Improving departmental equity using the IMPACT Framework

Improving Departmental Equity Using the IMPACT Framework includes step-by-step instructions and worksheets for experts and novices alike to anticipate, acknowledge, and redress racism perpetuated by academic departmental policies and practices. This resource is meant to accompany Getting Started With Equity: A Guide for Academic Department Leaders, which walks academic department leaders through the process of conducting an equity audit of the department’s teaching practices and policies, lays out evidence-based teaching practices that support educational equity, and outlines inequities and how to redress them in specific academic disciplines. 

This resource will help committed educators develop an anti-racist analytical framework, based on an anti-racist growth mindset — the belief that all people, including educators, have the potential for constant evolution and development of a more thorough understanding and practice of anti-racist behaviors. The exercises and processes outlined here will help you and your team decide how and where to begin in making your academic department a more equitable place for minoritized, first-generation, and poverty-affected students.

Improving equity requires acknowledging where and why inequities exist and actively working to eliminate them. The process outlined in Getting Started With Equity requires intentional steps to identify and analyze policies and practices that may be driving inequitable access, experiences, and outcomes for racially minoritized and poverty-affected students. Improving Departmental Equity Using the IMPACT Framework provides departmental task forces with a process for redressing the inequities identified in the departmental equity audit.

See the companion resource Getting Started With Equity