SEL: Changing Campus Culture to Support DEI

Postdoctoral Researcher Elizabeth Holcombe and Adrianna Kezar Detail How Shared-Equity Leadership Leads to DEI Support

While colleges and universities have worked to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the last several decades, campuses are still struggling to make meaningful change to their cultures in ways that truly embed DEI in everything they do. The role of leadership in facilitating this type of change is the focus of a new project currently underway at the Pullias Center, ‘Building a Culture of Shared Equity Leadership in Higher Education.”  Elizabeth Holcombe, a post doctoral researcher on the project (with Adrianna Kezar, Center Director), shares her thoughts about SEL and provides a project update.

“Shared Equity Leadership is a collective approach to leadership” where DEI becomes everyone’s responsibility regardless of where they are situated in the institution or what their formal responsibilities are,” according to Holcombe. SEL has emerged from the intersection of research on DEI leadership and research on shared leadership. Kezar, who has studied culture change for DEI for more than two decades, noted “Rather than having one person or one department bear most of the responsibility for a task as monumental and complex as DEI, SEL capitalizes on the collective expertise and knowledge available on our campuses and leverages the diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of faculty, staff, administrators, and students.”

The Pullias Center teams with the American Council on Education (ACE) for the “Building a Culture of Shared Equity Leadership project,” which is supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

“At the heart of SEL is the idea that leaders working collectively to promote equity are on a personal journey toward critical consciousness, where they are constantly reflecting on their own identities and experiences, their place within or outside of existing power structures and hierarchies, as well as the systemic nature of inequity,” said Holcombe.

A personal commitment to the work, as well as a commitment to ongoing learning and growth, is crucial in order to be able to work collaboratively and dismantle the systems and structures that are hindering progress towards equitable outcomes. Additionally, SEL features a set of values and practices that leaders embody and enact collectively in order to accomplish their DEI goals. Values include things like love and care, humility and vulnerability, which run counter to prevailing notions of hierarchical or patriarchal leadership approaches, as well as things like courage, self-accountability, and innovation, which may be more commonly associated with mainstream, Western approaches to leadership. The practices associated with SEL include a foundational practice of centering the needs of those from systemically disadvantaged groups, as well as 5 main ‘practices’ categories: developmental practices, relational practices, communication practices, practices that challenge the status quo, and structural practices.

These practices are meant to be the property of the leadership collective, rather than a checklist of requirements for a single individual leader to accomplish alone. The idea is that leaders can lean into their strengths in different areas; so one person may be particularly adept at cultivating positive relationships with others on campus (a relational practice), while another team member may be excellent at facilitating learning opportunities for colleagues (a developmental practice). Every member of the SEL group doesn’t have to be excellent in all of these areas—that is the benefit of a shared leadership approach.

While SEL has these common features of the personal journey, values, and practices, the ways in which it is actually organized or structured can vary based on campus contexts and environments. In Phase 2 of the project, which is currently underway, the team is investigating four different models for distributing the work, ranging from a highly structured model with many layers and levels of formal DEI positions to a woven model where DEI leadership is actually woven into or embedded in every role on campus.

“One important aspect of SEL is authenticity and people bringing their full selves to the work of leadership for equity,” stated Holcombe. “SEL runs counter to the prevailing notions of hierarchical or patriarchal leadership approaches. It makes space for love and care, and values of compassion and empathy.” Over the next 2 years, four more reports will be co-published with ACE on SEL, so stay tuned.