses taught by Black faculty compared with courses taught by faculty of all other ethnicities. However, upon further scrutiny through a predictive model, faculty ethnicity was not a significant predictor of success. Based on these findings, a faculty inquiry group was convened, composed of those with the highest Black student success rates, to explore what they thought might be the reasons for their success with this student population. The areas explored were as follows:

1. The Human Side:

• Personal experiences with discrimination or prior teaching with high-risk, low-socioeconomic status students.

• Professional training that may have influenced their ability to work with Black students.

• 'Bringing in the faculty's personality and personal life/background for students to observe.

2. Pedagogy:

• Flexibility for students (e.g., deadlines, grading practices, expressing care/concern for students individually)

• Approaches/attitudes that value and show kindness to those who are struggling

• Valuing error as opportunity to learn

3. Course Materials/Documents/Assessment:

• Access to textbooks, resources, individualized help.

• Looking at disaggregated course results, student centered approaches, tests not heavily weighted.

• Integrating music or other cultural sources.

• Providing feedback through all modalities including voice and video.

• Students creating original work.

• Sharing grading rubrics in advance.

Results of the faculty inquiry group were recorded and converted to the Faculty Impact Survey (FIS) comprised of thirty items addressing what was shared in the group session. The FIS was distributed to all faculty participating in the group, and they provided feedback on the completeness and accuracy of the survey compared to what was shared in the group. Once a finalized version of the FIS was agreed upon, it was distributed to faculty in fall 2022 and fall 2023. Responses of faculty on the survey were then integrated into a predictive model for Black students in their classes during those terms. The results of the FIS, along with faculty ethnicity and the other factors in the previous predictive model, were regressed against Black student success. At this time, only two variables (both FIS items) were found to significantly predict Black student success:

• I set high expectations for all students in my class.'s (-)

• It is important that students show accountability in my classroom.'s (+)

In discussions with faculty and other constituencies regarding these results, possible explanations center around faculty roles and agency given to students. In the first statement, the focus is on the faculty's expectations, whereas in the second statement, the focus is on the student to demonstrate agency in some way. This project is ongoing.