High Impact Practices in Higher Ed Need an Equity Framework

Author’s Note: On Nov. 8, 2021, Harris students received from Dean Baicker the shocking news that our classmate Samantha (Sam) Burton, MPP ’22, had passed away several days prior due to a sudden illness. 

In her honor, below is a Research-in-Review of a paper she co-authored with undergraduate mentors Dr. Valerie Chepp and Dr. Sarah Greenman. It was accepted by Teaching in Higher Education on Oct. 17, 2021 and published a week after her death on Nov. 10, 2021.

Following the Research-in-Review is an interview with Dr. Chepp and Dr. Greenman discussing Sam’s contributions to the paper and their recollections about working with her.

Valerie Chepp is an Associate Staff Qualitative Researcher in the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Previously, she served as Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Social Justice Program at Hamline University. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Maryland, an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin.

Sarah J. Greenman is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in Hamline University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science, specializing in victimization, sanctioning, and deterrence. Greenman received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Carleton College and her Master’s and PhD from the University of Maryland Criminology and Criminal Justice Program.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Research in Review

Ask a college graduate to reflect on what undergraduate experience influenced their trajectory the most, and it is likely rare that it will have occurred in a traditional classroom setting, at least these days. Perhaps they went on a life-altering alternative spring break, found a mentor through an internship, or learned a new language studying abroad. Maybe they formed strong bonds with their classmates in a first-year seminar, showed off their intellectual growth in an ePortfolio, or performed research alongside a professor.

Each of these are examples of what is known within higher education literature as “High Impact Practices,” or HIPs. These practices are grouped together because they share a set of effective pedagogical characteristics, such as increasing exposure to diversity, allowing students to interact directly with faculty members, and giving students the opportunity to apply what they learn to situations outside university walls. Research into how they improve student outcomes makes them sound like a panacea, showing that participation in HIPs is associated with improved student learning, higher student self-esteem, enhanced post-graduation job prospects, and more. These effects are cumulative as students participate in more HIPs.

In “High-impact educational practices, leveling the playing field or perpetuating inequity?” authors Sarah J. Greenman, Valerie Chepp, and Samantha Burton tap the brakes on the enthusiasm for HIPs. As promising as HIPs appear to be, Greenman et al. point out the inequitable distribution and access to these types of programs, and that the very students which universities have historically underserved—students of color, disabled students, low-income and first-generation students—are the ones with the least access to HIPs and their benefits. If advantaged students are disproportionally reaping the rewards of HIPs, then HIPs are increasing inequality rather than decreasing it.

To remedy this the authors propose that practitioners apply an equity lens to designing HIPs and evaluating their results. While some research has been done which shows that the effect of HIPs is different based on the student’s identity, they argue that a critical and intersectional approach is needed to understand why some students benefit from HIPs more than others and how to make HIPs accessible to the students who need them most.

Greenman et al. share three categories of improvements to HIPs that can be found in the literature to enhance access. The first is offering “modified and tailored approaches” to HIPs based on an intersectional understanding of the dynamics that prevent certain students from participating. An example the authors give is offering study abroad opportunities of varying lengths, costs, and levels of accessibility. The authors point out that this accommodation would not only give underserved students access to these programs, but also could help students in certain situations such as those with rigid jobs, student athletes, and others not specifically targeted.

The second type of improvement to HIPs that the authors classify is to restructure how they are offered at an institutional level. Rather than allow them to remain optional, which could be an issue if certain students are more likely to opt into them than others, several schools are either requiring all students to complete multiple HIPs from a list before they graduate or making them a critical element of student success initiatives targeted at underserved student groups. This intervention is especially valuable early in a student’s college career, given the positive effect HIPs have on retention rates.

The third and final category of improvement is increasing the resources available to students, faculty, and staff for the creation and management of HIPs. From a student perspective, scholarships for study abroad programs could be targeted at specific groups of students, food and travel could be subsidized for internships off-campus, or on-campus housing could be converted into learning communities. From a faculty and staff perspective, offering HIPs is time and labor intensive, and when faculty and staff are overworked, taking the time and energy to ensure HIPs are offered equitably can be even more of a struggle.

HIPs are a hodgepodge of interventions that are effective but have historically been designed by—and offered to—traditionally privileged groups. The authors issue a call to action: “We need to interrogate what makes a particular experience high impact, who defines high impact, and how we define high impact.” “HIPs hold the promise of compensating for the barriers underserved students face. Going forward, the implementation of HIPs and their evaluation must be explicitly equity-focused if their goal is to reduce inequality.

Interview 

Adam (Chicago Policy Review): How did each of you first meet Sam? How did this collaboration first come about?

Sarah Greenman: I’ll let you talk first [Valerie], because I met Sam through you.

Valerie Chepp: I was the Director of the Social Justice program at Hamline University [Sam’s undergraduate alma mater]. I was also a professor in that program, and I taught the Introduction to Social Justice class which Sam took. I remember exactly when she took it, it was the semester of Trump’s election. It was a very heated class in some ways because we’re talking about issues of social justice, and we had a student working on Trump’s campaign in that class.

She subsequently declared a minor in Social Justice; she majored in Political Science. Then she did a couple of internships, and I was her faculty advisor—she worked for Women Winning, an organization committed to electing women to office. She had a great final project where she created a little website as if she was running for office with what her policy positions would look like. She was really committed to issues of gender policy and justice.

I continued to meet with Sam for her Social Justice minor, we would meet often. For the Introduction class, I had a Teaching Apprentice—I would pick an advanced student who performed well in the class to serve as a peer educator—and Sam was my Teaching Apprentice. Sarah and I started working on this paper, and when we were thinking of a student who would be good to pull in, Sam’s name rose to the top.

Sarah: We hadn’t done much work on it before Sam came in. Sam came in and did most of the literature review for us. We then worked with her throughout the whole project.

Valerie: She was graduating, and she did much of the work the summer after she graduated. She went above and beyond.

Sarah: She was working on it over graduation weekend. We met with her the Friday before graduation and she was like, “Sure, I’ll keep working on it!” and I was like, “Are you sure you don’t have other stuff you’d rather do this weekend?” and she was like, “No, I’ll get it done!”

Adam: So the literature review was her major contribution to the paper? How else was she involved?

Sarah: When we started this project, we didn’t have a clear direction, so she did a really, really broad literature review. I mean she was looking at all high impact educational practices, all types of different underserved groups. She did a lot of work for that, as we developed the paper. Then she read the draft and we talked through some ideas with her, since she was the one who had done the literature review.

Valerie: Also, when I read the abstract…

Sarah: Oh yeah, she wrote some of the abstract.

Adam: Abstracts are hard. That’s impressive.

Valerie: That first sentence is directly pulled from Sam’s writing.

Sarah: She also did a first take at an organizing draft after the literature review, to weave the sources together. Then we took it from there.

Adam: What led you to take on this project?

Sarah: I’m a criminologist, so we have different disciplines, and we were talking about [where we] overlap. We’re both passionate about teaching, so that’s how we started talking about it. At Hamline we have a large percentage of traditionally underserved students who are not able to do the traditional high impact learning practices like study abroad, so we were talking about that—what’s going on here and trying to figure out what we can do differently. We started really thinking, “How do we know what’s currently being done and working? And who is it working for?”

Adam: Both of you wrote recommendation letters for Sam—could you talk about what her interest was in policy school, and how she planned to use the degree?

Sarah: I know she was interested in reproductive rights. When we met while working on the paper, we spent a long time talking about what kind of graduate school she wanted to go to, whether policy or something else, and reproductive rights came up a little bit.

Valerie: She applied to really strong programs, as she should have because she was a really strong student. She was very committed to leveling the playing field and working to create a more just world for marginalized groups, and doing that through the lens of policy making.

Sarah: I think it’s also worth noting that at Hamline not that many students go on to grad school. I know there’s some schools where everybody goes to grad school, or like 50%. Here, it’s a handful of students at most.

Valerie: And then, to go to Harris—to even have the wherewithal to believe that you belong somewhere like that is really noteworthy. She was so wonderful and bright. I’m so glad she knew our paper was going to be published and that we’d made the final set of revisions.

Adam: Do you have any closing thoughts?

Sarah:   I think what really stands out to me is her dedication. I joked about her working on graduation weekend, but it’s true, she was working on graduation weekend! And then after she graduated, she was working a job and still continued to work on this. Again, that is not normal for a Hamline student, or any undergraduate student. She went above and beyond.

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Greenman, Sarah J., Valerie Chepp, and Samantha Burton. “High-Impact Educational Practices: Leveling the Playing Field or Perpetuating Inequity?” Teaching in Higher Education, November 10, 2021, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.2000384.