Throughout this academic year, I will be using this Initiatives column to share parts of the college’s strategic plan. My goal is to help you understand the goals and how we aim to reach them, and to help you see yourself in the plan as someone who can not only help to implement it, but also can benefit from it.

This week’s initiatives column will focus on the first two action items of goal 2 (transforming educational professionals), objective 2 (strategically balance curricular offerings) in our strategic plan for 2021-25. You can read the full plan on our website.

This objective calls on us to engage in the process of revising and developing our curricular offerings to prepare our students to understand and serve the needs of all learners including: those residing in urban and rural settings and poverty contexts; those with disabilities; English language learners; multilingual students; people of color; LGBTQ+ individuals; and linguistically and culturally diverse populations, with specific attention on addressing systemic inequities, essential literacies, mental health and well-being.

There are three action items associated with this objective. This column will focus on the first two.

Action item 1 is to focus work across the college in ways to enable student enrollment growth. The implementation tasks are:

• Employ strategies such as reducing the number of sections and consider a rotating schedule for some courses, where possible, to create bandwidth for curricular work.
• Identify curricular synergies, within and across departments, to reduce redundancies and create bandwidth for curricular work.
• Identify programs within the college that would benefit from additional support and resources to better align course and program offerings with a student demand, the needs of the field, and society.
• Hire a marketing professional to develop an overall brand for College of Education programs, develop a marketing plan, and assist in undergraduate and graduate student recruitment.

Action item 2 is to incorporate essential literacies, inclusive instruction, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, and mental health and well-being across all programs with attention to the intersection of these areas. The implementation tasks are:

• Identify the knowledge, skills and dispositions we expect our students to acquire through our teaching, curricula and experiential opportunities related to essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, and mental health and well-being.
• Conduct a needs assessment of instructors regarding the adoption and implementation of essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, and mental health and well-being in our curricula and instructional practices.
• Based on the results of the needs assessment, provide resources and support (e.g., professional development and course materials) to instructors to implement anti-racist, equity-based curricula and instruction that also reinforce the essential literacies needed by education professionals to transform the education landscape.
• Identify and integrate curricular and instructional mechanisms that enliven the mental health and well-being of all students.
• Develop structures to implement, evaluate and study innovative approaches to educator preparation — including curricula and instruction — that develop change agents in respective fields who are well-prepared to address known and new systemic inequities.
• Develop materials, resources and learning opportunities to train faculty and graduate students in the self-awareness, listening and expressive communication skills that are needed to support meaningful discussion as one component of effective and inclusive instruction.
• Train and support professionals to disrupt instances in which marginalization occurs.

This work is not easy. It challenges the status quo, which can leave us feeling uncomfortably vulnerable. It also is labor-intensive, requiring all of us to look at what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and how we can do it better through the lens of equity and social justice. At the same time, as we have begun to dive in and do the work, we already are starting to see the positive change that can occur – and that further emphasizes the need for the work to be done.

Coming up

The next Initiatives column will include a look at goal 2, objective 2, action item 3.