What is the TIPS: Towards Justice Pathway?
The TIPS: Towards Justice pathway is a two-year departmental pathway that addresses persistent marginalization and underrepresentation of Latine students in STEM.
Originally developed at Sonoma State University with the support of the National Science Foundation, The Pathway comprises (1) workshops and exploration regarding factors contributing to Latine underrepresentation in STEM, including stereotype threat and implicit bias; (2) introduction to culturally responsive pedagogies; (3) collaborative implementation of these practices in gateway STEM courses via lesson study; (4) review of institutional barriers and STEM students' connections to campus resources; and (5) implementation of High Impact Practices to increase student sense of belonging in STEM fields.
The TIPS Pathway is a significant undertaking on the part of a STEM department—with the potential for exceptional reward as we support many more of our students to thrive in our classrooms, departments, and disciplines.
See the Pathway Components for more information on each step of the Pathway.
TIPS Pathway Components
The TIPS: Towards Justice pathway is a Department-level commitment. We recommend the following before embarking:
- A discussion, at a department faculty retreat or dedicated department meeting, about what is currently known about the department's "servingness" culture: Are there data sources that help us to understand who is and is not currently at home in and succeeding in our department?
- An accounting of existing/prior efforts by members of the department to build a culture of servingness, and intentional effort to seek out related professional opportunities: conferences, workshops, etc.
- At a separate meeting, a discussion (no commitment yet) of faculty members' interest in exploring issues of teaching practice and department culture that might better serve students—even if that exploration challenges some deeply-entrenched ways of being.
A STEM Department interested in embarking on the TIPS culture-change Pathway is encouraged to design and contract for a one-day exploratory workshop. This externally-facilitated workshop should examine currently-available information about students' experiences in the Department, existing data about student persistence and success, and faculty beliefs, values, and preconceptions.
At the conclusion of this exploratory workshop, the Department will be prepared to decide whether to commit to the two-year TIPS Pathway. Departmental leadership will then need to work to identify funding sources, line up contracts with external providers, and arrange for student surveys and externally-facilitated focus groups (which provide the seed data for Year 1 departmental professional learning).
This first academic year of the TIPS Pathway consists of focused work on departmental practices that impact students' sense of belonging or marginalization in our disciplines, especially in our classrooms. Through a 4-day summer workshop, semimonthly facilitated check-ins, a three-day winter workshop on Rehumanizing STEM and lesson study, and a spring lesson study experience, the Department comes to understand students' experience, and begins to transform its practice so all students come to see themselves in the discipline.
During year 2 of the TIPS Pathway, lesson study helps to maintain a focus on departmental practices that build and deepen a sense of belonging for traditionally-marginalized students. In parallel, department task forces examine institutional barriers that keep some students from staying and succeeding in the discipline (financial aid and probation/disqualification/reinstatement policies, implicit messages about who does science & math, etc.); and explore opportunities across the institution for greater connection between the Department and other relevant efforts (multicultural centers, MESA, scholarship opportunities, other Minority-Serving Institution efforts). Departmental policies and practices are examined and revised to ensure that servingness-focused efforts are valued, supported, and rewarded in faculty evaluation, teaching assignments, curricular design, and other departmental decisions.
At the conclusion of the formal 2-year TIPS Pathway, the Department will ensure ongoing progress by, for example,
- establishing lesson study as a continuing Department practice,
- engaging with the campus teaching & learning center to incorporate servingness as a focus of campus-wide efforts,
- negotiating an agreement with the appropriate administrator for ongoing focus on servingness (for example, support for ongoing lesson study and other professional learning, and servingness-focused course coordinators), and
- working to revise college- and university-level policies and practices to recognized and encourage a servingness-focused culture.
TIPS Pathway Framework
