Episode 55 - Black And Brown Students Matter!: Jennifer Harvey
Dialogue on Teaching, Wabash Center’s podcast series, is hosted by Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D., Director of the Wabash Center. Amplifying the Wabash Center’s mission, the podcasts focus upon issues of teaching and learning in theology and religion within colleges, university, seminaries, as well as the publics impacted by these schools. Dialogues with faculty and administrators working in the wide range of institutional contexts illumine the complexity of teaching and the teaching life.
In this time of urgent potential, higher education has a particular role and responsibility to re-frame and fully center our collective commitment around the well-being and thriving of Black and Brown people. Predominantly white institutions have long noted, but tolerated, racial disparities in rates of retention, persistence to graduation, and grade point average--all data that indicate students of color are being negatively impacted by hostile racial climates in so many of our institutions. Those of us who work within higher education, especially faculty, can and must transform our institutions by centering the experiences of Black and Brown students. Rev. Dr. Jennifer Harvey will speak to these issues, by sharing her journey as Faculty Director of the Crew Scholars Program at Drake University. Crew is an academic excellence and leadership development program for students of color at Drake. In its eight years of existence, among students in Crew, Drake has seen the gpa gap close, student of color retention rates soar, and Crew Scholars persistence to graduation outpace and outperform all other Drake students (including white students).