Equity FAQ

Feedback

Introduction

Category: Equity

The group that put this page together is a subcommittee of the President’s Diversity Advisory Committee (PDAC) tasked with putting together current and relevant information about equity and inclusion and campus policies, activities, and initiatives related to these topics. 

Category: Equity

A group of representatives at SFCC that included students, staff, faculty and administrators developed an equity statement as well as a pronoun statement for the college. This statement can be found here and is what drives our work related to equity and inclusion on campus.

Category: Equity

The President’s Diversity Advisory Committee (PDAC) is the campus group that informs and drives the equity and inclusion activities, policies, professional development, initiatives and public statements. PDAC is a group that works directly with the President of SFCC and has representatives from students, staff, faculty and administration. You can find out more about the group here.

Category: Equity
  • If you go by a name that is different from your legal name you can fill out this form here and submit it to enrollment-admissions@sfcc.edu. By doing this, the name you go by will be displayed on Canvas, Office 365, Outlook, Teams, Course Rosters for faculty to view, and can be put on the front of your student/employee ID. Do keep in mind that it will take us time to upgrade and change technology to contain preferred names. Below is more general information about the process and the policy can found here with more detailed information.
  • Can I change my email address and username to match my preferred name? Yes. You should fill out the Change of Personal listed above first. Once this is completed you can request that OIT change your email address and username to match your preferred name. This will impact your ability to login, therefore, OIT suggests requesting this in between semesters or early in the semester if possible. Use this link to start a ticket: https://w3.sfcc.edu/oit/support/request. Alternatively, call us at (505) 428-1222.
  • What are the rules?
    • Preferred name only refers to first name.
    • Your preferred name can’t be vulgar or offensive.
    • Your preferred name can’t be intended to cause confusion or be a misrepresentation.
    • You can only request one preferred name per calendar year.
  • Where will my legal name continue to be visible?
    • Many Ellucian banner pages or forms.
    • Student surveys
    • Rave  
    • Back of Student ID
  • SFCC is required to use your legal name on many documents. These include, but are not limited to:
    • Transcripts
    • Diplomas
    • Tax Documents
    • Student Billing
    • Paychecks
    • Financial Aid documents

Terminology

Citations are provided within some of the terminology.  Note these two sources provided, when used, are abbreviated at the end of the terminology.

  • MP Associates, Center for Assessment and Policy Development and World Trust Educational Services, 2019.
  • (MPA) next to term indicates this citation
  • Miller, s. (2019). about gender identity justice in schools and communities. New York: Teachers College Press.
  • (sM),  next to term indicates this citation

Category: Equity

This refers to the rejection of gender as a biological or social construct altogether and the refusal to identify with gender. sM

Category: Equity

(A)pronoun is an extension to the rejection of gender as a biological or social construct and thereby a refusal to use or be identified with or by a pronoun. sM

Category: Equity

Ableism is a set of dominant practices and beliefs that assign inferior value (worth) to people who have developmental, emotional, physical or psychiatric disabilities. (stopableism.org)

Category: Equity

“Accessible” means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally and independently as a person without a disability. (United States Office for Civil Rights)

Category: Equity

Claimed Names and Pronouns refers to names and pronouns that one feels most comfortable identifying with or being used when spoken or referred to. Names and pronouns can change over time and based on context, and should be honored. Names and pronouns are ever-expanding and indeterminate. sM

Category: Equity

CRP is grounded in three tenets and three goals for which teachers should strive: “an ability to develop students academically, a willingness to nurture and support cultural competence, and the development of a sociopolitical consciousness” (Ladson- Billings, G., 2005, p. 483).

Category: Equity

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy draws from  aspects of students’ cultures in an asset-based approach as opposed to deficit-based to make the course material relevant to them, and to increase their skill acquisition, engagement, and learning outcomes (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Category: Equity
  • Culturally responsive assessment  is mindful of the student populations the institution serves. It draws from language that is appropriate for all students when developing learning outcomes, acknowledging students’ differences in the planning phases of an assessment effort, developing and/or using assessment tools that are appropriate for different students, and being intentional in using assessment results to improve learning for all students. It calls for student involvement throughout the entire assessment process including the development of learning outcome statements, assessment tool selection/development process, data collection and interpretation, and use of results 

(Montenegro,  & Jankowski, 2017, p. 10). It is  “an action-based, urgent need to create contexts and curriculum that responds to the social, political, cultural, and educational needs of students; it is affirmative and seeks to identify and institutionalize practices that affirm [Indigenous]; and,  authentic cultural practices of students” (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016, p. 1278).

Category: Equity

Disablism is a set of assumptions (conscious or unconscious) and practices that promote the differential or unequal treatment of people because of actual or presumed disabilities. (stopableism.org)

Category: Equity

Equality is about sameness or uniformity while equity addresses universal fairness. When systems are built on equality, they assume that everyone is starting from the same point. Equity assures conditions for optimal access and opportunity for all people, with particular focus on promoting policies, practices and procedures that do not advantage one group of people over others.

Category: Equity

Inclusion is the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity- both within and outside the curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) where which individuals might connect in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathetic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and units. (MPA)

Category: Equity

Anti-Racism is defined as the work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach and set up in opposition to individual racist behaviors and impacts. (MPA)

Category: Equity

An anti-racist is someone who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing anti-racist ideas. This includes the expression or ideas that racial groups are equals and none needs developing, and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequity. (MPA)

Category: Equity

Cisgender/cis or Cissexual is a person who by nature or by choice conforms to gender-based expectations of society. Cisgender individuals tend to have a gender identity that is aligned with their birth sex, and thereby have a self-perception and gender expression that tends to match behaviors and roles considered appropriate for their birth sex. Cisgender people are also on a continuum of gender identities, and there is no one way that a cisgender person must be. It is important to recognize that even if two people identify as men (one being cis and the other being trans*+), they may lead very similar lives but deal with different struggles pertaining to their birth sex. The prefix cis is of Latin origin, meaning “on the same side (as),” and evolved from the use of the term transgender as a recognition and signifier that there are different types of gender identities.  (sM)

Category: Equity

The Critical Race Theory movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies take up but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, and even feelings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step by step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and principles of constitutional law. (MPA)

Category: Equity

Chicano/a identity was widely reclaimed in the 1960s and 1970s by Mexican Americans as a means of asserting their own ethnic, political, and cultural identity while rejecting and resisting assimilation into whiteness, systematic racism and stereotypes, colonialism, and the American nation-state.

Latinx or Chicanx demonstrates a gender neutral or non-binary stance with those not included in the gendered uses of Latina/o and Chicana/o.

Hispanics are people from Spain or from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.

Latin@ is commonly used amongst Spanish populations, and demarcates a non-gendered person. Latin@ maintains the reference to both “a” and “o” endings in Spanish. This notation , the @,  maintains the masculine and feminine duality that exists in Spanish, thereby constraining the writer to dichotomous conceptions of Spanish.

LGBTQIA+- is an acronyms which  has become more commonplace in regular everyday writing and discourse. While acronyms are never fully inclusive and always expanding, this acronym represents a continuum of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (trans*+, trans, gender creative/expansive/affirmed),  queer/questioning, intersex, ally/asexual, + and too many others to name.

Black Americans– Society has shifted away from identifying Black people as African Americans because not all Black people  are from Africa. African Americans are Black Americans and some prefer to be called African Americans while others prefer to be called Black Americans.

POC is an acronym for persons of color (all non-white folx). 

BIPOC is an acronym  for Black, Indigenous and people of color (all non-white folx). There are some controversies with using this term among the POC community.

Filipinx  is born out of a movement to create space for and acknowledge genderqueer members of the Filipin* diaspora in the white-centric binary places their parents decide to move to (e.g. the United States). The term is also seen as a way to decolonize colonized identity.

MX is a title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female.

Non-binary Hebrew Project: https://www.nonbinaryhebrew.com  (Links to an external site.)

Indigeneity is a term originally defined and accepted in 1972 by the UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples, but was considered too restrictive and was later amended to what follows in 1983.

Uppercasing the word Black and lowercasing the word white has taken on more usage in the past few years as a way to both reckon the oppression of Black Folk and amplify the crucial importance of shifting ideologies. Lowercasing of white in the same piece of writing serves to highlight this. If they are done in separate pieces of writing, it lacks recognition and effect. Thus, when put in the same piece of writing, this becomes apparent.


Initiatives

SFCC Land Acknowledgment

Category: Equity

SFCC’s strategic plan puts equity at its center and many of the goals are directed towards closing the equity gap by engaging in systemic changes at the college level. In addition, one of our institutional values is People and one way we demonstrate this is by celebrating diversity. For more information on the schools strategic plan and its goals and outcomes, please click here

Category: Equity

SFCC is a data-informed institution, which means that it uses data to identify initiatives and for continuous quality improvement. For the academic year 2021-22 PDAC is working on a Campus Climate Survey to identify potential issues with the student experience that SFCC can address. The committee is also creating a set of reports that can be used to track the outcomes of its work and continually improve our practices. 

Category: Equity

The SFCC Library has developed a collection of resources on anti-racist teaching, which can be found at Teaching Resources – Anti-Racist Teaching in Higher Education – Research Guides at Santa Fe Community College (sfcc.edu)

Category: Equity

SFCC Faculty, Staff, and  the Governing Board,remain committed to addressing equity issues that directly impact our stakeholders. The governing board’s policy on equity can be found here: (https://www.sfcc.edu/policy/sfcc-governing-board-policy-diversity/). PDAC stays apprised of local, state, and national politics and responds to areas of concern that directly impact our community.

Category: Equity

To be designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) the institution must have an enrollment of full-time, undergraduate equivalent that is at least 25% Hispanic and then apply to be evaluated for specific requirements. More about these specific requirements and the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics can be found here

Category: Equity

When faculty positions become available at SFCC, the hiring authority works with Human Resources to engage in a search that spans both local and national organizations including those like HACU (Hispanic Association of College and Universities). The goal is to create a large, diverse pool of strong applicants from a variety of backgrounds. SFCC has also reviewed job postings and interview questions to follow best practices in hiring so that there are no barriers to success in the process and there is a trained equity representative on each hiring panel. SFCC continues to evaluate its internal policies and practices to continuously improve the experiences of its faculty and staff to support the retention of employees of all backgrounds. 

Category: Equity

PDAC put together a group of people both within the SFCC community as well as the local Native American community to put together a land acknowledgment statement.


Faculty, Students and Staff

Category: Equity

SFCC is committed to teaching Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP). CRP is grounded in three tenets: (a).  “an ability to develop students academically; (b). a willingness to nurture and support cultural competence;  and the ©. development of a sociopolitical consciousness” (Ladson- Billings, G., 2005, p. 483). 

SFCC is committed to reflecting a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy which draws from aspects of students’ cultures in an asset-based approach. This means that course materials are relevant, and increases skill acquisition, engagement, and learning outcomes (Ladson-Billings, 1995). 

To assess student learning and outcomes SFCC employs Culturally Responsive Assessment  which is mindful of the student populations the institution serves. It draws from language that is appropriate for all students when developing learning outcomes, acknowledging students’ differences in the planning phases of an assessment effort, developing and/or using assessment tools that are appropriate for different students, and being intentional in using assessment results to improve learning for all students. It calls for student involvement throughout the entire assessment process including the development of learning outcome statements, assessment tool selection/development process, data collection and interpretation, and use of results (Montenegro,  & Jankowski, 2017, p. 10). It is  “an action-based, urgent need to create contexts and curriculum that responds to the social, political, cultural, and educational needs of students; it is affirmative and seeks to identify and institutionalize practices that affirm [Indigenous]; and,  authentic cultural practices of students” (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016, p. 1278).

Category: Equity

A database on scholarships available to SFCC students can be found here. There are multiple scholarships on the list that are particular to women, American Indians, Hispanic people and more. 

Category: Equity

Yes, undocumented students are welcome at SFCC. 

Category: Equity

SFCC is a sanctuary campus and the governing board issued a statement to this effect, which can be found here

Category: Equity

This kind of information is called demographics. SFCC uses demographic information to help understand the student population. It is also used to identify where there may be gaps in enrollment or other trends on campus that may need to be addressed. For instance, if there are more students of one gender than another as compared to the local population, then SFCC would look at reasons why that might be to see if there are initiatives that might be helpful in balancing that representation. 

Category: Equity

There are currently mandatory trainings that relate to LGBTQAI+ issues that every employee at SFCC must complete and PDAC is working to improve and expand upon these trainings. There is also a resource site that faculty can access on diversity training and curriculum. 

Category: Equity

For every permanent job position posted there is a search committee convened to review candidates, complete first interviews and recommend candidates for hire. Each committee must have at least one trained diversity representative to ensure the committee maintains socially responsible practices throughout the hiring process. 


Policies

Category: Equity

SFCC’s Department of Human Resources maintains policies regarding equal opportunity of employment, discrimination and harassment. All of these can be found here. For information on similar policies as they relate to students click here. 

Category: Equity

If you are unsure of who to reach out to when you have a concern or complaint please fill out our Complaints & Concerns form found here and it will get directed to and addressed by the appropriate individual. 

Category: Equity

Local police and paramedics are called to campus in an emergency situation when either our campus security needs help or when it is beyond their capacity.

Category: Equity

SFCC’s Marketing and Public Relations Department focuses primarily on students of color in College marketing material. In the formulation of marketing decisions, MPR examines race, ethnicity, gender identity and other aspects of institutional data to ensure marketing material is proportionate to the populations we serve. In addition, we also recognize that the very institutional nature of “college” and “higher education” is systemically biased against students of color (and exacerbated during the pandemic) and impacts people of color disproportionately. In order to uproot systemic bias we must continue to push even harder to present and build SFCC as a space where students of color (as well as students from all overlooked and underserved areas) can feel at home. 

We exercise these equity guidelines in many forms, including the photos we select for marketing collateral, the choices of regional accents and inflections of the voice talent for radio and TV spots, providing Spanish translation when appealing to Spanish-as-a-first-language individuals, and maximizing our marketing collateral for the media consumption behaviors of people of color (for example: students of color rely on mobile technology at higher rates, thus we primarily design our digital projects as “mobile first.” 

We carefully monitor that college marketing materials accurately reflect the classes, services and outcomes we promise to deliver. We also use these marketing interactions to gather data and other information in order to continuously hone the quality and efficiency of future ca((MPA))igns and further appeal to the needs and aspirations of our students of color.


Governance

Category: Equity

The SFCC Governing Board  adopts for the College through its approval process to guide the work of the College (SFCC Policy 1-1). Each SFCC Policy has a leader who is responsible for remaining current with external rules and regulations, understanding and documenting the guiding principles, and developing the procedures for that Policy. This shared commitment to Equity guides the decisions that are made on behalf of, with, and for the College and its stakeholders. https://www.sfcc.edu/about/governing-board/

Category: Equity

SFCC’s commitment to equity, inclusion and belonging are the highest priority of the College.

All efforts and initiatives are anchored by equity, inclusion and belonging. This includes, but is not  limited to: SFCC’s infrastructure, institutional procedures, teaching and learning, assessment,  professional development, campus facility policies, data reporting, programs, marketing and public relations, technology, procedures, and program development, etc.


Local and State Resources

Demographic data can be found here

Spanish Speaking Staff and Faculty

Laura Mulry – French 

sj Miller– Hebrew and German