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Language and identity in critical sensegiving: journeys of higher education equity agents

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Language and identity in critical sensegiving: journeys of higher education equity agents

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Content Running head: JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 1

Language and Identity in Critical Sensegiving:
Journeys of Higher Education Equity Agents
Robin Bishop

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
In Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN URBAN EDUCATION POLICY

August 2014
Advisor: Dr. Estela Bensimon
Committee Members: Dr. Patricia Riley, Dr. Donald Polkinghorne

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 2
Dedication

In completing this dissertation about “journeys,” I would like to thank the people who
have been an integral part of mine. First and foremost, I would like to thank all of the family and
extended family who have supported me through challenging times (and been there to celebrate
during the good times): Dad. Karen & Lexie & Chelsea. Mellanie & Vaughn. Diane. Janis &
Steve. Dave & Kathy & Jenna. Bettie. Grammy.
I would like to thank, as well, the classmates with whom I have engaged on this journey,
particularly: Misty, Tiffany, Stefanie, Monica, Katie, Kris, Jonathan, Cecy, Peggy & Chelvi. All
of you were important in my academic journey, whether for your sharing of some crazy
experiences, your encouragement when I was questioning, or your modeling of determination
and positivity. I would like to thank my friends, both for their comradeship and for their
patience as I have been absent from many events and conversations: Bryan (you’re my brother
but also my friend), Jennifer, Misty (you got two mentions!), Nancy. Leo. Thank you to those at
work who believed in my abilities and who stepped in during trying times: Jeanette, Evelyn,
Shelly, Sr. Carol, Pat, Laurie, Sr. Darlene, Maria, Bernie, Gaile, Pam, Greg. As I think about my
Mount family, it is difficulty to decide where to stop, as the list goes on. Finally, I would like to
thank my committee members for their invaluable guidance: Dr. Patricia Riley, Dr. Donald
Polkinghorne, and of course, Dr. Estela Bensimon.
This dissertation is dedicated to:
Teresa Johnson Bishop Walker (“Mom”).
C. Gilbert Bishop (“Grandad”).
Luvenia Johnson (“Grammy).
- You were each important role models as I sculpted my own journey.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 3
Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction 4
Defining the problem 4
Current study 12

Chapter Two: Review of Related Literature 21
Conceptions of Agency 21
Key Concepts from Sensemaking 25
Review of Sensegiving Research 33
Exemplar Studies of Action Research 42

Chapter Three: Methods 48
Selecting a Methodology: Narrative 48
Situating Narratives Within a Case 51
Assumptions and Tensions 52
Early Access and Evolution of Research Questions 56
Ethical and Political Considerations 57
Data Collection 58
Data Analysis and Presentation 60
Trustworthiness 64
Limitations 65

Chapter Four: Narratives 68
Introduction and Considerations 68
Prologue 71
“Louis” 73
“Bridget” 90
“Jerry” 105
“Thomas” 119
“Michael” 135
“Stacey” 148
Epilogues 162

Chapter Five: Theoretical Synthesis and Implications 168
Process and Results of the Inquiry Experience 168
Allies’ Sensemaking Experiences 175
Acknowledging Previous Points of Readiness 178
Sensegiving for Equity 187
Situating Sensegiving within a Campus Narrative 192
A Chronology of Sensegiving 195
Identities as Critical Agents 201
Implications 208

References 214

Appendices 228
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 4

Chapter One: Introduction

The Problem of Student Racial Inequities in Higher Education and the Need for a
“Structural Racism Lens”

Despite its key role in serving the public good (Chambers, 2005), American higher
education continues to fall short in the delivery of equitable outcomes for students across racial
and ethnic lines. When one examines the national data, a stark picture emerges: A greater
percentage of Black and Latino students, as well as American Indian and some Asian ethnic
groups, are lost from the college pipeline than are their White counterparts (Mikyung, 2009;
Kelly, 2005). In order to better understand this phenomenon, one can place higher education
within the context of larger society, where similar inequitable patterns are embedded in such
diverse institutions as law, medicine, criminal justice, schools and churches (Bonilla-Silva,
1997). This phenomenon, commonly known as structural or institutional racism, takes place
“when institutions or organizations, including educational ones, have standard operating
procedures … that hurt members of one or more races in relation to the dominant race”
(Scheurich & Young, 1997, p. 5).
These institutional practices may be unintentional and may often go unrecognized
(Feagin & Feagin, 1986; Scheurich & Young, 1997); therefore, in order to work toward their
eradication, practitioners must turn an intentional “lens” in the direction of said practices,
framing questions critically around race. Fullbright-Anderson et al. (2005) declare, “In nearly
every system that touches the lives of young people there are formal and informal policies and
practices as well as cultural norms and stereotypes that contribute to racial disparities. A
structural racism lens helps identify factors, even those that may appear neutral at face value,
that contribute to racially disparate outcomes” (p. 13, italics mine). To apply such a lens is to
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 5
make conversation about race both explicit and meaningful. There is an urgent need for such
acts, for unless academic communities dig beneath the surface to create true understandings of
the issues underlying diversity and equity, the challenge of creating greater opportunities for
students of color will linger indefinitely (St. John, McKinney & Tuttle, 2006).
The Difficulties of Discussion

However, it has been documented that the cultures of higher education institutions are
often characterized by the treatment of race as a “four letter word and an avoidable topic”
(Harper & Hurtado, 2011, p. 211). Harper and Patton (2007) offer three reasons for reluctance
among some higher education professionals to engage in racial conversation in any but the most
superficial manner: First, committing to this kind of discussion involves a willingness to deal
with discomfort, guilt and frustration, as well as an acknowledgement of privilege by individuals
who may be advantaged on a campus by their racial positions. Second, this kind of discussion
generally leads to the uncomfortable realization that the problem of racism will not likely end
soon. Finally, this ensuing realization should lead to a sense of personal responsibility for
change, yet many practitioners may not want this kind of obligation.
Thus, instead of such critical self-reflection, many may take refuge in the claim that they
do not see race, or they may endorse what Brown et al. (2003) have called “racial realism,”
attributing the obvious racial disparities in societal indicators like wealth or health to differences
in motivation between racial and ethnic groups. In describing this phenomenon as it manifests
within higher education, Bensimon has outlined “deficit-minded” thinking, a mindset from
which staff and faculty attribute the observed racial differences in college student outcomes like
retention, transfers or graduation to the students themselves. Often these practitioners claim that
the students simply do not take responsibility for their educational endeavors, or that certain
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 6
student groups do not value education culturally (Bensimon, 2007). From this mindset, the
response to noticed inequity is more likely to be, “If they would just take advantage of resources
… ” rather than the more self-critical question, “What do we need to do in order to ensure that
our resources are accessible to students of color?” Thus, despite the prevalence of race-focused
initiatives in higher education (Paul, 2003), the necessarily hard-hitting questions that prompt
self-examination and institutional critique might not often be taking place, as individuals fall
back on superficial discussion or on blaming students.
The Difficulty of Top-Down Approaches or “Quick Fixes”
Similar to other institutional types, higher education organizations are characterized by a
tendency to reproduce their existing cultures as new members are recruited and socialized into
existing practices, which may become deeply ingrained and thus remain unquestioned (Bess &
Dee, 2008; Schein, 2010). Schein defines organizational culture as “a pattern of shared basic
assumptions … that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to
new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (2010,
p. 18). In other words, as these kinds of student-blaming or race-dismissing conversations
become normalized within an institution, they are likely to become a part of the institutional
culture such that new members are quickly socialized into the practice of blaming students and
avoiding self-critique and begin to socialize others to do the same.
Additionally, higher education institutions have historically embraced the traditions of
academic freedom, faculty autonomy and shared governance. Therefore, while undoubtedly all
organizations are resistant to quick fixes, the unique qualities of college and university settings
may make them particularly so (Kezar, 2001; Birnbaum, 1991). And while these bedrocks are,
in some cases, beginning to change in form due to increasing external pressures (Slaughter &
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 7
Rhoades, 2004), this has not resulted in higher education cultures embracing more business-like
models, so much as it has resulted in increased frustration among practitioners who expect to
participate in governance yet feel unheard (Kezar & Lester, 2011).
Further complicating the question of simple solutions or top-down initiatives comes the
fact that higher education is characterized by multiple subcultures – departments, different
academic disciplines, faculty and student affairs – such that members from different units may
not experience the regular social exchanges needed to create substantial change (Kezar, 2006).
Due to operation within both epistemological and organizational “silos,” innovation or cultural
change initiated in one area may not permeate disciplinary or departmental boundaries.
Therefore, unidirectional approaches – such as simple mandates from leaders or external
agencies regarding diversity – may not produce real movement within higher education,
specifically the needed movement toward greater acknowledgment of structural racism and
greater institutional and personal accountability for equity.
Action Inquiry as a Solution

What, then, may be a more effective approach? One possibility is the intentional
establishing of communities of inquiry that allow faculty and staff to engage in ongoing dialogue
and investigation regarding inequities. Yorks describes professional action inquiry settings as
Social space…for producing actionable knowledge…(where) inquirers…must adopt new
ways of relating to one another and challenging their own assumptions regarding both
their inquiry questions and their traditional ways of addressing them… (This may be)
directed toward improving either personal effectiveness or the effectiveness of the
practice setting (2005, p. 1217-1219).

Such an approach recognizes the importance of an ongoing community of practice
(Wenger, 1998) in aspiring to facilitate the gradual development of the involved professionals
into reflective practitioners (Schön, 1987). Two relevant aspects of participant knowledge are
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 8
emphasized: the formal knowledge into which these professionals are inducted during training,
and the knowledge of how to engage in interpretation and enactment (Kemmis & McTaggart,
2000). As such, a professional’s “espoused theories” may be distinguished from his “theories in
use,” and gaps that are identified between these become sources of discussion for change
(Argyris & Schön, 1974).
Contextualizing action inquiry within “action research.” A variety of names are used to
describe similar and overlapping forms of such research, with all generally considered under the
larger moniker of action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000; Reason & Bradbury, 2001).
With roots in Neo-Marxist ideologies, such approaches have evolved from the criticism that
traditional positivist social science approaches, despite their claims to value neutrality, may
unwittingly serve to perpetuate existing power structures (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000;
Greenwood & Levin, 2005), including the effects of the larger political economy on the academy
and its institutions (Slaughter & Leslie, 2001). Such work is further characterized by a refusal to
decouple “pure” from “applied” research, recognizing that each must inform and work with the
other (Greenwood & Levin, 2005; Yorks, 2005).
As such, it builds, in part, on the influential ideas of psychologist Kurt Lewin (1947) in
connecting theory and practice in order to solve real-worlds problems, an idea informed by
Dewey’s (1929) pragmatist charge to do away with false dichotomies in the interest of socially
relevant research. At the same time, current action-focused methods reach beyond Lewin’s early
designs to incorporate greater emphasis on ongoing dialogue and cogenerative learning among
members (Greenwood & Levin, 1998). In doing so, they more closely appropriate Dewey’s
emphasis on the value of actual experience in the human world.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 9
An example of action inquiry in a higher education setting. One such action inquiry process
that has been applied to numerous institutions of higher education is the Equity Scorecard, in
which faculty and administrators form communities of inquiry to investigate the present state of
racial inequity on their campuses. As they do so, they are guided by researcher-facilitators who
collaborate with institutional members in organizing and examining racially disaggregated
student data (Bensimon, 2007). As members examine racial inequity data, they explore
questions and hunches, which prompts mining for additional data. Such data are not strictly
numerical, but incorporate additional qualitative campus inquiry activities such as interviews,
observations and document analysis. With each new round of data brought back to the inquiry
group by its members, questions and hunches are refined, prompting new rounds of inquiry, so
that a more informed picture of the state of campus inequity ideally emerges (Bensimon,
Polkinghorne, Bauman & Vallejo, 2004; Harris III, Bensimon & Bishop, 2010; Dowd, Bishop,
Bensimon & Witham, 2012). Ultimately, these investigations result in formal recommendations
to the campus in the form an Equity Scorecard report, as well as potential changes in the actions
and thinking of individual inquiry members.
In addition, a key role of Equity Scorecard facilitators is to assist inquiry members in
tabling both their quick-fix solutions and their potentially stereotyped presumptions about
students. A recognized gap between one’s espoused theories and theories in use as mentioned
earlier may occur, for instance, when a professional believes that he does not engage in deficit-
minded attributions about students of color, yet he subsequently claims that Latino families do
not value education. A key factor in addressing such potentially uncomfortable realizations may
be the ability of the facilitator or other inquiry members to reflect this “gap” back to the
individual. Therefore, the presence of the researcher not only as an academic expert on
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 10
inequities, but equally as a “friendly outsider” in terms of facilitation, is key (Kemmis &
McTaggart, 2000; Greenwood & Levin, 1998). Over the course of an Equity Scorecard project,
team members ideally move toward “equity-mindedness,” embodying a willingness to engage in
racially explicit dialogue about student outcomes; a willingness to inquire into potential
institutional causes for such outcomes; and a focus on individual and institutional responsibility
for making these outcomes more equitable (Bensimon et al., 2004). In other words, they ideally
move toward becoming greater “agents” for equity within their higher education settings.
The Question of Agency and Constraint
Yet, in considering what might reasonably be accomplished as these individuals choose
to work toward more equitable outcomes, one must acknowledge the complicated interplay
between organizational constraints and individual agency. This tension is rooted in the
conceptions of foundational sociological thinkers. For instance, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
argued, in describing the concept of habitus, that within any structure “an acquired system of
generative schemes … engenders all the thoughts, all the perceptions, and all the actions
consistent with those conditions and no others” (1977, p. 95). In other words, even those seeking
to create change are so powerfully informed by existing rules and resources within an
organization that their most intentionally innovative actions will ultimately reproduce the
existing structure. Meanwhile, sociologist Anthony Giddens, while acknowledging the
inseparability of agency and structure, also charged:
…the notion of human action logically implies that of power, understood as
transformative capacity: ‘action’ exists when an agent has the capability of intervening,
or refraining from intervening, in a series of events so as to influence their course. The
introduction of a theory of action into sociology thus entails regarding power as just as
essential and integral to social interaction as conventions are (1979, p. 256).

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 11
Giddens argued in his conception of structuration that while structures provide a context within
which actors carry out their actions, these structures are not only withheld, but at times also
changed, by the choices and understandings of potentially purposive and reflective actors.
The assumption of agency in action research methods. In connecting this argument to the
assumptions of action inquiry, the emphasis in inquiry settings is not simply on the reflection that
takes place among practitioners, but on their translations of reflection into changes in practice.
Greenwood and Levin explain, “technique, technology, and knowledge merge in an
understanding of knowing how to act to reach certain desired goals. Knowledge is not a passive
form of reflection but emerges through actively struggling to know how to act in real-world
contexts with real-world materials” (2005, p. 51). Furthermore, this change is not limited to
one’s own practices, but – as an extension of the neo-Marxist roots of action research – is geared
toward the ultimate change of one’s environment. Similarly, Kemmis & McTaggart declare that
one type of reasoning that members engaging in such settings are likely to gain is a kind of
“critical emancipatory reasoning,” which “manifests itself in attitudes of collaborative reflection,
theorizing, and political action directed toward emancipatory reconstruction of the setting”
(2000, p.585, italics mine).
Thus, the assumption of the potential for individual agency – for those involved to be
spurred into intentional action toward change in their environs even as they work within its
confines – firmly undergirds the work of action research methods, including action inquiry.
Additionally useful here is agency theorist Benson’s conceptualization of praxis:
The commitment to praxis is both a description – that is, that people under some
circumstances can become agents reconstructing their own social relations and ultimately
themselves … and an ethical commitment … that social science should contribute to the
process of reconstruction, to the liberation of human potential through the production of
new social formations (1977, p. 5-6).

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 12
If one is to accept this conceptualization, then to maximize the intent of action inquiry is not only
to acknowledge the potential of participants to transform their social settings, but also to research
the processes by which this may occur.
Current Study: The Journeys of Equity Agents at Rockbourne State University

A unique opportunity to study the ways that agency may develop over time – specifically
agency with regard to working toward greater equity in one’s institutional environs – is presented
by the contextualized narratives of select Equity Scorecard team members and allies at the
Midwestern institution of Rockbourne State University
1
.
Research Site. Rockbourne provides a unique site for the investigation of the topic because by
the end of the Equity Scorecard process there, all Rockbourne team members had demonstrated
equity-mindedness as established in an earlier impact study. Additionally, intensive equity work
was carried out by non-members (referred to herein as “allies”) in response to the Scorecard data
and concepts. This was particularly the case with the Rockbourne Honors program, which
initially included a severe lack of students of color and was transformed by allies such that it
now approaches parity with larger campus population. Therefore, the select Rockbourne team
members and allies provide a kind of intensity sample (Creswell, 2007), allowing a research
focus on their subsequent process of fostering equity within their campus environs and the ways
in which they identify with the responsibility of this work. In other words, these equity-minded
individuals provide an information-rich case, suitable to illuminate the phenomenon of interest
(Jones, Torres and Arminio, 2006).
Furthermore, the institution is situated within a largely White geographical region, with a
student body that is highly homogeneous and with racially minoritized students attending in very
small numbers (see appendix A). Building on earlier statements about the difficulties of racially

1
The names of the institution and of the six individuals interviewed in the study are all represented by pseudonyms.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 13
explicit conversation in higher education generally, one may point to specific characteristics of
Rockbourne that would be expected to amplify this difficulty. It has been noted that many
Midwestern regions are characterized by a kind of “politeness” wherein educators and students
may avoid difficult conversations such as those that are race-based (Marshall & Theoharis, 2007;
Meadows & Lee, 2002). Furthermore, it is noted that particularly at predominantly white
institutions (PWI’s), race is likely to be treated as “an illegitimate subject for conversations or
policy discourse, thus serving to reify social hierarchies and maintain the status quo” (Gusa,
2010, p. 477). Therefore, Rockbourne serves as what might be considered in some ways an
“unlikely” site for transformative equity work. The site allows situated narratives to highlight
how these individuals have engaged in this work – and how they have found some aspects of the
Rockbourne culture to be facilitative of such work – even within larger cultural circumstances
that might hinder such equity transformation.
Participants. The current study employs a narrative approach to data analysis and presentation.
In order to preserve space for satisfactory depth within individual narratives, it was necessary to
limit the number of interviewees. Thus, in selecting a limited number of participants, five lines
of thinking informed recruitment: (1) existing data on which to build; (2) participants’
willingness to engage in a great deal of “rich” reflection related to the topic; (3) their
involvement with the phenomenon of interest (higher education equity work); (4) reflection of a
range of racial and gender positionalities; and (5) reflection of a range of experiences with equity
work prior to their Scorecard encounters. Selection ultimately included six interviewees – three
team members and three allies. More information about selection will be included in chapter
three, with their respective narratives presented largely a-theoretically in chapter four, allowing
for a separate theoretical synthesis in chapter five.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 14
Research Questions and Framework. The respective narratives of the interviewees provide
the opportunity to examine the following questions:
What has been each individual’s journey over time toward increased acknowledgement
of structural racism, as well as recognition of the institutional and individual
responsibility to advocate for equity (i.e., to foster equity-mindedness) that may
accompany this acknowledgement? How has this journey of acknowledgement
manifested in action for each individual? How has her/his identity informed, and been
informed by, this journey?
More specifically, what is the current state of, and what has been the historical
development of: (a) her/his identity as a person with a given combination of privileged
and oppressed positionalities, and (b) her/his identity as someone who takes action to
advocate for equity (foster equity-mindedness)?
It is recognized that the degree or types of action taken by each individual vary. Thus,
the over-arching research question presented is not a question of whether the individual qualifies
as an agent of equity, but rather of how he makes sense of the ways in which he does or does not
choose to engage. While various forms of action are considered in highlighting the individual’s
journey, the selected framework of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) foregrounds those forms
pertaining to socially constructed meaning-making. Particular attention is paid to the ways in
which the individual has gained a greater understanding of institutional racism via conversations
with others, and the ways in which he engages in sharing to create greater understandings for
others, or “sensemaking for self” and “sensegiving for others” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991 ,p.
444).
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 15
Methodology and Contribution. Further outlined in chapter three, this topic is investigated via
a narrative approach to inquiry that privileges the nuanced and varied stories of individual
members, even as their stories are situated within a case so as to provide context. The Equity
Scorecard not only provides a direct, action-focused setting geared at engendering equity-
focused racial conversations in higher education institutions; it also provides – via research
conducted on its processes and outcomes – the opportunity to study the setting in ways that may
contribute to three distinct types of increased understandings: (1) the understanding of how to
effectively conduct action inquiry settings so that members and others in the community may be
driven to take action toward greater racial equity, (2) an increased understanding of effective
means of working toward equity within higher education settings more generally, and (3)
increased understandings of specified theoretical frameworks, both as they might guide inquiry
settings and as they apply to organizational learning and cultures more broadly.
With regard to the conducting and tools of action inquiry or other action research
settings, this study offers a more nuanced understanding of the identity processes that take place
for involved individuals as they bring their previous experiences and self-concepts to bear in
making sense of the information that they encounter in the setting. Thus, it may contribute to
considerations of how to best conduct facilitation within these settings, or direct future research
focused on process within such settings. Additionally, unlike previous Equity Scorecard
research, this study encompasses both time passed since a team’s completion and the inclusion of
others outside of the team who responded to Scorecard report. Thus, it expands Equity
Scorecard research to explore exemplars of how team members can effectively communicate the
report (including its findings and underlying concepts) with campus peers such that others in the
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 16
community might embrace the work of racial equity, and how both the members and allies might
be affected by their embracing of this work.
With regard to the question of how to work effectively toward greater equity within
higher education institutions more broadly, the study contributes to considerations of the ways in
which the kind of shared and sustained sensemaking that takes place within the action inquiry
setting might be emulated in varied key higher education locales, such as diversity hiring
committees, curriculum discussions, admissions formulations and others. More specifically:
although it is not possible to transfer all of the elements and tools of an inquiry setting like the
Equity Scorecard to other higher education sites, do these equity agents identify aspects that
were key to their developing equity agency that might be translatable to other equity discussions?
Finally, with regard to the framework of sensemaking, the current study contributes to the
understanding of the process of sensegiving, or the intentional “engage(ment) in cycles of
negotiated social construction” with others in the attempt “to influence the sensemaking and
meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality” (Gioia
& Chittipeddi, 1991, p. 434, p. 442). The study answers a call from Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld
(2005) to examine the currently understudied topic of the ways in which sensegiving may affect
the identities of those who engage in the act. It further responds to a call to take sensemaking
research in a more critical direction by incorporating questions of power and privilege into a
“critical sensemaking” framework (Mills, Thurlow & Mills, 2010; Thurlow and Mills, 2009). In
bringing the two together, the study contributes to an understanding of how engagement in
sensegiving around a critical topic like racial equity may involve a process of identity
development, not simply as an active professional, but also with regard to the individual’s varied
positionalities.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 17
Definition of key terms. Because some terms may be used in differing ways across different
studies or settings, it is useful to clarify the ways in which they are conceptualized herein.
Action Inquiry. As described earlier, action inquiry is used here to describe a setting or process
in which individuals come together to collectively investigate their own practices and larger
realities of their institution. Here it is worthy of note that academics writing about the myriad
approaches situated within the umbrella term of “action research” have varied in the lines of
distinction that they draw across methods (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000). Some authors
distinguish the title “action science,” with its focus on practitioners’ cognitive models, from
“action inquiry,” with its emphasis on reflective communities (Greenwood & Levin, 1998).
However, Reason (1994) groups the two into a common division, noting blurred boundaries and
identifying the theorists who have contributed under either title (e.g., Schön). He declares,
“(both) action science and action inquiry are forms of inquiry into practice; they are concerned
with the development of effective action that may contribute to the transformation of
organizations and communities toward greater effectiveness and greater justice” (1994, p. 330).
Implicit within his choice is that in bringing together the foci of cognition and reflective
communities, one considers the entire potential of such professional inquiry groups.
This is appropriate, as the Equity Scorecard is concerned with both the individual
cognitive changes among team members and the potential larger-scale organizational changes
that happen as members seek to encourage others within their inquiry communities and larger
campus communities to reflect on the meaning of extant inequities. Therefore, this text will
follow the distinctions offered by Reason in using the term action inquiry while considering this
term to be largely synonymous with action science. As noted by both Torbert and Reason, such
approaches aim to move their individual participants, upon identifying their own gaps and
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 18
making personal changes, to obtain a kind of “power” to engage thoughtfully, and with
behavioral flexibility, in transformational conversations with members within their immediate or
larger institutional communities (Torbert, 2001; Reason, 1994). While the remainder of the text
will refer to “action inquiry” settings, it is worthy of note by the reader that (a) this term is
largely interchangeable with action science and other subtypes of action research, and (b) the
findings with regard to how action inquiry might best be conducted for desired outcomes might
be largely applicable across various action research types.
Agency. Agency is defined here not by an objective measurement of the outcomes of one’s
actions (although some indicators of campus change will be collected to contextualize the case);
rather, it is defined here by the purposiveness of one’s actions. Citing Giddens (1979), Kemmis
and McTaggart note that participants engaging in any of the forms of action research will often
transition to new ways of viewing a problem as a result of their sustained dialogues, not only to
the points of view of their peers in the inquiry, but also to a larger perspective about how the
local problem connects to larger social and historical conditions. Furthermore, they charge,
“when participants are dissatisfied with the way things are, they do not just want things to be
different; they understand that things have to be made different by themselves and others,” and
they become increasingly conscious that “social settings are constituted through social practices,
and that making change is itself a social practice” (2000, p. 573). Leaning on this idea, I
conceptualize “equity agency” as consisting of one’s awareness of the problem of inequity, one’s
desire to make things different, one’s recognition of one’s own responsibility to work for change
via social practices, and accompanying engagement in social behaviors aimed at the
reconstruction of the social setting toward greater equity. As noted above, sensemaking is a
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 19
useful framework for this examination due its encompassing the topics of understanding, identity
and social meaning-making.
Narrative. The term “narrative” is utilized in two ways within this paper; thus, it is valuable to
both distinguish and relate these two uses. The primary use of the term refers to the
methodology of qualitative research utilized in the current study. By using a narrative approach
to data collection and analysis, I have attended to and preserved the personal stories of the
individual participants. An individual’s “storied narrative” may be described as “the linguistic
form that preserves the complexity of human action with its interrelationship of temporal
sequence, human motivation, chance happenings, and changing interpersonal and environmental
contexts” (Polkinghorne, 1995, p.7). Bruner (1987) argues that “Eventually the … self-telling of
life narratives achieve the power to structure perceptual experience, to organize memory, to
segment and purpose-build the very “events” of a life” (p. 15). In other words, our
interpretations of the events that transpire around us are inherently connected to our construction
of our own identities and what we find meaningful. This form of data examination and its
presentation are valuable for the way in which they may present the reader with insight and
understanding, prompted in part by empathy or other emotions provoked by a person’s story
(Polkinghorne, 1995; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The use of narrative methodology will be
further discussed in chapter three.
The term is used secondarily within this paper to refer to an organizational narrative.
Boje (1995) describes organizations as collective storytelling systems, and Czarniawska notes
that, similar to individuals, “organizations need a coherent narrative,” (1997, p. 24); she goes on
to explain that organizational identity may be conceived of as a “continuous process of narration
where both narrator and the audience are involved in formulating, editing, applauding, and
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 20
refusing various elements of the ever-produced narrative” (1997, p. 49). Thus, the members
interviewed herein are involved in this process of formulating, editing, applauding or refusing
their institution’s “narrative” in various ways as a part of their agency for equity.
Whereas a study centered primarily on the question of organizational narratives might
present data in sections designated by the types of prevailing narratives within the organization,
with individual statements used to demonstrate categories of narratives or reactions (e.g.,
Humphreys & Brown, 2002), the proposed study will foreground individuals’ stories. In doing
so, one area of exploration is the way that the individual perceives the institution’s dominant
narrative (or perhaps various competing narratives) with regard to equity and diversity, and how
she sees her own experience as someone who advocates for equity fitting within that larger
institutional narrative.
Racial/ethnic terminology. It is additionally useful to outline some of the terminology that may
be used with regard to racial or ethnic designations of student populations or of the interviewees.
As the researcher, I refer to “minoritized” students (rather than minority students) as a means of
acknowledging their situatedness within a legacy of oppressive structures and potential present-
day treatments, rather than a simple numerical concept (Stewart, 2013). I will use this term
interchangeably with the phrase “students of color.” While some of the interviewees at times
used the phrase “students of color,” they also used a geographically specific phrase,
“multicultural students.” In the interest of honoring their phraseology, I include this term as it is
used within their direct quotes. Finally, as members self-identified, they often used certain terms
interchangeably (e.g., African-American and Black), and I did the same in writing about them in
respect to their preferences.

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Chapter Two: Review of Related Literature

Conceptions of Agency
As individuals work to create new, shared narratives of their campus’ current status with
regard to racial inequity, they may be confronted with the question of the degree to which they
feel that they can contribute to a new narrative among peers, as opposed to the hegemony of
competing narratives (Humphreys & Brown, 2002). In other words, they may encounter the
dilemma of agency and constraint outlined in the previous chapter. Furthermore, they may
confront the question of how to best engage in this process; in doing so, they may display
differing motivations, interpretations, strategies or actions. Thus, it is valuable to consider how
these cognitions or choices are discussed within conceptions of agency and the ways that these
conceptions inform the questions asked of interviewees in the present study.
Agency in higher education: likely to be tempered. One initial consideration is the likely
temperedness of such expression by higher education professionals within their work settings.
For instance, in their study of faculty grassroots leadership in higher education, Kezar and Lester
(2011) found that these practitioners – conscious of the importance of keeping their jobs – were
not necessarily “activists” in the sense found in the social movements literature. Using a
framework of “tempered radicals” (Meyerson, 2003), the authors found that these actors
exercised individual agency in moderate yet meaningful ways as they worked within the existing
system. One way that they employed their tempered agency, in particular, was to create dialogue
that gave voice and presence to certain ethical issues on campus.
Responding to institutional contradictions. Basing their conceptualization heavily on
Benson’s work (1977), Seo and Creed (2002) argue for a situated understanding of the actor
working within institutional constraints, such that neither the recognition of the individual’s
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agency, nor the reality of current organizational limitations, is lost from the analysis. They
additionally argue, along with Benson, that agents will operate primarily by exploiting existing
institutional contradictions. These authors further argue that contradictions may arise from a
variety of sources, including changes taking place over time (wherein elements of old structures
or agendas are still present at the same time as new ones), as well as contradiction across units
(such as different agendas or values across different departments). Finally, they suggest that a
primary source of contradiction is the degree to which participants come to see certain
institutional arrangements as misaligned with what they have come to define as their own
interests. As these misalignments are recognized, agents will work within existing institutional
scripts (including contradictory ones when necessary) in order to seek a better alignment with
their defined interests (Seo & Creed, 2002; Benson, 1977).
What, then, might be important questions to examine within a focus on the agency of
individuals who have come to see institutional contradictions and chosen to engage based on
them? Seo and Creed state that, “The likelihood of praxis increases as contradictions within and
across social systems develop, deepen, and permeate actors’ social awareness” (p. 230). They
note that, while actors can potentially become reflective at any point, the likelihood of actors
becoming change agents is increased when they “continually and collectively experience
tensions arising from contradictions …” (p. 230). Such a description is relevant to the
experience of Equity Scorecard team members; the Equity Scorecard process makes a particular
contradiction – the current state of student equity on campus, as opposed to the level of equity
that might be expected, assumed or desired – a constant point of focus as actors return repeatedly
to the data while they collectively make sense of disparities. And in the case of allies selected
for this study, they became aware despite not having engaged in an official “inquiry setting”
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 23
around the Scorecard data. How do team members describe their process of becoming aware of
this contradiction within the setting? How do the allies describe their developing awareness of
this contradiction as they encountered it in the Scorecard report or other indicators?
Seo and Creed also propose, as noted earlier, that this shift toward agency is most likely
to occur when actors discover via contradictions that their own interests and ideas are not being
served by current arrangements. Thus, another guiding question emerges with regard to the
consciousness of contradictions: in what ways do these practitioners – inquiry member or ally –
come to “identify” with this as a cause that is contradictory to their own interests? For instance,
do they identify aspects of their own identities in which they have experienced oppression, and
thus view the students’ experience as an extension of their own? Do they identify with what it
means to be an educator within a “just” system, and thus seek to make the system more just? In
what other ways is this interest propelled?
Interpreting resources. Sewell (1992), in suggesting that agency theorists build on but also
seek to better define the concepts laid out by Giddens, places an emphasis in part on the idea of
resources. Sewell offers a definition that encompasses human and non-human resources, with
non-human being any object that can be used to enhance or maintain power (money or space
might be examples here), and human resources including the skills, knowledge or emotional
commitments that might be utilized to gather and employ any other resources. Agreeing with
Giddens that it must be acknowledged that resources are always unevenly distributed, Sewell
also cautions against a determinist view of this power asymmetry that leaves actors as victims of
their lesser power. Instead, he argues, “however unequally resources may be distributed, some
measure of both human and nonhuman resources are controlled by all members of society …
Indeed, part of what it means to conceive of human beings as agents is to conceive of them as
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 24
empowered by access to resources of one kind or another” (p.9-10). He goes on to argue that
what may be particularly important are the ways in which actors interpret their existing
resources, stating, “Any array of resources is capable of being interpreted in varying ways and,
therefore, of empowering different actors and teaching different schemas. Agency, to put it
differently, is the actor’s capacity to reinterpret and mobilize an array of resources” (p. 19).
Therefore, another important line of question focuses on how these agents interpret the
resources to which they have access, and this may be done within the acknowledgement of an
unequal distribution. For instance, while a given member may belong to a group that is granted
less voice within the institution (be this by virtue of race, gender, or professional position such as
staff or non-tenured faculty), does the member also identify avenues by which she has access to
power? Furthermore, are there tools, language, understandings or other resources that these
individuals identify as having gained from the Scorecard? What becomes important is
distinguishing the kinds of empowering interpretations that ultimately lead members to act, thus
corralling their extant resources to create change.
Time orientation. Meanwhile, Emirbayer and Mische (1998) suggest that agents are always
embedded in a time orientation that includes past, present and future, and that as we examine
potential changes in this emphasis, we can gain insight into the ways that agents engage in
inventiveness. “As actors respond to changing environments,” the authors state, “they must
continually reconstruct their view of the past in an attempt to understand the causal conditioning
of the emerging present, while using this understanding to control and shape their responses in
the arising future” (p. 968-969). They argue that, while all actors must continually use all three
orientations, the balance among past (iterational), present (practical-evaluative) and future
(projective) is key.
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Those most focused on the iterational will frequently reactivate past patterns of thought
and action. While this provides stability in sustaining identities, it may also hamper innovation
and support existing patterns. More important to the kind of agency that holds potential for
altering institutional patterns are the latter two time orientations. Agents who are more focused
on the practical-evaluative element are those who, in the moment, are able to engage in a
“conscious searching consideration of how best to respond to situational contingencies in light of
broader goals and projects” (p. 999). Thus, as unexpected responses occur in their environments,
these actors are able to adapt within the moment by changing their behaviors based on a variety
of scripts. Agents more strongly focused the projective are able to envision possible future
trajectories of action by playing out how varied scripts might be used and might play out, thus
they are able to “reconstruct and innovate” based upon “evolving desires and purposes” (p. 984).
Based on this conceptualization, it is relevant to incorporate individual actors’ time orientations
as they interpret and respond to events, particularly those in which they encounter resistance to
equity-focused ideas: As these individuals have negotiated conversations about equity within
their campus communities, were they simply pulling from past interactions? Responding to
identified challenges and adjusting communication strategies? Did the Scorecard process or
tools help in envisioning new means of communication?
Further Framing Conceptions of Agency: Key Concepts from Sensemaking
A number of the previously reviewed agency conceptions point in part to the cognitive
interpretations and decisions on the part of individuals as they engage to construct new patterns,
as well as a focus on not only the larger policy changes that take place, but the individual-level
interactions that can contribute to the evolving nature of organizational cultures. A useful
framework for adding a cohesive umbrella to these questions is the framework of sensemaking
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(Weick, 1995; Weick, 2001). Sensemaking as a framework highlights the importance of
conversations between individuals in the “constant state of becoming” of organizations and
cultures as described by Benson. As Weick et al. (2005), explain,
Students of sensemaking understand that the order in organizational life comes just as
much from the subtle, the small, the relational, the oral, the particular, and the momentary
as it does from the conspicuous, the large, the substantive, the written, the general, and
the sustained … Small structures and short moments can have large consequences (p.
410).

Developing an organizational narrative – conversation and interpretation. Sensemaking
centers in part on the narratives that are created about an organization – its purpose and how well
this purpose is being fulfilled, its goals, its values, the meaning of working there – and
importantly, it recognizes the social interactions through which these narratives are shared,
preserved or changed (Brown, Stacey & Nandhakumar, 2008; Maitlis, 2005; Isabella, 1990). As
these narratives are a part of what makes up the organizational culture, the culture itself becomes
an ever-changing product of the conversations between individuals (Currie & Brown, 2003).
Thus, sensemaking recognizes the Deweyan concept that organization emerges in and through
communication (Dewey, 1916). In other words, conversation is where organizing occurs (Taylor
& Robichaud, 2004).
This process is neither simple nor uniform, as there are potentially as many different
interpretations of what is “happening” within an organization as there are members. Thus, in
order to create any kind of shared agency, two or more members must be equally oriented toward
certain information and reach shared ideas about such information (Taylor & Robichaud, 2004).
Yet the process by which members interpret information is often geared more toward plausibility
and consistency with their current notions than toward accuracy, due in part to the shear amount
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 27
of information that members encounter on a daily basis (Currie & Brown, 2003; Abolafia, 2010;
Weick, 1995).
Thus, when an action inquiry setting is examined through the lens of sensemaking, it
becomes apparent that the inquiry setting serves a key function: It provides a process by which a
group of professionals repeatedly focus on the same cues (Weick, 1995) in their sustained
dialogue. In the case of contradictions as described earlier by Seo & Creed, it becomes more
likely, then, that these members will develop: (1) a shared understanding of what is “happening”
with regard to student equity on their campus, (2) a shared sense of what “should” be happening
based on the organization’s mission, the public mission of higher education or other discussed
standards, and (3) a shared narrative about the existing contradiction between desired and actual
equity. It may be argued that the approximation of this shared narrative can only be reached as
members explore their differing initial interpretations, reflect and return repeatedly to additional
data, and continue to explore evolving interpretations. As noted by Taylor and Robichaud
(2004), “The organization is sustained not by ignoring differences but by making them an object
of conversation. Organizations are polycentric communities that reflect many different interests
and backgrounds, and maintaining co-orientation takes work” (p. 404).
Sharing the narrative with others: sensegiving. Yet, assuming that an individual does indeed
reach a new cognitive interpretation – a new narrative about existing campus contradictions – to
what end is this geared? Eisenberg and Riley (2001) caution about the reductionistic elements of
cognitive approaches to organizational studies, noting that the importance of cognition lies in its
connection to action. What, then, is the kind of action that might be most of interest with regard
to the problem of higher educational inequities? The most immediate kind of change might be a
change achieved within one’s own practices, such as a change in one’s pedagogy, undoubtedly
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important as an individual manifestation of the kind of structural racism described by Scheurich
and Young (1997) and others. Yet, with regard to the social construction of an organization as
outlined herein, arguably of equal value are the ways in which the individual engages in
meaningful conversations with others in order to create shared understanding – or shared
institutional narratives – among a greater number of members of the organization.
Of course, this is not a simple task. For instance, Greenwood and Levin note of inquiry
settings, “The action research inquiry process is linked intimately to action in context. This
means considerable challenges in communicating and abstracting results in a way that others
who did not participate in a particular project … will understand” (2005, p. 54). How might this
be achieved, and how can a sensemaking lens help to illuminate this challenge? Gioia and
Chittipeddi, in their 1991 article, conceptualized what arguably became a new branch in the
theoretical framework of sensemaking when they acknowledged that for actors to engage in
sensemaking, this process is often accompanied by the variant of “sensegiving,” by which they
must work to create shared meanings for specific others.
This is not conceived as an advertisement or even a simple process of persuasion.
Rather, in keeping with the idea of socially constructed meanings, they note that in sensegiving,
these members “engage in cycles of negotiated social construction” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991,
p. 434) with others as they attempt “to influence the sensemaking and meaning construction of
others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality” (p. 442). In doing so,
sensegivers will encounter a great deal of uncertainty about whether others will ultimately reach
the same construction of reality and what the results of others’ constructions will be (Maitlis &
Lawrence, 2007); thus, the means by which the idea is communicated, “in the face of possible
indifference or resistance” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991, p. 435) becomes important.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 29
In this sense, it is not simply about “getting it right. Instead it is about continued
redrafting of an emerging story so that it … is more resilient in the face of criticism” (Weick et
al., 2005, p. 415). This redrafting may be as much a matter of adjusting the styles by which one
communicates the story – be it by a certain type of framing or educating about the topic, by
asking questions or prompting thought among others, for instance – as it is about the story itself.
And in making choices about how to do this, a central component of this cognitive theory –
interpretation – again becomes key. Weick et al. (2005) describe a situation in which a
professional engages in sensegiving with her peers and the process of interpretation in which she
must engage as she gauges their reactions: “What is especially interesting is that she tries to
make sense of how other people make sense of things, a complex determination that is routine in
organizational life” (p. 413). In other words, those who must engage in intentional sensegiving
around an issue will inevitably find themselves having to make sense of others’ responses. As
they do so, they may choose to incorporate this interpretation into their consideration of whether
to continue in a similar vein or to adjust their sensegiving strategies.
Therefore, if a member has had success in communicating ideas of racial equity to others
via a particular strategy, such as educating others about structural racism, then he may employ
the same strategy again. But if the individual encounters apathy or resistance, what may be
equally important is his ability to conceive of new or innovative ways to communicate. In
connecting this to questions of agency, Emirbayer and Mische’s chordal triad becomes
particularly relevant. The question becomes one of whether the agent is stuck re-employing the
schema of the past (iterative), or whether he can assess what is happening in the moment and
adjust accordingly, as well as anticipate possible means by which to communicate in the future
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(practical-evaluative and projective). In other words, the question becomes: How have the
indvidual’s sensegiving strategies evolved over time?
Sensemaking is noted to be both prospective (Weick, 1995) and retrospective (Colville,
Waterman & Weick, 1999) in nature; this brings an alignment between Emirbayer and Mische’s
chordal triad and what Weick et al. (2005) have termed “adaptive sensemaking.” The latter
declare, “Adaptive sensemaking both honors and rejects the past … There are truths of the
moment that change, and take shape through time. It is these changes through time that
progressively reveal that a seemingly correct action ‘back then’ is becoming an incorrect action
‘now’” (p. 412-413). They go on to note that individuals must demonstrate “ambivalent use of
previous knowledge” if they are to “benefit from lessons learned … (so that they may) update
either their actions or meanings in ways that adapt to changes in the system and its context” (p.
414).
The role of identity. In addition to the properties of looking forward and back in selecting
appropriate actions, sensemaking can further illuminate the topic of agency through questions of
identity. Identity, in fact, is noted as one of the basic properties that distinguish sensemaking
from other cognitive theories in organizational communication (Weick et al., 2005, citing
Gililand & Day, 2000). One place where the role of identity becomes important is in the initial
sensemaking around racial inequity data, either as revealed in the Scorecard inquiry or as
summarized in the Scorecard report. This is because, in deciphering large amounts of data as
described earlier, and especially in encountering data that contradicts expectations, individuals
are likely to respond in ways that confirm existing identities and enhance self-esteem and self-
efficacy as they draw on their personal experiences to compose a story that makes sense of what
is happening (Coopey, Keegan & Emler, 1997; Brown, 2000; Currie & Brown, 2003). Thus,
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 31
individuals bring their diverse identities and experiences to bear as they make sense of what they
encounter. And as a result of the socially constructed understanding they reach, some identities
may be more changed by the process than others. Thurlow and Mills (2009) note that as
individuals project their identities onto the environments they face, they ultimately learn about
the accuracy of their accounts of the world and about their identities, and this becomes a
feedback process in which each influences the other.
Weick et al. (2005) similarly describe this phenomenon:
From the perspective of sensemaking, who we think we are (identity) as organizational
actors shapes what we enact and how we interpret, which affects what outsiders think we
are (image) and how they treat us, which stabilizes or destabilizes our identity. Who we
are lies importantly in the hands of others, which means our categories for sensemaking
lie in their hands. If their images of us change, our identities may be destabilized and our
receptiveness to new meanings increase (p. 416).

This idea may take on a particular importance in the role of sensegiving, a role in which
the responses from others may be especially salient. Taylor and Robichaud (2004) describe a
process by which individuals, in co-orienting along with their peers to create shared meaning,
may transform themselves into agents with newly emphasized identities in regard to their roles as
members of the institution. Yet, Weick et al. acknowledge that this is a highly underresearched
area and an avenue ripe for exploration. “Yet to be examined,” they declare, “is the effect of
efforts at sensegiving on the (sensegivers) … When you hear yourself talk, you see more clearly
what matters and what you had hoped to say.” (2005, p. 416).
The role of identity in sensegiving, then, may be iterative, with an existing identity
informing the way in which a member chooses to engage, and with this identity further informed
by the ways in which others respond to him or her in the sensegiving role. Finally, the flavor of
this iterative process is likely determined by the way in which Emirbayer and Mische’s chordal
triad manifests. As members interpret either the positive or negative reactions from others, their
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 32
expectations about future interactions and the degree to which they pull from new schema in
these ongoing interactions may come into play. In essence, then, a model of agency that
incorporates both one’s choices about strategies of communication, and one’s identity as an
agent – and acknowledges the complex ways in which each may inform the other – is likely to
achieve a fuller picture than either element alone.
A critical sensemaking lens. Recently, scholars have critiqued the sensemaking framework,
noting that while useful, it is incomplete for its lack of attention to issues of power and privilege
(Mills et al., 2010; Thurlow and Mills, 2009). Arguing that Weick’s approach is limited by an
“under focus on issues of power, knowledge, structure, and past relationships” (p. 188), Mills et
al. call for a critical sensemaking approach, one in which the ongoing social process of meaning
making is examined with special attention to how the “concept of organizational power places
local meanings in a broader understanding of privilege” (2010, p. 190). They encourage a
particular focus on the sensemaking constructs of identity and plausibility, or more specifically,
the ways in which individuals’ meaning-making with regard to what is happening in the
institution is influenced by – and influences – their individual identities. Such a focus is
particularly relevant for the Equity Scorecard conversation, in which privilege of individuals –
via their racial, professional and other positionalities – may influence how they enter the
conversation about race. Furthermore, their reflection on their own power or privilege may be
invoked by such conversations, speaking to the aforementioned iterative role of identity in the
sensemaking process (Weick, 1995).
Here also, the sensemaking framework incorporates the acknowledgement of institutional
constraint, as these authors advocate for “acknowledging power in a broader social context”
(Mills et al., 2010, p. 190) as well as attention to the way that some voices may be heard over
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others within the organization and the ways that the organization may privilege some narratives
over others. Connecting this with Sewell’s agency conception of “interpreting resources,” a
tension develops that requires the acknowledgement of two complementary perspectives. From
a structural perspective, institutional members do, indeed, have differing access to privileges,
opportunities and perceived legitimacy by others within their institution; at the same time, within
this acknowledgement (and within the critical assumption that these privileges differ along
racial, gender and other positional lines) it is also useful to come to understand how the
interpretations made by these individuals may contribute to the ways in which they navigate
these barriers as they engage in sensegiving about racial equity.
Review of Sensegiving Research
While a review of all of the research that has been conducted within a general
sensemaking framework may be beyond the scope of this paper, useful herein is a review of what
has been found among studies conducted specifically to examine the phenomenon of
sensegiving. These are valuable both in terms of shedding light on potential considerations for
the communicative agency and identities of action inquiry members and allies, as well as for
consideration of the ways in which the conceptualization of sensegiving as an act has developed
over a series of studies.
Sensegiving by leaders in higher education and other fields. In their influential study, Gioia
and Chittipeddi (1991) conducted an ethnographic examination of a strategic change effort by a
new president at a large, public university. With one researcher serving as an insider who
worked closely with the president and participated in the strategic planning committee, and the
other researcher aiming to provide potentially more objective analysis, they analyzed recorded
interviews with the president and other senior executives, daily records of observed events, as
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well as university documents related to the change process. After conducting an initial
descriptive round of analysis and a second theoretical round, they concluded that the president
had not simply engaged in a process of dissemination about his vision. Rather, he had engaged
in alternating phases of interpretation and action. He first made sense of the current status of the
institution, a process in which he had to engage in a “cognitive re-orientation of existing
interpretive schemes” (p. 444). He next engaged in a process of helping others to make sense in
a way that aligned with his newly developed vision; in other words, he now engaged in a round
of “sensegiving.” This process of articulating a new vision and helping others to create
understanding did not end here, however. Rather, he engaged in a second round of personal
sensemaking, this time to make sense of how others were responding and incorporate this new
information into considerations of how to communicate a vision, followed again by a round of
sensegiving. Thus, the authors described the overall process as involving alternate rounds of
cognition and action, or an iterative process of “sensemaking for self” and “sensegiving for
others” (p. 444).
Smerek (2011) built upon these findings by interviewing 18 college and university
presidents who had been externally appointed within the last five years. Analysis was broadly
framed within sensemaking and sensegiving, while using a grounded theory approach to allow
emic themes to emerge. The author identified specific strategies that new presidents used to
balance their “simultaneous being and learning.” In addition, the author noted that while
presidents demonstrated some agency, they also showed a heavy focus for normative concerns.
The author also noted a great deal of forward-looking intentionality about actions on the part of
interviewees, suggesting the importance of both future and past orientations of sensemaking.
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In a study of leaders within another industry, Bartunek, Krim, Necochea and Humphries
(1999) engaged in a ten-year insider/outsider examination of the carrying out of an initiative
within a city government agency. Asking similar questions to Gioia and Chittipedi, they added a
temporal dimension, addressing how earlier events affect later ones, specifically “the effects of
prior sensemaking-sensegiving cycles on new ones” (p. 42). Noting the concept of “espoused
theories” versus “theories in use” (Argyris and Schon, 1974) to imply that leaders may not
always engage in sensegiving in ways that match their beliefs, they argue for the study of the
potential difference between the ways that leaders understand change as opposed to how they
communicate it. In addition to identifying these leaders’ specific strategies, they identified
relationships between the leaders’ sensemaking and sensegiving. Specifically, they noted that
there was greater consistency between the leaders’ sensegiving and personal sensemaking when
they perceived threats to the program; whereas, when personal threats were perceived (such as
tentativeness of their own jobs), their sensegiving efforts became less congruent. The authors
interpreted, as well, that leaders’ sensegiving built on their previous experiences.
Sensegiving by mid-level members and diverse stakeholders. In a case study that ultimately
offered a critique of the common focus on leaders in sensegiving research, Snell (2002)
interviewed both leaders and mid-level members in a case study of a Hong Kong-based utility
company moving from a hierarchical communication style toward becoming more of a learning
organization (Senge, 1990). Noting the idea of “communities of practice” (Wenger, 1998) as a
building block of a learning organization due to its focus on open and shared learning among all
members, Snell concluded that the organization’s emphasis on top-down sensegiving had, in
fact, undermined its desired movement toward becoming a learning organization. In particular,
the company’s privileging of top-down messages over “critical upward experience sharing” (p.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 36
565) had helped perpetuate existing structures and assumptions, rather than foster more open
sharing among members. While the company did make movements toward the learning
organization goal, Snell emphasized that members at different levels had different perceptions of
this movement (in other words, differed in their sensemaking) and that in such an effort, it was
key to consider the importance of sensegiving not only by leaders but also by midlevel members,
as these may take on different forms or messages.
Moving in this direction, several studies have focused on the work of middle managers
specifically, or of diverse arrays of issue stakeholders. For instance, Maitlis (2005) engaged in a
longitudinal qualitative study of three British symphony orchestras in order to investigate the
social processes of sensemaking and sensegiving among large groups of diverse stakeholders.
The author noted that orchestras served as valuable study sites because of their high degree of
ambiguity, with many issues being contested by multiple stakeholders. Critiquing the occasional
focus in early sensemaking literature on settings characterized by sudden disasters or by tightly
coupled information systems (both of which may result in more consistent processes of
sensemaking among members), she argued for the need to understand the more mundane
processes of sensemaking and sensegiving among heterogeneous parties in complex
organizations. Conducting formal and informal interviews and meeting observations, she found
that leaders tended to engage in sensegiving within controlled settings (such as boardrooms),
whereas other stakeholders were more likely to engage in sensegiving within sporadic and
ongoing casual conversations.
Maitlis and Lawrence (2007) engaged in an additional longitudinal study of leaders and
stakeholders within British symphony orchestras, this time focusing on the sets of conditions that
triggered and enabled sensegiving for the two groups. They found that while a person’s
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 37
sensegiving seemed to affect his or her own sensemaking, the reverse was not necessarily the
case; in other words, developing a refined or new opinion of an issue did not necessarily mean
that the person would attempt to influence the opinions of others. When it did occur, sensegiving
was generally triggered by a perceived “gap” in the sensemaking processes of others. For non-
leader stakeholders, this happened when they (1) perceived the issue to be of import and (2)
perceived that they could not rely on leaders to handle the necessary sensegiving around the
issue. The subsequent desire to engage in sensegiving was further enabled when they felt that
they possessed relevant expertise; when they felt that they were perceived as legitimate; and
when scheduled or ad hoc opportunities presented themselves. Identifying slightly different
triggers and enablers for leaders, Maitlis and Lawrence again highlight the importance of
studying the sensegiving of members who are not in leadership positions. The authors also
presented the idea of “bounded responsibility,” as individuals only engaged in sensegiving
“when they perceived a need to take some responsibility for an issue” (p. 29). This was driven
“sometimes by self-interest, but also by feelings of responsibility or organizational stewardship”
(p. 30). The authors suggested further research into what happens as members become more
confident about their expertise and legitimacy regarding an issue.
In a study of mid-level managers, Smith, Plowman and Duchon (2010) conducted in-
depth interviews and site visits at eleven high-performing plants across nine industries. Via an
inductive thematic analysis, the authors found that these middle managers did not talk about how
they implemented strategy as the authors had expected, but rather how they tried to reinforce
values and perceptions within their everyday actions in the organization. Ultimately connecting
this to the sensegiving literature, the authors emphasized two emergent themes of sensegiving:
(1) the “everydayness” of ongoing microinteractions with others that were not necessarily
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attached to a singular event or phase of uncertainty, and (2) the focus on intangibles that was not
limited to explicit statements, but rather included what was modeled in behaviors, or suggested
by body language or other symbolic communications. They described sensegiving as an act that
can create “sentiment” outcomes, which can ultimately lead to “substantive” actions (p. 21).
Questions of positionality in sensegiving. One of the first to bring questions of ethnic and
gendered positionality into the examination of sensegiving, Rouleua (2005) conducted an
ethnographic case study of middle managers in a women’s clothing company undergoing a
change strategy. Relevant for its socioeconomic, ethnic and linguistic undertones, this strategy
involved expanding the market to include a more diverse demographic, and the role of the
middle managers was to engage in sensegiving with various clientele who might hold differing
perceptions about the value of this shift. The authors identified “micropractices” within the
middle managers’ sensegiving strategies. These included translating the new orientation via
stories, metaphors and other rhetorical devices, as well as justifying the change in reasons that
were based in the receiver’s discourse. Additionally, the authors found that these middle
managers “overcoded” their strategies based on commonalities or differences in the linguistic,
ethnic or gendered characteristics between themselves and the receiver. For instance, when the
two spoke a common language other than the dominant language, the sensegiver often initiated
dialogue in this language to establish a commonality. Thus, the authors described sensegiving in
terms of its tacit or intuitive use of microprocesses that are embedded in a broader social context.
Focusing on the collective work of sensegiving. Arguing that the emphasis on individuals may
not highlight collective sensemaking processes, Foldy, Goldman and Ospina (2008) proposed
that a focus on the desired cognitive shifts among recipients would allow researchers to direct
attention to the work of sensegiving. Connecting sensemaking and sensegiving with social
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movements literature, they conducted group and individual interviews at twenty non-profit social
change agencies. The authors identified two broad categories of the sensegiving work in which
agency members must collectively engage: How the audience understands the purpose of the
organization’s work, and how the audience understands the constituency or population served by
this work. The authors also observed that sensegiving about the problem was a separate framing
process from sensegiving about the solution.
Diverse and contested narratives. Humphreys, Ucbasaran and Lockett (2012) sought to
identify the stories used commonly by jazz musicians to make sense of their professional lives.
Selecting the jazz community for its equivocality and freedom of expression, they note that the
community continuously seeks to balance the tension between creative diversity and the
necessary cohesion of bands. One way that members make sense of this tension is to tell and
retell stories that convey what it means to be a jazz musician (identity) and what jazz is or is not
(definition). Conducting an ethnographic study that encompassed formal interviews, fieldnotes
from informal conversations and ongoing email exchanges, the authors found that the stories or
narratives that were most contested were those that ran counter to the dominant discourse.
Specifically, those narratives that were met with the most resistance were resisted not simply for
the direction that they prescribed, but for the fact that they prescribed any direction at all in a
community that highly values individual creativity and autonomy. The authors described such
stories as forms of “antenarrative,” or new but still incomplete narratives which serve as “a
wager that a proper narrative can be constituted” (Boje, 2001, p.1) in attempt to shape future
direction by giving voice to certain interpretations.
In another examination of diverse narratives, Søderberg (2003) conducted a longitudinal
case study of a company that had acquired a series of internal acquisitions. She conducted
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interviews that were narrative in nature in order to capture the different workviews and
worldviews of members at different levels and to examine how some stories of the organization’s
changes might be marginalized. Noting that members differed in how they experienced and
interpreted common events, she also described how particular members identified with certain
groups based on gender, position or common interests and how these contributed to common
narratives of the change within groups. She ultimately cautioned against the common focus in
research on the narratives created by upper management, as members at other levels may have
different narratives of the change process. She additionally identified that the alternations of
sensemaking and sensegiving did not occur in neat phases as alluded to in Gioia and
Chittipeddi’s early conception (1991), but that the two occurred in more iterative ways.
Synthesis. In synthesizing these research conclusions and directions, a number of relevant
themes emerge. While early sensegiving research focused on strategic and official work by
high-level leaders, ongoing studies have increasingly emphasized the importance of examining
the kind of sensegiving in which non-leaders engage. This kind of communication is likely to be
more varied, more nuanced and more sporadic. It is likely to encompass not only explicit
statements but to be “overcoded” in intuitive and symbolic ways. The act of sensegiving is
likely to be connected in an iterative way to one’s own sensemaking, drawing on both past
experiences and on one’s ability to look forward with intentionality. Questions of the degree to
which one engages may be determined, in part, by perceptions of job security or other normative
concerns, by one’s sense of personal responsibility for carrying this message, and by one’s sense
of her own expertise on the topic. The reception of others to the message may depend on the
degree to which the message is coherent with messages being delivered by leaders and, similarly,
the degree to which the constructed narrative runs counter to the organization’s dominant
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discourse. In terms of how to communicate the message to others, members may be served by
considering how to frame both the problem and solutions, as well as considering how they want
to affect peers’ understandings of the institution’s mission or responsibility to its service
population (e.g., students), as well conceptions of the population themselves.
Critical considerations. While none of these articles were explicitly framed within a critical
sensemaking perspective, the two that most closely approach this lens, and thus have particular
relevance for the current study, are those by Rouleau (2005) and Humphreys et al. (2012).
Rouleau’s examination of the linguistic, ethnic or gendered “overcoding” practices in
sensegiving is meaningful for the way in which it considers the potential relevance of
positionalities of sensegivers as they engage in sensegiving around a topic that is also racialized.
Importantly, her ethnographic study, largely observation-based, served to document that these
overcoding practices were taking place, but not necessarily to examine the conscious or
unconscious nature of these actions. The current study adds to this understanding by examining
the ways in which sensegivers may (or may not) recognize potential for connections between self
and particular audiences via these characteristics, and the study brings an intentional focus on
these topics as they relate to forms of privilege and oppression.
Similarly, the study by Humphreys et al. (2012), while also not explicitly framed within
critical sensemaking, is relevant for its acknowledgement of the importance of a dominant
narrative. While the current study adds a critical frame in examining an explicitly racial
narrative, the Humphreys et al. study is important for its description of a setting in which
resistance to a narrative comes not only for its differing from an existing narrative, but also for
prescribing a definition among a constituency who do not like to be externally “defined.” As
noted in chapter one, higher education is similarly characterized by a great deal of ambiguity and
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autonomy. Thus, the current study adds to this by examining a similarly loosely coupled setting,
but with regard to a narrative that sits explicitly within a critical framework.
Finally, the Maitlis and Lawrence study (2007) is valuable for its exploration of the
question of “bounded responsibility,” or the extent to which members consider themselves
responsible to take on the role of sensegiving for their new understandings. In laying a more
critical lens over these findings, one is prompted to explore the extent to which individuals
consider responsibility in the context of their privileges. As noted, these authors also encouraged
additional research into what happens as individuals gain confidence in their expertise about an
issue, a question particularly relevant for those who have experienced the sensemaking process
around the Equity Scorecard.
Exemplar Studies of Action Inquiry and Other Action Research
In addition to research findings about sensegiving, it is valuable to examine some of the
ways that research about the impacts of action inquiry and other action research projects have
been conceptualized. A great many articles about action inquiry and other forms of action-
oriented research are conceptual discussions of the epistemological or methodological tensions
that arise within such research, or the societal contexts surrounding such work (e.g., Bradbury-
Huang, 2010; Greenwood, 2012). This frequency is perhaps indicative of the ongoing need to
define and articulate action research methods to academic communities that may still see these
methods as marginal. Of the articles that do focus on a particular action setting, most are not
studies of impact, per se, but rather tell the story of what took place in the setting.
Such articles often begin with a description of the circumstances that prompted the
inquiry group, moving on to how and why it gathered, some of the challenges and successes that
were experienced along the way, and the “lessons” to be inferred from these challenges and
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successes (e.g., Charles & Glennie, 2001; McCarthy & Riner, 1996). While these often include
some quotes from members as a part of narrating the story, rarely do they describe the methods
of participant observation or other data collection used in gathering these quotes, nor are findings
generally couched in theoretical frameworks, other than occasionally a reference to an
underlying principle of action methods. Others are stronger in their connections to underlying
theories and their demonstration of the “journeys” of participants via description of process (e.g.,
Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2003). This heavy focus on narrating the “doing” that takes place is in
alignment with the underlying epistemologies of action research as described earlier.
Nonetheless, there is a call for more studies that assess the outcomes of such work
(Chandler & Torbert, 2003) to complement these approaches. As Chandler and Torbert note, “In
action research, timely action in the present, transforming historical patterns into future
possibilities, is the ultimate aim and achievement” (p. 135). In aiming to assess this potential,
some impact studies may use interviews or surveys at the conclusion of an action inquiry project
to assess members’ predictions or efficacy for engaging in certain actions in the future (e.g.,
Huffman & Kalnin, 2002). Chandler and Torbert note that while useful, these predictions cannot
tell us as researchers what will ultimately happen, and thus, additional “past-oriented, third-
person empirical research that assesses the efficacy and transformational capacity of these future-
vision-oriented research methods will eventually be necessary to test their actual effects” (p.
139).
Studies that have taken this “past-oriented” focus vary in whether they examine actions
or perceptions, and whether these belong to members of the inquiry group or to members of
larger impacted communities. For instance, in a study of the ongoing effects of teacher action
research, Sneider and Lemma (2004) conducted follow-up surveys of 34 teachers who had
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engaged in action research with their students as part of their master’s capstone within the last
decade; eighteen of these members additionally participated in interviews. While these
individuals had participated in singular, rather than joint, action research projects, the study is
relevant for its addressing of the question: To what extent had these teachers “sustained an
inquiry mindset”? While few teachers had conducted additional action research due to time and
resource limitations, the majority indicated that they were still incorporating elements into their
classrooms, such as a greater reflexivity about their teaching than they had prior to the
experience, and that they were still utilizing teaching methods that they had developed during
their action research, albeit modified for context. The majority also indicated personal efficacy
in their ability to bring about positive changes in students’ learning and attributed this in part to
the action research projects. While focused mainly on self-reported data and largely atheoretical,
the strength of this study is its examination of the sustained attitudes and behaviors of prior
action research members that they attribute to the action research experience.
Looking instead at the inquiry setting’s effects on its target community, Pang et al. (2002)
describe the reconstructing of a nursing curriculum within a Hong Kong higher education
institution. Because the new model of instruction was likely to be apprehended by faculty and
students alike, action inquiry was chosen as the strategy for its implementation with the goal of
achieving a more positive reception among students. A core group of teachers, tutors and
students engaged in inquiry to explore current attitudes about the curriculum and to surmise
appropriate means of implementing the new curriculum based on these concerns. Upon
completion of the inquiry and implementation of the curriculum, the authors surveyed all
students of the school with an 81% response rate, finding that student opinions toward the new
instruction method had shifted in a positive direction, despite some lingering reservations. The
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 45
authors concluded that the inquiry group had largely achieved its goal and thus, that an inquiry
group was an appropriate selection for the implementation strategy. They additionally noted this
as evidence that action inquiry can be successful in Asian cultures, despite their more common
embracing of hierarchical knowledge structures. The strength and weakness of Pang et al.’s
approach illustrate a conundrum at the heart of assessment of inquiry group work. It may be
argued that the approach was particularly strong since what was ultimately assessed was their
actual outcome goal (the shifting of public perception). At the same time, as measurements
move away from the actual actions of inquiry group members, it becomes more difficult to
attribute the results directly to the inquiry group. In other words, it is possible that this change
would have happened even with another implementation method, due to the students’ increased
familiarity with the new curriculum upon its implementation.
In a rare example of an inquiry/non-inquiry comparison study, Yorks (2005) writes about
a series of action inquiry groups that were established at various sites to address the joint
concerns of stress and aggression within the Veterans Administration. Because eleven VA sites
had inquiry groups working on the problem while others did not, and because the research team
had access to relevant human resources data, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the
pilot sites (those with action inquiry groups) experienced more improvement over the course of
the project than did comparison sites (facilities that did not enact inquiry groups) as measured in
the frequency and results of key human resources reports. These included significant reductions
in reports of stress and aggression at the inquiry sites but not control sites; reduction in 8 out of 9
behaviors related to work compensation claims at the inquiry sites but not control sites; and a
greater increase in employee satisfaction at inquiry sites than control sites (Yorks, 2005;
Harmon, 2004). An assessment method such as this one is rare due to the necessary access to
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 46
extant relevant, standardized reports within the organization, as well as the ability to use
comparison sites. While quite strong in providing empirical evidence of the results of an action
inquiry setting, the cited reports do not illuminate the actions or processes by teams that
contributed to such change.
Researchers who aim to study the “effects” of action inquiry must inevitably make such a
choice in narrowing research questions. Are they more interested in the question of the sustained
beliefs and behaviors among inquiry participants, or in the desired outcomes among the targeted
population(s) or setting(s)? While the latter serves to provide empirical evidence for the
effectiveness of inquiry groups in reaching their ultimate goals, the former serves to illuminate
the potentially complex action and thinking processes of members such that the study may
inform the ways in which future inquiry groups are conducted. In selecting either prioritization,
assumptions must be made, either (1) assumptions that the inquiry members’ actions are, in fact,
what caused the identified empirical changes, or (2) assumptions that the identified sustained
actions or beliefs by members will, in fact, contribute to the desired changes among the target
population or setting. Nonetheless, each type of study is valuable for its ability to contribute to a
fuller picture of the existing knowledge base about the elements and results of action inquiry.
The current study examines how select action inquiry members share their equity-minded
messages with others and how they come to identify with this responsibility; it addresses, as
well, how select allies received the message from these members, subsequently identified with
the need to act and took up responsibility for communicating to others. The study addresses the
previously mentioned call by Benson (1977) to conduct research that helps to construct better
understandings of the ways that actors may potentially transform their social settings. As such, it
is primarily a study that adds to conceptualizations of agency and further nuances our
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understandings of sensegiving. As will be explored in chapter three, this was accomplished via
a situated study of the narratives of equity agents.

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Chapter Three: Methods
Selecting a Methodology: Narrative
In focusing the research question of individuals’ identities as equity agents, and in
incorporating the dimension of the passage of time both before and since their Scorecard
encounters, an appropriate methodology is the use of narrative, a methodology that allows for a
centering of each individual’s lived experiences. Narrative has been described as a way of
thinking (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) or even a paradigm (Fisher, 1985); thus, in inevitably
shaping the questions asked by a researcher, it becomes a “lens” that directs a study. To work
within a narrative approach is to frame questions within a set of assumptions that lend
themselves to a focus on the agency of an individual (Mishler, 1996; Riessman, 2008); yet the
importance of context is not ignored, as the interest is not simply in the individual but in how he
makes meaning within the contexts he encounters (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). A narrative
lens is additionally well-aligned with some of the underlying assumptions and central concepts
of both sensemaking and action inquiry.
Narrative alignment with the emphases of sensemaking and sensegiving: Interpretation,
identity, looking forward and backward. Central to both sensemaking as a theoretical
framework and narrative as a methodological lens is the focus on identity. As noted earlier, in
order for practitioners to come to identify with student outcome equity as a cause for concern,
they may need to identify in some way with the experiences of minoritized

students, be it by
connecting to an aspect of their own experiences, by identifying with peers who have taken up
the mantle, or by other means. Polkinghorne explains,
Life stories need not be simply self-centered or narcissistic. Our individual stories can,
and perhaps need to, expand the protagonist from an I to a we … The importance of
events is no longer determined only by their effect on me, but now also by their impact
on the others who have been taken in as part of my own identity (1991, p.146-147).
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Furthermore, with its emphasis on the passage of time, narrative, like sensemaking,
implies a focus on the ways in which individuals look both backward and forward as they place
and explain their actions. Narrative methodologists argue that we come to know ourselves via
the stories that we use as we weave together our past experiences, current events and future
expectations (Polkinghorne, 1991; Bruner, 1987; Riessman, 2008). This includes the elements of
retention and protention, analogous to the way that we experience a melody, not simply one note
at a time, but with an awareness of previous and upcoming notes that create a whole that is built
from its parts (Polkinghorne, 1991; Husserl, 1964). Fisher (1985) notes that the stories humans
construct function in two ways: to justify the actions or decisions we have already made or taken,
and to direct our future decisions and actions. In essence, then, a narrative lens allows a
researcher to gather data in ways that will illuminate how individuals look backward and forward
in creating a sense of continuity within which their choices – such as choices about whether and
how to engage in equity-focused sensegiving – are contextualized.
Yet, in emphasizing time, a narrative focus provides not only the opportunity to
illuminate how their actions represent a continuity, but also how they might recognize particular
instances that represented deviations from prior patterns or behaviors. For instance, Bateson
states, “Adaptation comes out of encounters with novelty that may seem chaotic. In trying to
adapt, we may need to deviate from cherished values, behaving in ways we have barely
glimpsed, seizing on fragmentary clues” (Bateson, 1994, cited in Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).
Thus, in asking individuals about their agency with regard to issues of equity over time, one
gains the ability to identify not only patterns of development but also “self reported break points”
(Neumann, 1995). In the case of Equity Scorecard participants and allies, this question may be
of particular relevance due to the new understandings, language, data and tools acquired by these
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individuals. Narrative theorist Jerome Bruner, for instance, describes how language and other
symbolic systems mediate our ways of thinking about a subject, thus shaping the ways we
represent reality when it comes to that subject (Bruner, 1991). Hence, narrative is well-suited to
the question of how the “trying out” of using these tools and language in new ways may have
amplified existing identities as agents of equity, or may have provided new “break points” in
which individuals began to take up responsibility for an equity agenda for the first time.
To contribute to a fuller picture of agency as it does or does not manifest in this context,
it is equally important to understand how members make sense of the times that they failed to
advocate for equity. These explanations may be situated within the identities that participants
have constructed for themselves as professionals and whether these professional identities
include responsibility for – and capability of – agency for equity; they may equally connect to
whether and how these individuals conceive of their likelihood of future agentic actions. As
explained by Polkinghorne (1991),
We are in the middle of our own stories, and we do not control all the circumstances that
affect the outcome of those stories. We have to revise our plots when events impose
themselves in such a way that we cannot complete the story as planned. (We do not have
the ability) to alter or neglect those life events of which we are ashamed or about which
we are guilty. Rather, we are narrators of our self-stories, constructing plots or story lines
that integrate and give meaning to all the critical events that have been part of our
existence (p. 146).

This construction of coherent and justifying stories is not limited to the explanation of one’s own
actions, but include the ways in which individuals make meaningful the actions of peers, groups
and institutions (Polkinghorne, 1991), thus encompassing the ways that inquiry members make
sense of the reactions that they encounter from others.
Narrative alignment with undergirding assumptions of action inquiry: Real-world contexts
and socially constructed meaning. Both narrative and action research methodologies are
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grounded in Dewey’s pragmatism and Aristotle’s phronesis, with their emphasis on
understanding how humans exercise judgment in their manipulation of material and social
factors in real contexts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Fisher, 1985; Greenwood & Levin, 2005;
Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000). Just as Greenwood and Levin argue of action research that while
“theoretical capability is necessary … no results ever will be achieved unless local actors learn
how to act in appropriate and effective ways and use suitable tools and methods,” (p. 51), Fisher
likewise argues that “narrative rationality … is an attempt to capture … ‘practical wisdom’”
(1985, p. 349-350, italics mine).
Similarly, both lenses acknowledge that meaning is socially constructed and that this
construction should be studied not as an attempted snapshot of objective reality, but rather as a
process that in itself helps to create reality. While narrative emphasizes the ways in which
individuals construct their understandings in order to create cohesion between past, present and
future, as well as consistency between external understandings and their own self-understanding
(Polkinghorne, 1988; Bruner, 1987), action research methodologies emphasize the ways in which
groups of individuals co-construct shared understandings. Thus, in bringing the two together,
one is compelled to investigate how the co-constructed understandings among these individuals
may have informed and been built upon their self-understandings. In using this to undergird a
question of agency, one must ask how each individual’s sense of herself as an agent has been
informed by the co-constructive – in other words, the shared sensemaking – experiences in
which she has engaged.
Situating Narratives within a Case
Narrative analysis is noted to benefit from placement within a case, such that the
researcher has “some conception of the unity or totality of a system with some kind of outlines or
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boundaries” (Stake, 1988, p.255, cited in Polkinghorne, 1995). Indeed, as discussed in chapters
one and two, team members or allies of the Equity Scorecard must exercise their agency within
complex institutional environments that constrain and enable their sensemaking and sensegiving
actions in a variety of ways (Weber & Glynn, 2006). Thus, the reader will ultimately benefit
from a contextualized telling of these stories in a way that allows her to consider some of the
environmental circumstance as experienced by the individuals. This is achieved by “fencing in”
the topic to be studied (Merriam, 1998) within the bounded system (Creswell, 2007) of
Rockbourne State University. Via this case-level contextualization, the reader is assisted in
making naturalistic generalizations (Stake, 1995), or informed judgments about the extent to
which the described phenomena may be similar to those experienced within other case settings,
especially settings with which the reader may be familiar.
Furthermore, it has been observed that the act of sensegiving is highly embedded in both
the identities and situational contexts of actors (Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007). Therefore,
complementary use of these two methodologies within sensegiving research allows for a
balanced examination of identity and context, in which the findings regarding each may inform
the other. And the privileging within this study of the personal narrative – with its emphasis on
the cognitive elements of a person’s experience – is well-suited to answer the call from Weick et
al. (2005) for the examination of the effects of sensegiving on the identities of those engaged in
the act.
Assumptions and Tensions

In doing qualitative research (indeed, all forms of research), it is important to articulate
one’s informing paradigm and the subsequent assumptions that undergird a study guided by this
paradigm. Additionally, in combining paradigms or frameworks, it is valuable to acknowledge
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the tensions that may arise from potentially contradictory underlying assumptions (Lincoln,
Lynham & Guba, 2011). In the proposed study, one tension arises from the merging of two
paradigms, while another arises from the question of the place of theory. The following sections
will outline some of these tensions; subsequently I will discuss, within my data collection and
analysis sections, the means by which I approach resolution of these tensions.
Paradigmatic tensions. Narrative work is generally encapsulated within an interpretivist
paradigm, which recognizes the importance of the meaning that people confer on their own and
others’ actions, as well as the role of the researcher in making choices about how to collect and
analyze data and what to infer from the data. Researchers are inevitably making interpretive
decisions at every step of the research process (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Riessman, 2008;
Bruner, 1991), from the interview to transcription to how and what to represent for readers.
Narrative researchers generally acknowledge that what is “captured” is not a snapshot of an
objective reality, but rather a valuable telling of a story as experienced by the individual, then co-
constructed in dialogue with the researcher, and finally interpreted and conveyed for
meaningfulness by the researcher (Riessman, 2008; Bruner, 1991). Throughout this process, the
foregrounding of one aspect or another may render other aspects of the story less apparent or
invisible (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Therefore, the usefulness of a study comes not in its
capacity to capture with certainty what has taken place, but to highlight the meanings created by
members and the potential implications of these meanings for ongoing actions and social
constructions. Or, in the words of Long and Mills (2010), “It is not the meaning per se of an
event that matters as much as the faith we place in our interpretation of it, because it is this faith
that shapes action and gives rise to a constructed reality” (p.33).
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At the same time, a study of racial inequity is well-served by a critical paradigm, in
which assumptions are likely to encompass a focus on issues of power, privilege and justice –
such as that offered by a critical sensemaking perspective – and research will be centered on
addressing these issues to bring about change. Such “research thus becomes a transformative
endeavor unembarrassed by the label ‘political’ and unafraid to consummate a relationship with
an emancipatory consciousness” (Kincheloe & McLaren, p. 140). Yet there are inherent tensions
between interpretivist and critical paradigms, as interpretivists have critiqued critical
perspectives for their absolutism, while critical theorists have critiqued interpretivism for its risk
of perpetuating existing assumptions or structures (Taylor & Trujillo, 2001).
For instance, Clandinin & Connelly (2000) caution that narrative researchers must keep
in mind that to make assumptions about the ways that race, gender, class and power play out in
organizations is to make assumptions about the existence of an objective reality, which may
approach a kind of positivism that is at odds with narrative thinking. Conversely, Taylor and
Trujillo admonish that qualitative researchers who assume a kind of relativism in their research
risk “cultivating an aesthetic experience that does not disturb or radicalize its consumers” (p.
169). Thus, my challenge as a researcher was to keep questions of race and other positionalities
at the foreground (and inform these questions with the acknowledgment of unequal power
structures) while also respecting the varied ways in which individuals interpreted the presence or
meaning of such structures within their organizations and for themselves.
Formalistic tensions. One of the central tensions in narrative work is the question of the
appropriate place of theory. This tension arises because theoretically oriented, or “formalistic,”
thinking is likely to employ people only as exemplars of a category, whereas in narrative
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thinking, people are valued for their embodiments of actual lived experiences (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000). Or, in the words of Taylor and Trujillo in describing interpretivist research:
Theory … is held in tension as a resource establishing the significance of the
ethnographic argument, and as a powerful “hammer” that may potentially shatter its emic
character. In this view, the goal of interpretivist research is to contribute to … theory
without succumbing to positivist tendencies toward totalization and reductionism (p.
184).

This brings a conflict for the researcher that presents itself at each stage of the inquiry
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In both the initial questions and the analysis of data, the dilemma
is whether to view the phenomena through the selected framework(s) or to view each
individual’s story in its entirety. Each, if overemphasized, may detract from the other. This
dilemma similarly presents itself at the outcome of a narrative study, as the researcher must
wrestle with the question of what can be claimed based on the study, or what is to be taken from
the findings. Thus, “learning to think narratively at the boundaries between narrative and other
forms of inquiry is, perhaps, the single most important feature of successful narrative thinking”
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p.24-25)
Resolution of this dilemma comes in the suggestions of Taylor and Trujillo (2001) that
the researcher suspend the use of theory in analysis until after she has first achieved a holistic
understanding of each individual’s experience. Next, the discourses as provided by each
member and as framed within the theory are brought together in a tentative manner. Finally, in
reaching to contribute to a theoretical understanding, the researcher should seek to present as
much of the individual’s story as possible, both to provide clear exemplars of how theoretical
conclusions were reached, and to preserve the opportunity for readers to engage in “vicarious
testing of life possibilities” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 42). I will further explore these
implications in my data analysis section.
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Early Access and Evolution of Research Questions
Access was gained via existing relationships between the Center for Urban Education
director and my own existing relationships – based on prior studies and professional
development communications – with team members and allies. The three selected team
members were interviewed in a previous pilot study about their sharing of equity-minded ideas
beyond the team (Bishop, 2012a). While these members at times struggled to create shared
meaning for others, they nonetheless had continued, two years after their inquiry experiences, to
incorporate key ideas and findings from the Equity Scorecard into their work with others on
campus. They shared openly in their initial pilot interviews and each expressed an interest in
sharing more in additional discussions. Finally, these three members – a male of color, a White
male and a White female – represented a range of background experiences with the regard to the
topic of racial equity. Thus, it was ultimately decided that the current study would incorporate
the initial interviews of these three members with the addition of two more interviews taking
place at the site a year later. With the permission of each, all three interviews (as well as content
from informal discussions and member-check conversations) were incorporated into their
narratives, encompassing a two-year period of data collection.
Over the course of a subsequent pilot study at another Midwestern institution (Bishop,
2012b), the phenomenon of interest grew to include not only the work of team members in
fostering equity-mindedness, but also the question of the potential for others in the community to
be spurred toward some form of new or altered equity agency via their encounters with Equity
Scorecard content, including reports, data, language or concepts. Two such members from
Rockbourne were identified at a national convention, where they presented about their
successfully reformed Honors program informed by Scorecard data, as well as about how to
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communicate about equity to others. In a follow-up conversation, it was discovered that the two
individuals came from dramatically different backgrounds with regard to equity work and had
therefore “situated” their new Scorecard knowledge quite differently, even as they worked for
the same goals. Both expressed a willingness to be interviewed and both shared early thoughts
in these informal dialogues. Thus, subsequent on-site interviews built on earlier rapport.
Informal and formal discussions encompassed a time span of just under two years, with formal
taped interviews and member-check conversations encompassing a range of one year.
A third Rockbourne member was suggested by several interviewees as an example of
someone who, while having incorporated equity-mindedness in her work, had also encountered
structural challenges; after multiple informal conversations on-site, she expressed an eagerness to
participate in formal interviews. It was decided that these three “allies” – again a male of color,
White male and White female – would provide ideal counterparts to three team members, as they
encompassed both a range of background experiences with regard to the phenomenon of interest
and a range of success in Scorecard-based equity efforts. Furthermore, each had adapted some
of the language and concepts of the Scorecard into their work without having been on the team;
thus, these members offered the opportunity to understand what they felt had been key to their
success in doing so.
Ethical and Political Considerations
While existing relationships provided easier initial access, they also made ethical
considerations particularly important. Due to the political nature of the interview topics, time
was taken at the beginning of each conversation to expand on existing rapport in order to
minimize discomfort about sharing. As the researcher, I disclosed my own relationship to the
topic in terms of my previous experience doing equity-focused work as both an administrator and
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faculty member within higher education. Participants were informed that pseudonyms would be
used at the individual and institutional levels, and that some professional titles or other
information could be changed if desired in order to protect anonymity. In addition to the
political character, the conversations encompassed matters that were sensitive due to their racial
content and issues of power and privilege. As interviewees discussed these matters, I was
cautious to convey a non-judgmental tone regardless of their choice of words or the ideas that
were expressed.
Data Collection
As noted, formal data collection involved primarily interviews, which were recorded and
transcribed. For the team members, the earlier pilot study interview took place by telephone,
with two subsequent in-person interviews taking place in Rockbourne. For each ally, two in-
person interviews took place in Rockbourne. Interviews ranged from an hour to an hour-and-a-
half. In the case of all six interviewees, a telephone member-check conversation a year later
further informed the data, as participants added thoughts to their earlier reflections.
Interviews were loosely structured (see appendix B) so as to allow themes to emerge that
might not have been present in the protocol questions. Prior to second and third interviews,
previous transcripts and/or previous interview recordings were reviewed multiple times in their
entirety. These reviews informed ongoing interview questions, as they allowed me to identify
topics that had not been explored, as well as areas where I might have failed to probe for deeper
reflection or more specific memories. Participants were given the choice of where to engage in
interviews and were encouraged to consider the question of where they might be most
comfortable reflecting. Based on their preferences, formal interviews took place at a
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combination of offices, on-campus dining facilities, off-campus cafes, and in two cases,
participants’ homes.
In addition to formal interviews, a good amount of informal time was spent with all six
members – individually and in groupings – during my two weeks at Rockbourne. These
informal dialogues (which took place in offices, at campus events, at restaurants, and during
additional home visits) were key to rapport building and data collection, as they further informed
interview questions. More specifically, I was able to prompt in interviews, “You mentioned
during our dinner last week that you … Could you say more about that?”
Secondarily, case-level data collection consisted of a variety of methods. These were
determined, in part, by the opportunities that arose during the site visit. While not all are
included in narratives, they informed my understanding of the anecdotes offered by the
interviewees as well as the culture and student populations of Rockbourne. These encompassed
observation of an Honors class co-taught by two allies; additional teaching by others; an Honors
Council meeting; and a Faculty Senate meeting. Additionally (and also secondary to narrative
data), documents were reviewed to triangulate participants’ descriptions of their use of the
Equity Scorecard information in program reform, as well as participants’ descriptions of the
predominance of certain language within their larger institutional narrative and of certain
structural or programmatic change (see appendix C for one example). Importantly, the
sensemaking and identities of individuals served as the primary unit of analysis, whereas the case
level data were utilized to provide context for the researcher – and selectively for the reader – in
making sense of the individuals’ narratives.
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Data Analysis and Presentation
Tsoukas and Hatch, in citing Ricoeur, note that “when engaged, memory and expectation
extend us across time, allowing us to bridge past and future in the present moment … distensio
occurs when we stretch our consciousness across past, present and future” (2001, p. 1005).
Narrative data analysis was conducted with the goal of presenting to the reader a connected set of
elements, one that allows for distensio by connecting members’ memories (distant and recent),
current experience of their organization, and anticipation in moving forward.
Initial readings. Relevant here are the aforementioned paradigmatic and formalistic tensions.
At the level of paradigms, interpretivist and critical lenses may, at certain points, lend themselves
to differing analyses of particular interview passages; thus, prior to constructing narratives, each
interview was read initially through a lens that privileged the interviewee’s interpretations by
seeking to understand her meaning-making process. The interview was then re-read through a
lens that prompted more critical questions of analysis about the equity-mindedness of the
individual, including her perceptions of students, her acknowledgement (or lack thereof) of
societal and institutional privileges and her positionality within this, and her own sense of
responsibility for equity.
Privileging the story via narrative analysis. At the level of theory, formalistic tensions emerge
with regard to the goal of the analysis: To what extent is the aim to present a preserved and
relatable story for the reader, and to what extent is the goal to categorize actions or cognitions in
ways that allow for a theoretical synthesis and contribution to the understanding of sensemaking?
I began by privileging the former. I accomplished this goal by utilizing Polkinghorne’s
suggested steps for “narrative analysis.” Thus, my goal was not to break stories down into
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categorized parts, but rather “to produce stories as the outcome of the research” (1995, p.15,
italics mine).
I sought to accomplish this by attending to seven key elements suggested by
Polkinghorne (1995): (1) elements of the cultural context in which the story occurs; (2) the
individual’s spatial and temporal location; (3) the presence of others who affect his goals and
actions; (4) the individual’s world vision, including struggles, motivations, interests and purpose;
(5) his habits or patterns of thought, as well as efforts to create new actions or thought patterns;
and (6) the details that differentiate his story from others. In doing so, and in attending
particularly to the cognitive dimensions within these, I aimed to generate for each participant a
story (7) that was ultimately “plausible and understandable,” providing a “meaningful
explanation of the protagonist’s responses and actions” (p. 18).
In bringing these elements together in the process of emplotment, I began with the
individual’s current state as an ending point, or “denouement,” placing events together such that
they answer the question of how the current state came to be (Polkinghorne, 1995). In other
words, how did this equity agent come to her current state of understanding and action with
regard to issues of campus racial equity? In seeking to understand this journey, I placed her
Equity Scorecard involvement within the unfolding plot, while acknowledging other, uniquely
experienced events (both prior and after) that contributed to her journey of equity agency.
My process of narrative analysis. More specifically, the above was achieved via a series of
steps. I began by taking the transcribed interviews (approximately 30 single-spaced pages per
interviewee) and re-ordering sections to create a “chronology” for each individual. This was
necessary because participants were given space to discuss themes as they came to mind, often
circling back to earlier topics or changing subjects as new thoughts occurred. After a chronology
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was created, I re-read the chronology in its entirety and highlighted sections most relevant to the
research questions. In line with the principles of narrative smoothing, I avoided highlighting
sections that were redundant or less relevant, unless they provided a direct contradiction to other
statements or the evolving plot, in which case it was necessary to attend to the contradiction and
re-consider how these points might need to be included.
Upon completion of these highlighted chronologies, I re-read all highlights and began to
develop an outline of key events and observations for each individual. These outlines were first
developed by hand utilizing an expansive wall space. This tactile and kinesthetic process was
important, as it allowed me to move physically within the six narratives while I moved mentally
within them. Once an initial, detailed outline had been completed for an individual (utilizing a
two-foot by two-foot wall space for each), a more concise and increasingly “smoothed” outline
was developed. Finally, each outline was then translated into a narrative for the participant, with
aesthetic consideration of how to present recurring themes to the reader and how to provide a
sense of looking back and looking forward, as well as a sense of denouement.
Privileging theory via analysis of narratives. After presenting emplotted narratives, I returned
to the data themselves to consider synthesis of themes across individuals. This, presented as a
separate chapter, is used to make a tentative contribution to the evolving theoretical
understandings of sensemaking and sensegiving, particularly: as they apply to critical topics like
racial equity, as they encompass questions of identity, and finally, as they are embedded in an
institution like Rockbourne. In doing so, I employed the more formalistic approach of “analysis
of narratives,” (Polkinghorne, 1995), examining data across stories to identify common elements,
using particular examples to illustrate concepts or categories. In examining the data in this way,
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I used a combination of concepts derived from theories while also allowing for inductively
derived themes. The discussion is presented in chapter five.
My process of analysis of narratives. As noted earlier, the formalistic tension of narrative
work presents itself in the struggle over whether to attend to the individual’s narrative itself, or to
the ways that it fits within theoretical frameworks. While attempting to privilege the former
during my first round, I inevitably had observations about how these stories embodied themes
from the frameworks. I attempted, as much as possible, to keep these two separate by recording
any thoughts about the theories as they occurred and then returning to the stories themselves. I
maintained a binder of written notes specifically for theory-based (and non-theory-based)
observations. Upon completion of the narratives, I returned to binder, reviewed all notes, and
added additional notes in reflecting on the six narratives in their entirety. In order to allow
themes to emerge from these observations (rather than “force” pre-existing categorical
designations), I next separated each observation onto its own note card and began creating
groupings based on similarities. The sections that emerged from these groupings guided my
writing of chapter five.
This process, similar to my narrative analysis process, preserved a tactile sense of
“closeness” to my data that I did not feel would have been afforded by computerized coding. It
also allowed themes to emerge. One topic, in particular, that was less present in my earlier
writing but emerged as a strong theme in the data was the importance of language as a tool, both
for communicating to others and for structuring one’s own thinking. While the importance of
language is acknowledged in both sensemaking and narrative writings, I had entered the study
attending more heavily to topics of identity. And while these topics are present in the stories, I
had not expected the extent to which the theme of language would permeate the six narratives.
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Trustworthiness
The earlier noted preservation of stories may be key not only to moving toward resolution
of paradigmatic and theoretical tensions, but also to achieving the goal of a trustworthy study.
While validity, in the traditional sense, is not commonly the goal within narrative research
(Mishler, 1990) the researcher should nonetheless strive to achieve “trustworthiness.” This, in
essence, becomes a question of how the inquirer can provide ample evidence to her or his
audience that the inquiry methods were adequate and that the findings are worthy of attention
and consideration (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Mishler, 1990).
Taylor and Trujillo (2001, p. 183) offer a list of seven suggested actions for interpretivist
researchers to achieve this end. They suggest providing evidence of a committed study, which I
aimed to do via my secondary collection of multiple data sources (observations, documents) even
as I privileged narratives. They suggest using both emic and inductive analysis to allow for
analytic connections across individuals while preserving naturally occurring differences, which I
have outlined in my data analysis description. They also advise that the researcher provide
sufficient evidence to warrant the interpretations and analyses presented, which I aimed to do via
ample direct quotes within the preserved narratives. They recommend that the researcher
provide evidence of her reflexive and alternating movement between data and explanations,
which “may include ‘confessional’ discourse about elements in the nonlinear process of …
discovery,” a disclosure that I have provided in the previous description. They encourage the
demonstration of rhetorical skill such that a vivid, compelling and plausible story (or
verisimilitude) is created, a goal for which I have strived in my emplotted narratives. They
further advise that the researcher employ member-checks or other forms of triangulation.
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As referenced previously, I engaged in member-checks with the six interviewees. Due to
their narratives being “preserved” as stories, it was important to verify that each participant felt
adequately represented. A complete draft of the narrative was sent to each interviewee along
with an invitation to consider: Do you feel adequately represented? Is there anything that I have
misinterpreted? Are you comfortable with what I have included, as well as what I have left out
for the sake of flow? I engaged in telephone conversations with each member after he or she had
read the narrative, with conversations ranging from 30 minutes to two hours. In addition to
ensuring trustworthiness, these member-checks served as follow-up conversations in which
members shared additional thoughts that were prompted by the narratives, reflections on what it
felt like to see their narratives represented in print, as well as updates on events that had
transpired in the year since my site visit. With their permission, selected comments from the
conversation were added to either enrich the narrative or add to the prologue.
Limitations
The current narrative case study is both rich in potential information and constrained by
limitations. Most importantly, the inability to observe the Equity Scorecard action inquiry
setting itself (or the initial sharing of the report with the allies) resulted in an inability to capture
any “objective” data about what took place there. Therefore, the ways in which members
attribute certain learning or changes to what took place in these settings are merely their own
reports. Similarly, I was unable to observe individuals’ subsequent sensegiving acts around
topics of equity; rather, I centered on their recollections of these events. In other words, I have
not captured what actually happened, but rather, members’ re-constructed memories of these
instances as they look back and make meaning of these events in connection with their own
identities.
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The inability to physically observe the unfolding of events might be considered a
limitation in the context of traditional case study methods. However, because my primary
interest is in the ongoing sensemaking that these individuals have taken from their Scorecard
experience and how this is situated within their respective identities, their verbal reflections are
an ample source of data. In fact, based on the retrospective nature of sensemaking (Weick,
1995), interviews situated after the events in question are suited to the goal.
The goal of my study is neither to obtain an objective record of these individuals’ acts of
sensegiving, nor to engage in a traditional “impact study” which directly attributes certain
outcomes to certain aspects of the inquiry setting. Rather, the goal is to privilege individuals’
stories and identities – which encompass life experience both prior to and after their Equity
Scorecard encounters – and to situate their subjective experience of the Scorecard within their
larger stories. Hence, I conceptualize what I aim to convey as their “journeys.”
In clearly acknowledging the limitations and outlining what I hope readers might gain, I
hope to maximize the likelihood that the study is used to its maximum potential. As such, the
current study tentatively informs the evolving conceptualizations of both agency and sensegiving
(particularly sensegiving about critical topics) for future researchers. It additionally informs the
academics and practitioners who coordinate action inquiry and other action research settings
about how to best prepare their members to engage in effective communications with others
about their findings. Finally, it has the potential to inform practitioners who have an interest in
equity or other ethically focused agendas about how they, themselves, might best engage in
agentic actions for these causes. In aiming to achieve all of these ends, the study approaches the
goal of critical research studies as outlined by Mumby: to provide “social actors … with the
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 67
means by which to both critique and change the extant meaning structures of an organization”
(1988, p.146-147).

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Chapter Four: Narratives
Introduction and Considerations

As noted earlier, the six narratives that follow are not to be thought of as a traditional
sample from which to “generalize.” Rather, these six unique stories represent varied ways that
individuals encountered and made sense of Scorecard data and how they subsequently
incorporated it into their sensegiving repertoires. Thus, the attempt herein is to present depth via
the life story approach given to each individual, as well as range via the diversity of perspectives
presented across the six individuals.
These six individuals were selected because they were known to have stepped into
increasingly equity-focused roles as agents within – and in some cases beyond – the institution of
Rockbourne State University. While some had participated in the Scorecard inquiry setting,
others had encountered the Scorecard report and data from the original participants. All had
begun to utilize the data and equity-focused concepts to create programmatic change and to
communicate to others the need for change. Thus, in utilizing the individuals as an intensity
sample (Creswell, 2007), and coupling this with a narrative approach to data presentation
(Polkinghorne, 1995), I strive to illuminate some of the varied ways in which actors who
represent a certain characteristic might manifest that characteristic.
Narrative goals. The successes of some of these actors are not meant to make a claim about the
success of the overall Scorecard team at this institution, nor the success of the Scorecard action
inquiry process more generally. Instead, they serve the following functions:
(1) Illustrate the range of backgrounds from which individuals might encounter concepts of
racial equity. This may include a variety of previous exposure to topics of racial equity or topics
of equity more broadly, and a range of previous “processing” of one’s place within an
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 69
inequitable society as an individual who embodies a variety of positionalities (racial, gender,
professional position).
(2) Allow for an examination of the developing identities of equity agents. As noted earlier in the
text, Weick and others have called for an examination of the ways individual sensegivers may
come to define themselves. This may be coupled with calls for studies of sensemaking topics
within more critical frameworks (Mills et al., 2010). By presenting depth and chronology of
individual narratives, the study allows the reader to vicariously experience the arc of
development as individuals came to see themselves as agents and sensegivers around the critical
topic of racial equity within their institution.
(3) Provide the opportunity to examine how a larger institutional narrative may facilitate or
hinder the development/success of such actions. By situating all of the actors within their
experiences of a common institutional context, I give secondary attention to the ways in which
the larger institutional narrative regarding equity may have hindered or facilitated their own
individual narratives as developing equity agents.
In staying true to Polkinghorne’s distinction of “narrative analysis” from “analysis of
narratives,” the next section presents the personal narratives holistically, largely in the absence of
the theoretical framework. While the framework of sensegiving and conceptions of agency did
inform interview questions, certain resonant events within these individuals’ lives were included
in the final narratives without regard to whether they would directly illuminate the theories. In
other words, it was important to present stories that highlighted these individuals’ identities and
histories independently of how they fit within conceptions of sensemaking, sensegiving or
agency.
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Themes. At the same time, the stories do indeed touch upon several themes from the previous
literature review, and synthesis will be provided in chapter five. In examining the narratives, the
reader may begin to notice the following themes across several of the participants’ stories:
(1) The importance of a growing awareness of the contradiction between one’s personal
expectations about equity and the actual state of inequity within the institution. This awareness
was largely aided by ongoing sensemaking with peers, whether in the inquiry setting (for
members), or in conversation with inquiry team members in making sense of the Scorecard
report (for allies).
(2) The usefulness of specific language in making sense of the inequities, and later in
communicating these inequities to others.
(3) The sense of hope that came from the realization that the problem was “actionable.” This
was aided by the concreteness of data as it allowed for targeted goals.
(4) Agency manifesting as the highlighting of contradictions in communicating with others.
(5) In some cases, a developing identity around one’s actions toward equity. This identity
development was aided not only by reflecting on one’s own sensegiving, but also – and perhaps
more importantly – by the reflections that came back from others, including peers and
supervisors.
(6) At the level of the institutional narrative, a larger “official” narrative that aligned with the
goal of the inquiry setting (i.e., of promoting equity) was helpful in the development of equity
agency, as it allowed for (a) the realization of contradictions within initial sensemaking, and (b)
the manipulation of contradiction within later sensegiving.

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Prologue
It is a snowy Midwestern day in April. As I trudge across the Rockbourne State
University campus, poorly equipped in my California version of coat and boots, I do my best to
attend to the characteristics of the campus and its students, rather than to my freezing
extremities. I begin to observe groupings of students traversing the campus grounds. I am first
struck by their comfort level in the cold and snow; I become increasingly self-conscious about
the pained look undoubtedly decorating my face as I jump around puddles rather than walk
through them as the students do. Finally, as my self-awareness begins to fade and the topic of
my study returns to my mind, I notice the racial/ethnic groupings of students around me. While I
was aware of numbers prior to my trip, I am nonetheless struck by the overall “Whiteness” of the
campus. Groups of White students, many or most blonde-haired, walk by lost in chatter. I begin
to search for students of color and, here and there, I notice an occasional group of three-to-five
students who appear to be of Asian descent. Based on my knowledge of surrounding
demographics, I infer that many of these students are probably Hmong-American, an ethnic
group that has settled in large numbers in nearby parts of the Midwest. Only occasionally do I
notice a student whom I would identify as African-American or Latino. A large, snow-covered
foyer connects several of the campus buildings, and I see the occasional faculty or staff member
crossing the snow-cleared paths (again surprisingly well-equipped for the snow, even as they
look professional, a combination that has escaped me). They say hello to one another in passing
and sometimes exchange smiles and greetings with their students.
I am here to interview six professional members of the campus community, all in some
way affiliated or associated with work of the Equity Scorecard that took place here three years
prior to my visit and all, in some way, involved in ongoing racial equity work.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 72
Some specific considerations of the campus context, which will be revealed and nuanced within
the stories of these Rockbourne faculty members, include the following (see appendix C and D):
(1) An infusion of language about diversity and equity (D&E) that allows the agents to situate
their communications about the need for equity within a larger campus narrative.
(2) The presence of faculty who are designated as “D&E Fellows,” a role in which they are
expected to contribute vocally to dialogues about diversity and equity.
(3) A recently reformed Honors program (based in part on Equity Scorecard recommendations)
in which the newly utilized holistic admissions procedure has resulted in greater racial equity
within honors.
However, as noted, my goal is not to capture an ethnographic snapshot of their campus or
outcomes of the Scorecard, but rather to find out more about the lives of the six individuals in the
context of their motivation to engage in equity efforts. I will spend the next two weeks here
taking part in both formal recorded conversations and informal dialogues on- and off-campus. I
will be struck, in part, by the reality of their so-called “Midwestern niceness.” While similar
interviews in California might be cloaked in the acknowledgement that I am taking up their
valuable work time, these professionals are more concerned about my parking, my food, my
accommodations, my adjustment to the climate. While I initially fear that this “politeness” might
represent a desire to make a good impression – or might translate to a hesitancy to discuss
sensitive topics like race and racism – it turns out that each is highly open about his or her
background, earlier and current limitations in understandings, and learning journey. Their
politeness does surface, in some cases, in their hesitancy to “claim” their own agency. These are
their stories.
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Louis: “This is not work, this is life. This is consciousness.”
A Chinese-American male in his forties and the leader of the former Equity Scorecard
team at Rockbourne State University, Louis has been English faculty at the university for almost
fifteen years. In defining equity, Louis describes it as a process of becoming equal, one that
takes into account history and institutional barriers, and he notes, “It’s the process part that’s
important.” He adds that in understanding equity, it is important to understand not only barriers,
but also “the institution that you belong to and your own social identities as being germane to the
outcomes for our students.” Louis goes on to note that this process “asks us to turn the mirror on
ourselves.” The latter pieces of Louis’s conception – social identities as germane to student
outcomes, and turning the mirror on ourselves – are important indicators of his journey. His
evolution as an equity agent included a great deal of self-examination with regard to his own
social identity and its potential contribution to student learning.

Growing Up: “You should just assimilate to the way that I’ve done things…”

Born in Hong Kong and having moved with his parents to the U.S. while still a baby,
Louis grew up in a fairly segregated Dallas suburb. He attended a predominantly White high
school, where he spent much of his adolescence distancing himself from questions of what it
meant to be Asian or Chinese-American. With most of his friends and dating partners being
White, he devoted mental energy to hoping that they would not make an issue of his racial
difference, an energy that translated to distancing himself from other minoritized students.
It developed into a kind of self-hatred, where clearly I would see other students [of color]
and I would want not to be like them, particularly if they were immigrants who didn’t
speak English as fluently as I did or travel in the same circles that I did.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 74
Today, Louis looks back on this phenomenon as internalized racism, a feeling that
remained strong throughout most of his subsequent undergraduate college experience in Texas.
He remembers specific instances that illustrate his consciousness at the time.
I recall walking around one of the malls on the campus and seeing these kind-of early
Asian-American student groups – this was in the late 80’s – and so they’re trying to
generate interest in these student organizations … putting flyers in my hands. I distinctly
remember looking at one and thinking, “I would never do this. I would never be a part of
this group … I feel that I’ve got a comfortable place in this society and you should just do
what I’ve done. You should just assimilate to the way that I’ve done things, and you’ll
be as happy as I am.” … Or, at least, I thought I was happy.

While Louis did experience several shifts in his thinking during this time, evolution in his
racial thinking was not yet one of them. He became more politically liberal as he explored
reactions to Reagan-era politics and more feminist via some of his studies. However, “the anti-
racist component wasn’t there yet,” he explains, “I didn’t have any friends to help me along that
journey.”
Turning Point #1: “He told me that my mind had been colonized.”
Louis initially declared a college major in engineering in response to stereotyped
expectations from his teachers and his own internalized expectations. “It took two years of bad
grades for me to realize that it wasn’t a good idea.” Later, having reflected on how much he
enjoyed his English classes, he eventually decided to pursue a graduate degree in creative
writing. It was here that a new turning point in consciousness would emerge, thanks to
reflections from two scholars: a well-known Japanese-Hawaiian poet who served as program
director and a mentor to Louis, and a Korean-American colleague in his program.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 75
Early in his graduate experience, Louis and some of his peers were admirers of a
particular well-known author, one whose works often focused on middle-aged White men who
dealt with alcoholism and troubled marriages. “And so,” he says matter-of-factly, “I was writing
about middle-aged White male alcoholics with devastated marriages.” However, two
consecutive conversations soon caused him to reflect on this.
One of my colleagues at that time … said that my stories were great, “but why are you
writing this?” I didn’t have a good answer for him, but clearly it was coming out of that
internalized racism. Then, when I had a meeting with … [the] director of the program, he
told me that my mind had been colonized. At that point I was twenty-one, and I thought,
“I don’t know what he means.” I kind of knew what he meant, but I didn’t get the full
meaning of it. I looked it up and started to think about it …

The reflections from these two Asian-American writers prompted Louis to think about his
contributions as a writer and the ways that his writing might better reflect his own experience.
As a result, he changed the focus of his stories.
I started writing short stories about people like me and about the kind of tensions that
arise when you are a racial minority and an Asian-American growing up in a largely
segregated part of the country wanting to be like everybody else, knowing that you’re
not. I wouldn’t say those were fantastic stories, but they were a lot more meaningful to
me because I was really beginning to accept the meaning of my racial identity and ending
the stage of denial that had been going on since I was an adolescent through early
graduate school.

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Inspired by this transition, Louis pursued his PhD in Asian-American literature. Here he
continued to evolve as a writer, focusing on plays or novels that confronted stereotypes about
Asian-Americans throughout history.
Turning Point #2: “We need to talk more about racism.”
While he found this subject matter a meaningful contribution – one that challenged the
way that power is shared in our society – he observes in hindsight that this role was limited due
to its intellectual nature. At the time that he had entered RSU, he was satisfied by this
intellectual pursuit as his contribution to social change. “I can honestly say that it wasn’t until …
I had been at this job a good seven, eight years that I stopped deriving the same satisfaction out
of an academic approach to justice.” He acknowledges that this written contribution of Asian
and Asian-American scholars is, in and of itself, an important one. Yet somehow, it was no
longer enough for Louis.
It was at this point in his readiness that Louis was invited to participate in two groups
concurrently, groups with perhaps complementary foci. Louis became the leader of the
university’s new Equity Scorecard team; at the same time, he became a member in a grassroots
faculty anti-racism group. “I found lots of important connections,” he notes, “and the most
important one that is central to the Scorecard and to anti-racism in general is: We need to talk
more about racism.” He situated these learnings within his growing dissatisfaction with an
academic approach to justice, as he observes in hindsight, “It was at this point that I began to see
other options for my energies.”
The anti-racist group, while controversial among some campus members and challenging
even to many who chose to participate, was well aligned with Louis’s goals for deep reflection.
“It helped me to realize the extent to which I had grown up with a great deal of internalized
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 77
racism.” He reflected within the group on critical epistemologies and the work to be done to
change dominant modes of thinking in the academy. As he did so, he found concurrent lessons
as the leader of the Scorecard team, lessons that prompted him to reflect on his teaching in the
classroom.
The Equity Scorecard really got me to think about my pedagogy and how it was much
more exclusive than I would have liked it to be … [It] got me to critique my own process
… There were changes I made to the syllabus. And it helped me to de-center myself in
the classroom and model the learning for my students that I wanted them to have. I
wanted them to be able to talk about not just Asian-American history and the Asian-
American experience, but to understand it in a deeper sense by talking about race and
racism in a certain way. Talking about institutional racism and internalized racism as
well.

This reflection on the need to de-center himself came from discussions with his
Scorecard teammates about so-called “gateway courses” – courses that served a kind of
“weeding out” function for certain majors as some students dropped – within the university. In
particular, they discovered that certain racial and ethnic groups were passing these courses at
lower rates than their White counterparts. Louis recalls that as the group reflected on what might
be happening within their shared sensemaking, they explored the problematic approaches of
“color-blind” and “gender-blind” teaching. It was here that Louis realized: while his teaching of
Asian-American literature was valuable, he stood to make an even greater contribution to his
students’ learning by modeling his own journey. By exposing his own struggle with internalized
racism, he worked to further humanize himself to his students, so that they might better reflect on
their journeys.
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A New Lens
At this time, Louis had begun to incorporate the language of outcomes – as situated
within a developing understanding of institutional racism from both the Scorecard and anti-
racism groups – as an important way to understand inequity. As he did so, he discovered that his
students were in need of the same understanding.
The classes I taught changed … to give my students the kind of learning I thought they
needed to be important contributors to the discussion once they left my class and
graduated from college. They really didn’t know how to talk about racism; they didn’t
know how to talk about outcomes. This is something I have found out and was really
distressed by. They were graduating and still felt uncomfortable talking about race and
racism simply because they didn’t have vocabulary and knowledge and history.

Thus, he began to focus on preparing his students to be critical consumers of information about
societal outcomes as they evaluated topics of inequity.
In reflecting on the concurrent journeys of the Scorecard and the anti-racism group, Louis
observes, “It was fortuitous that they were happening together for me because I think together
they really helped to kind of jump-start this consciousness that I’m operating out of today.” It
was with this new consciousness, and armed with new language of data and outcomes, that Louis
undertook a new role at the university.
An Ordained Role of Sensegiving: “Diversity and Equity Fellow”
At the time that Louis was accepting the role of the Scorecard team leader, members of
the university chancellor’s office were exploring alternative models for the duty of a chief
diversity officer. It was decided that a designated faculty member would help to shepherd key
projects, as well as take on a sanctioned position to speak for concerns of equity and diversity
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 79
within campus issues. Due in part to his participation as the Scorecard team leader, Louis was
ultimately selected as the first “Diversity and Equity”, or D&E, fellow for the university, a role
that would be couched within a larger presences of D&E language within the university. Despite
a still amorphous job description, his two primary responsibilities were to assist in developing a
new climate survey, and to communicate the findings of the Equity Scorecard.
In approaching the former, the equity lens that he had gained from the Scorecard greatly
influenced his judgment of the climate survey.
I don’t think the last one had the same kind of equity consciousness that this one did …
[but] there was a good deal of equity consciousness already in [the current] instrument.
The way that we were promoting it and the need for it definitely came out of learning that
we had from the Equity Scorecard. At the time, what I think the Scorecard called
institutional receptivity … the campus climate survey would fit right into that dimension
of the Equity Scorecard.

Meanwhile, Louis found that the language gained from the Scorecard allowed him to be
more direct and explicit in his campus communications about the need for equity and diversity.
He notes that despite his having entered the Scorecard team as already a kind of “expert” on
diversity issues, he had nonetheless learned a great deal, particularly with regard to the language
of data.
The Scorecard was really important because it gave me another discourse through which
to talk about anti-racism, which was … the discourse of data and outcomes. We didn’t
have that approach to thinking about outcomes. We weren’t outcomes-based in the way
that we were measuring our success when it came to our students of color, or at least we
weren’t used to thinking in that way … That was a quantitative dimension to my
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 80
knowledge that I didn’t really have before … It turned out to be a very persuasive one
with my colleagues when you could show them the numbers and you could show them
that [RSU] was at the back of all thirteen four-year regional comprehensive universities
in the [state] system when it came to percentage increases of students of color for the past
ten years. We have to turn the mirror on ourselves and ask, “Why this is happening?”
Despite already knowing a great deal about diversity in his existing role as a critical
scholar, Louis had nonetheless developed a new dimension to his equity knowledge. Having
introduced this dimension – the question of outcomes – to his evaluation of his students’
learning, he had brought this lens, as well, to his evaluation of other campus initiatives and to his
communications with others.
Reception and Resistance
In some cases, the messages carried out by Louis were well-received and departments
used the information to prompt self-examination. He tells the story of sharing the Scorecard
findings with everyone involved in residence life, including the resident assistants and many of
the students. He recalls that these individuals listened with interest, and they later used the
information to inform their policies and practices. For instance, they examined the question of
whether their interview questions for their resident assistants were racially or culturally biased.
… one of the qualities they wanted from their RAs was assertiveness. And so we talked
about ways in which that could be a very culturally biased type of quality that would
skew the interview process towards certain cultural identities and cultural groups. And
how it would be very difficult for certain students of color, perhaps even dangerous for
them, to be assertive in certain social contexts. And that was one thing they began to
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 81
understand about that institutionally racist policy that produced more White RAs than
RAs of color.
As a Midwestern university with a large Hmong-American population, these actors
particularly examined the lack of representation of Hmong-American resident assistants,
challenging their previous assumptions about reasons for this dearth. “And so rather than
assume that the Hmong-American students didn’t want to become RA’s,” Louis notes, “they
found out more about how many were living on- and off-campus … and patterns of housing.”
In this instance and others, Louis experienced success in communicating ideas and
findings from the Scorecard, and did so in ways that contributed to changes in programs. Yet,
not all audiences were immediately receptive. In presenting on the Scorecard data to the College
of Arts and Sciences, where he emphasized the findings about gateway courses across various
majors, Louis encountered a range of reactions. While some departments were interested and
ready to act, he also encountered a “vocal minority” who responded with challenges.
You know, it went from, “shouldn’t we really be talking about class rather than race?” to
“shouldn’t we be talking about diversity of thought rather than diversity of people?” …
Probably the number one resistance came from our very low “n” for students of color
here at [Rockbourne] … so people were coming at it from all angles. I won’t say they
were the majority, just a really vocal minority, and they really didn’t understand that
something was afoot here at our university to have produced these results year in and
year out.
Over time, Louis developed a repertoire of responses to these challenges. He discovered
that with some individuals not understanding the meaning of institutional racism, it was helpful
to bring in concrete examples. “I found talking about the ACT and tracking in high school is a
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 82
good way to begin that discussion of how institutional racism begins to produce these outcomes
without any conscious racial intent.” He learned, as well, to vary the discussion according to the
audience, noting that different members would elect to have the conversation about race and
equity in the “register” that they found comfortable. “I have had to come up with different
defenses with faculty and with a greater variety of defenses,” he observes, “because they will
come at you from many different ways based on their discipline.”
An Interplay of Positionalites in Sensegiving
Further recalling his various communications with faculty, he observes that it was helpful
that he, too, was a faculty member, as faculty were often likely to hear messages from peers
more readily than from members of the administration. Additionally, Louis reflects on the role
of his cultural identity in communicating matters of equity to others, observing nuanced and
perhaps paradoxical effects of his racial and ethnic identity.
Given my social identity as an Asian American, I believe that some White colleagues felt
less inclined to challenge me out of a fear of seeming disrespectful, insensitive, or even
racist. At the same time, I think that others did not take me as seriously because they
expected me to talk about race and racism because I am a person of color. It may be that
a committed, anti-racist White person would command more authority than I, simply
because people won’t think that my personal hang-ups are influencing how I analyze and
report on the data.

Thus, Louis had experienced his cultural identity as having contradictory effects on the
ways that he was received, particularly by White colleagues. While some may have shown more
deference out of an attempt to avoid the appearance of disrespect, others may have discredited
his message via the assumption that it somehow came from a sense of self-interest. At the same
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 83
time that he experienced these contradictory dynamics with White colleagues, he felt that his
identity gave him credibility among colleagues of color, particularly American-born colleagues
of color, who may have had similar experiences to his own.
Louis experienced an interaction that provided an “a-ha” moment for him during this
time. As he participated in a panel of people of color from the campus community, he was asked
a question that prompted him to reflect not only on the ways that race played out in his
communications with others, but also about his ongoing desire to talk more about the subject.
One of my colleagues, a woman of color, [asked], “Can you tell us what you do to make
the White people around you more comfortable?” It was one of those questions that
turned the light on for me because … both consciously and unconsciously, people of
color do this. I didn’t give a very good answer at that point. I think I said something
like, “Well, I don’t talk about certain subjects and so I end up talking to a lot of White
people about sports or my kid or my family, but what I really want to be talking about is
racism.” I want to be talking about racism more.

This moment of critical reflection was an important step in his journey, as the
verbalization of his sometimes-accommodating approach to conversation with White peers
prompted him to acknowledge to himself that he wanted to be more direct in bringing up the
topic of race, regardless of the race of his colleagues.
Evolution in Sensegiving: “You Really Have to Answer this Question for Yourself”
Louis reflects on the evolution of his strategies of communication about equity and anti-
racism topics over the course of his career. On one hand, he has learned to nuance his messages
for various disciplinary audiences who hold a range of epistemologies, and thus, a range of
standards of what counts as “good” data. At the same time, and perhaps paradoxically, he has
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 84
learned over time to approach the topic in a more straightforward and simple way. Whether
communication about the Scorecard, or about issues of equity and diversity more broadly, Louis
discovered that a concise proposition – one that puts the choice in the hands of others – was often
the best approach.
[My approach] has evolved in that I’ve been trying to make the case for decision-making
that would promote [diversity and equity] in as simple terms as possible … I think when I
first began this work it was very easy to kind of fall back into academic jargon to explain
why my position was a legitimate one, or one that required people to pay attention. More
and more I have wanted to really involve others in the decision-making by putting them
to a decision that I think really ought to be fairly simple to make and expressed in very
simple language … It’s like, “You really have to answer this question for yourself. I
can’t answer it for you. Whether you think this one extra experience would be worth it.
If you answer no, I really hope that you will reflect on why you think that.” If I were to
say how this has evolved, I think all of the reading of the literature, all of the classes that
I’ve taught, all the things that I’ve written, all the people that I’ve spoken to, almost
paradoxically have made it – maybe it’s not paradoxical – but have made it easier for me
to express this position in very simple ways, in very simple language.

Even as he had developed a repertoire that included strategies for speaking with a variety
of audiences, Louis also moved toward a more direct approach to communicating about causes
of equity, an approach that included the use of simple language and the posing of a direct choice
to others.

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Reinforcing an Agent Identity by Re-Focusing on the Classroom
After three semesters in the official D&E fellow role, Louis’s term was complete and
new faculty members stepped in. In reflecting on both the satisfactions and frustrations of
having carried out the role, and in building on his realization of students’ need for greater
understanding about equity issues, Louis chose to re-focus on his classroom as a source of
meaning as an equity agent. In particular, his realization that students needed a greater
understanding of race and equity issues led him to expand his classroom offerings to new topics,
including courses on race and racism, and teaching for a social justice living-learning community
that addressed issues of racism, sexism, heterosexism and other forms of oppression. “My focus
kind of returned to the students,” he explains, “which was immensely rewarding because a lot of
frustrations that I had felt communicating to colleagues I didn’t find with the students.”
In particular, he found that students were more amenable to the topics due to their being
less fully developed in their outlooks. This allowed him to re-invigorate his professional identity
in working for causes of justice.
There wasn’t a whole lot of resistance, and of course I understand that a lot of that may
have to do with a power differential of me being the instructor. I understand that. I also
do think that it does have something to do with their simply not being formed as
completely by learning processes and institutions that … have validated and legitimated
epistemologies that govern the behavior and even thinking of my colleagues. In very
simple terms, I guess they were still kind of open to the possibility that racism exists …
That was immensely gratifying and helped me kind of personally to re-imagine my
professional identity following the fellowship position.

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Despite having developed a strong repertoire of communication approaches in delivering
messages about equity causes to his colleagues, and having experienced some great successes,
Louis had nonetheless found this a tiring endeavor as he experienced pockets of resistance.
Thus, he found the opportunity to more fully focus on the parallel goal of delivering this message
to students to be an important way to both continue and re-affirm his identity as an agent of
equity. “Not that I’m giving up or deciding not to engage my colleagues on these matters,” he
adds. Rather, he chose to center his efforts on “how important it is to foster this kind of learning
for students.”

A Solidified Agent Identity: Reflections from Self and Others

Yet, even as Louis re-centered his energy on students, he found that the pull of equity
efforts with colleagues remained strong. This came in part from the expectations that colleagues
had developed as they came to see him in this role, and in part from the way that he had come to
see himself since developing this consciousness, a consciousness that he could not leave behind.
Believe me, there were times when I would want to stop thinking about [equity] and
focus on my family or focus on other interests … but then I just keep looking at all these
things that I agreed to do for my colleagues … It doesn’t end in that I think the
relationships that I’ve built over that time come back, but they come back in a way that
requires more effort and energy from me where people I’ve worked with before say,
“[Louis], can I get your advice on this?” or “[Louis], would you like to serve on this
committee? What do you think about this?” … It’s very difficult to say no because I
know the stakes are very high … I guess what I am saying is that I do want to participate
in these things and contribute what I know about them.

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 87
Despite his attempt to pull away, many colleagues had come to see Louis as an expert on
topics of equity and requested his participation. And while perhaps tired, he still felt the
inclination to contribute. This came not simply out of obligation, but because equity
consciousness had taken on a great importance to him, an importance that helped to define his
professional and personal identity, identities that he found inseparable. He returns to his earlier
theme of intellectual versus action-based approaches to change as he reflects.
It’s a consciousness, it’s a movement. It’s not work because, for me at least, it’s life. You
can’t turn it on and turn it off … If you understand the deep injustice of a system like
sexism or racism and you still approach it from an academic perspective, and you don’t
take it into you to the point where you would organize against it, how can you say that
you get it? You only get it on an intellectual level. And so that’s what’s so appealing
about social justice is that it has the activist component. It’s just not enough to kind of
think about it and teach others about it but that you put yourself right there.

One area where Louis continues to exert his time and effort is in reform of the liberal
education requirements at the university, a reform that will include a greater number of diversity-
centered courses for all students and an attempt to ensure that such courses are infused with
critical and self-reflexive content. In doing so, he finds a merger of the two focus areas of his
agency, as he collaborates with colleagues toward achieving a greater critical learning
experience for students.
Situating Self within a Campus Narrative

As Louis reflects on the journey of having placed himself in an activist role within the
campus culture, he reflects, as well, on the changes that he has witnessed in this culture – the
narrative – over his fourteen years at the institution. Describing the institution’s receptivity to
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 88
issues of equity and anti-racism as still a “work in progress,” he observes that one important
aspect has been the infusion of D&E language into documents and conversations. Despite
ongoing pockets of resistance to the idea, he notes that this language “has become normalized to
the extent where people begin to understand that this is going to be a concern whenever decisions
are being made.” Going forward, he looks to the outcome of the liberal education reform as an
indicator of this evolving narrative. He does so because the courses themselves, as well as the
resources that will be needed to carry them out, will serve as “outcomes” to which he can point.
This is one thing that the Equity Scorecard has taught me. What are your outcomes? Is
this just a feeling that you think things are getting better? … This is kind of getting us to
the liberal education reform. Right now I would say unless that passes, then it would be
very difficult to say that anything really major has changed. If this does pass … if we say
this is what we think our students need to be liberally educated, then it will in many ways
require us to live up to those ideals, whatever that might be: more courses, more hires of
experts who have these competencies.

Louis reflects on the connections across his varied forms of equity advocacy – from
advocating for programmatic and structural change in the interest of better outcomes for students
of color, to teaching with a critical lens, to his work advocating for educational content that will
educate all students through more critical lenses – in the following way:
They’re all connected because you have to think, “Why would students of color persist
and succeed at an institution?” The answer is not how well they adapt to the dominant
culture or models of learning, but how well the institution can adapt to their personal
talents and skills and experiences … If they don’t see themselves reflected either in the
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 89
faculty, staff or curriculum, it would be very difficult for them to see that this is a place
that reflects who they are.
In offering a final reflection on his arc of involvement in causes of equity and anti-
racism, Louis offers this:
The rewards are really personal. The reason why I think I’m involved in so many of
these things is because I cannot not be. I almost have to do them because they’re so
much a part of my identity. This goes back to not being able to turn a switch on and off
when you say “I’m on the clock” or “I’m off the clock.” This is not work, this is life.
This is consciousness.

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 90
Bridget:
“I’m not in a place to say that somebody can’t be taught when I have been.”
Bridget, a White woman in her forties, is the affirmative action officer for the RSU
campus. When discussing the Scorecard concept of equity-mindedness, she states that it is a
matter of “avoiding deficit thinking, and taking institutional responsibility for the folks that are
here, like our students and our employees, as well as people who come into contact with us
through applications for admission and applications for employment.” Bridget’s conception of
equity-mindedness as one that not only encompasses one’s mindset and treatment toward
students, but equally toward university employees, is important to her story. Via her participation
on the Scorecard team she evolved not only in the ways that she thought about outcomes for
students, but equally in her thinking about hiring and personnel concerns, which influenced her
affirmative action work more broadly.
Growing Up
After traversing states during their daughter’s childhood, Bridget’s pharmacist mother
and pediatrician father eventually settled in Rockbourne, having selected it because it was
exactly the middle point between their families. “They strategically and scientifically researched
middle sized towns in [this state],” Bridget laughs, “my parents are scientists!” Going through
most of her K-12 schooling in Rockbourne, she describes her Irish Catholic family as “worldly
for [Rockbourne],” having traveled to various parts of Europe. Reflecting on what she calls the
largely “Scando-German” demographic of the area, she notes, “I’m kind of exotic here with my
brown hair!” In looking back on her racial awareness at that time, she feels that while certainly
limited compared to today, she was perhaps more aware than some others in the neighborhood.
Referencing the nearby small town, she comments that at least “I wasn’t the White girl from
[Fairshore] who touched the Black girl’s hair when she meets her in college.”
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A Critical Consciousness in Steps
Her awareness of diversity issues would grow in granulated steps as she pursued studies
that addressed legal and international matters. Upon attending the state flagship university as an
undergraduate, she declared majors in both political science and French Area Studies, taking a
strong international focus in her examinations.
I really got hooked on proxy politics of the 80’s with the communists and the west
fighting it out and, like, Nicaragua and El Salvador and Southern Africa … I remember
protests and that sort of thing … not really on the domestic scale, though, more like
“you’re screwing over … people in Latin America over there and it’s outrageous” …
There was a simplicity to the thinking, for instance about the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., like
“Who is good and who is bad?”

Reflecting on her then-interest in the topic of inequities abroad, she notes, “I’ve always
had a good sense of fairness in my head, but certainly I know I was not really thinking about
those issues domestically.”
As she traces her journey of increasing consciousness about domestic racial issues,
Bridget points to two important themes along her educational and early professional path that
were important. While attending law school in New York, she gained experience in Native
American Law, where she was struck by “the racist discourse coming from anti-treaty rights
groups,” discourse that amounted to “other-izing a people.” Around the same time, she became
involved in environmental issues and pollution-based injustices, soon becoming familiarized
with the study of “environmental racism.”
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 92
I realized the importance of racial justice within an environmental justice cause … Look
who’s suffering the most, the people who live the closest with fewer resources. Look
again, it might be a race issue because many of those people are not White.

Within these two areas of graduate school study, she began to experience “early
realizations of how this law degree might be used” for justice in addressing inequities. “So many
kinds of injustices were tied together,” she notes as she reflects on connections of income,
geography and race, “and the interrelatedness was striking.”
Upon graduation from law school, Bridget returned to the Midwest, obtaining a clerkship
with a state Court of Appeals. Here she became more involved with criminal law, where she
continued to notice racial imbalances. “So many criminal cases disproportionally not White
people,” she declares. “The criminal cases were the thing that I noticed, and the criminal appeals
rarely succeeded, especially compared to the civil appeals.” Despite this noticing, she did not yet
have a strong framework in which to place the information in order to make sense of it.
Critiquing herself in hindsight, she acknowledges, “I didn’t have to – White person privilege –
wondering, and ‘that’s not fair’ type of deal … I would maintain that relatively politically aware,
personally non-bigoted, ‘typical White woman’ until probably after forty, even.”
Moving back to Rockbourne for her first employment law job at a law firm, she began to
deal with a number of equal employment opportunity cases about sexual harassment, disability
discrimination and the like. “Interestingly,” she notes, “I never handled race discrimination
cases – none ever came in the door!” After a take-over of the firm, she found herself looking for
new employment options, ultimately discovering the affirmative action position at RSU, where
she would make her first foray into higher education.

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A New Entrée: “Nicely ripe for learning”
Bridget’s first prominent memory at RSU – one that would shape her growing
understanding of equity concerns in higher education – was her interview with the then-
chancellor, an interview that made clear the importance of racial diversity issues within the
university.
[The chancellor] is, of course, wondering from his new potential affirmative action
officer what my theories and thinking about diversity are … [and] I don’t know. He
called me in and he [reviewed] my whole campus interview. He called me in again and
we specifically talked a little more about diversity, so I think that my immaturity in
talking about campus diversity issues was even a sticking point.

Using her now-incorporated Scorecard language as she makes sense of the then-
chancellor’s actions, she notes: “I’m pretty sure that’s kind of how he was thinking. ‘She seems
equity minded, but where’s the depth there?’ Because there wasn’t any.”
Despite expertise in legal matters of compliance and fair treatment on a human resources
basis – as well as earlier realizations about the structural inequities inherent in such systems as
environmental law – Bridget had more to learn about matters of diversity and structural inequity
as they may play out specifically in higher education. At this point in time she was “nicely ripe
for learning,” she notes. And it was here that she entered the Equity Scorecard team, assisting
the Chancellor in selecting team members who would span different areas of the university.
I remember that it came from the [state] system people. The chancellor was a diversity
advocate and said, ‘That sounds excellent, Bridget, why don’t you help
me?’…Traditionally at [RSU] a safe way to pick committees is to get faculty and staff
from all four colleges since shared governance is strong here.
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Bridget and the chancellor identified members who would likely be open to talking about
diversity. She recalls, “Everybody was excited about doing it … [even though] we were not sure
what this Equity Scorecard was going to be all about.”
Revelations in Data: “It doesn’t square”
Engaging as an unofficial co-leader with Louis in taking on the administrative duties,
Bridget engaged with a mix of excitement about what could be learned and doubts about her own
substantive contribution to the discussion of inequities within higher education. As she goes on
to recall some of their early meetings, she remembers that one important aspect for her learning
was the process of examining data.
I think the data mining aspect of the process was an excellent way to start different
conversations, because here’s this block of data. What does this mean about us? What
can we do to fix it if it means something negative about us?
In making sense within these conversations, she found that the variety of perspectives at
the table was key to building broader understanding. “Personal perspective and where you come
from and the institutional perspective [were] valuable on that team,” she recalls, “because we did
intentionally create a group that had different power bases, different kinds of roles across
campus, and then your personal perspective.”
These perspectives were brought to bear on a variety of findings, and Bridget recalls
discoveries that were alternately “interesting,” “striking,” or “upsetting.” As she examined the
data, she found that they did not align with her image of the mission that the university should be
fulfilling. For instance, she was upset to discover the low rates of movement through the
application and acceptance pipeline by students of color.
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I guess I was most bummed out, for a lack of a technical term, that we weren’t yielding
even when we accepted people. I saw some problems in that we’re not getting the
applicants. I saw some problems in that we’re not accepting those applicants, but the
most discouraging thing in my mind was the incomplete applications. That was a
bummer, but that’s something that we could fix and could improve on pretty easily.

This sense that the problem could be fixed was important. Bridget recalls that while she
and her team members had entered the team with a desire to create positive change, “this was a
pathway identified!” With some satisfaction, she remembers how the team’s early
communication of this data to administrators helped advocates in the admissions office to obtain
a multicultural recruiter. “She’s done some great work, along with others, in recruiting more
students of color,” Bridget notes.
Returning to her memories of the team process, Bridget continues to recall the reasons
that she found herself “bummed” by the yield data, reflecting:
Certainly we’re a public institution that’s supposed to be serving all these people … It
doesn’t square and it just seems like if there are this many people in the world out there
applying and taking these tests, then we should have some proportionate share and we’re
doing something wrong and not serving this group if they’re not coming here; we’re not
attracting them.

The data failed to “square,” not only with her own sense of the ideal mission of higher
education, but also with what she perceived to be a common shared Rockbourne State University
identity about delivering quality teaching and service to students. “There really is at [RSU],” she
explains, “a real focus on students and their well-being, both individual and as a group.”
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Having entered the team feeling that she lacked some expertise on topics of diversity and
equity in higher education, she recalls how she came to feel more fluent in these areas over the
course of the process, a development that was aided by being responsible for a segment of the
Scorecard report.
But I think every time we met, it was always really interesting, and how we did our
reports is that we had eight people on our team, and so two people were assigned each
perspective, so they kind of became experts on their perspective. And as the team lead
and the author of the final report, Louis became an expert on the whole thing!
Aided by her Scorecard work, Bridget gradually expanded her knowledge of campus
diversity issues to an understanding of the importance of equity in outcomes for both students
and employees. She would come to use this expertise in her other job duties by applying it to
questions of professional hires and employee relations.
New Frames for Affirmative Action Work

Bridget soon found herself using cognitive frameworks from the Scorecard to think
differently about her work as an affirmative action officer. This included her newly developed
conception of equity, a conception that she found more complete and more useful than
conceptions of “diversity” that she had previously encountered. “It did kind of shape me even
though I was already in the field,” she declares, attributing this shaping to the terminology that
she gained, as well as the new thinking that flowed from that terminology.
Well, really, it was the terminology that the Scorecard gave us, because I always
struggled with this diversity concept that was out there … this business case for diversity
that says ‘we all need to encounter and work with different people in order to be well-
rounded.’ That just doesn’t grab me. Of course it’s great to encounter different kinds of
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people, but what is the end goal? … So the equity concept was useful in that way … You
can’t just treat everyone equally and think your work is done.

As she incorporated this conception into her work, she found herself with new language
to frame how she would fulfill her duty of promoting more diverse hires at the university, as well
her employee relations and discrimination work. This included not only the definition of equity,
but also the idea of equity-mindedness. In bringing the two together, she had come to articulate
more explicitly (1) that outcomes were an important consideration within inequitable systems,
and (2) that the institution and its actors are responsible for working toward these more equitable
outcomes.
The deficit thinking, going into equity mindedness, is useful when you are dealing with
colleagues who are saying “well, I treat everyone equally and that should be enough” …
it is never the case that everything can be equal for two candidates for employment, nor,
of course, is it ever possible to treat everyone equally. So that’s not enough. And I think
it gives us terminology to encourage people to understand that it’s our responsibility.
Thus, as she incorporated this terminology more explicitly into her own thinking, she
began to use it, as well, in communicating her thinking to others.
Sensegiving for Equity: “I think once there is a word for it, it becomes more powerful.”

Like Louis, Bridget found the new terminology informing the way that she interacted
with both students and colleagues. Regarding the former, she experienced changes in her
teaching as a classroom instructor, as well as in the ways that she addressed student complaints
within her administrative duties.
As far as towards the students … I’ve tried to portray equity as a goal rather than
diversity as a means to an end. So that’s been kind of a piece that I’ve thrown in that is
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getting more polemic in my discussions with students. It makes it more fun, and they are
more engaged … So when I talk to them about minorities and women, we talk about how
little the laws actually do favor minorities or women, and we talk about how the laws
entirely favored men and White ones up until quite recently in our history.
Meanwhile, Bridget found it useful to have the language of deficit- and equity-
mindedness when working with colleagues who were already focused on similar concerns, as it
helped to have verbiage that directed their goals and guided their development of documents.
It’s useful terminology in discussing solutions, so that’s when you are talking with those
who are already working on solutions to these problems: “How do we come up with the
equitable outcome? What do we do about our transfer students? We need to help them
in these various ways.”

In addition to the usefulness of the language in shaping goals with others who were
interested in similar concerns, Bridget found it equally useful to have the language to name the
kinds of resistance or counter-attitudes that she would sometimes encounter. She recalls a
conversation in which it was discussed that some campus members might be resistant to the idea
that their pedagogies were contributing to less-than-equitable student outcomes:
I was talking to the Provost about [the need for greater equity] … and she mentioned
certain departments were resistant. So I talked to her about “well that’s just deficit
thinking!” And she said, “Yeah that’s an excellent way of talking about it.” So it’s kind
of almost in a conversation you are already in, and then the thing is described exactly –
like she said, “They don’t think it’s their responsibility and the students are deficient in
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this manner” – so you can label it with a term that makes sense. I think once there is a
word for it, it becomes more powerful.

In this example, Bridget found it useful to have the language of deficit-mindedness to
name the attitude that she was encountering among some faculty and staff that ran contrary to her
equity work. By being able to recognize and put a specific name to the attitude, she felt
empowered to work against it.
In encountering those who might otherwise be resistant to goals of equity, she also found
the data to be a powerful tool in communicating.
It’s the data-focused approach that appeals to faculty … You know, you can identify a
problem without the data, but it makes your argument stronger and more believable in
many people’s minds if you have your own data to back it up … The data focus is very
important, it makes people take notice … To those faculty who have statistical expertise
… [it’s useful] when we can say “OK, here’s the data we found.” It’s been a good
concept overall to say that “yes, we can all agree what our goal is” … but we need to see
what the barriers are, through certain statistics, and then use some of the language we’ve
come up with to try to enable [these individuals] to help their students succeed the best
that they can.

Reflecting on a group of colleagues – both within and beyond the Scorecard team – who
have gathered around these ideas, Bridget further observes that the language and data can create
new “allies,” allies who weren’t necessarily a part of the equity work before. Referencing her
colleague Thomas’ work on the revising of the Honors program, she observes about the
actionable nature of the data: “It just seems like when you get good data like that and it creates
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new allies like Thomas … when they have a little hook to act on.” She adds, “It really did help
empower all, including me, as advocates.”
Developing Communication Strategies: Vicarious learning
Yet, despite the positive receipt of the information by members like Thomas, Bridget also
experienced resistance from certain departments that were implicated within the data. And
through her own sharing, and the sharing that she witnessed by Louis, she incorporated lessons
that would inform her ongoing communications about such matters.
In particular, Bridget observed the reactions to Louis’s presentations about some key
Scorecard findings – findings about gateway courses that served as barriers for students of color
in certain departments – and the varied reactions by departments. She recalls that while some
departments responded by reflecting, “Hmm, that isn’t good, we need to do something,” one
simply challenged, “We treat everyone the same, that’s impossible.” In reflecting on these
reactions, she began to form ideas about her own ongoing work as an agent of equity causes.
So I think sometimes you have to be careful how you communicate the concepts and talk
about institutional responsibility. “What do faculty need from the institution as tools?”
rather than “You specific departments or faculty are doing something wrong here.” And
you know, it’s a specific way of having the conversation.

She goes on to observe that it is useful to speak about generalities when addressing large
audiences, and to save the specifics for one-on-one conversations. Through an early trial-and-
error communication of Louis’s – experienced collectively by Bridget and others on the team –
she had begun to take note of what worked and what did not. Thus, Bridget had developed new
strategies about sensegiving, strategies that came not only from her incorporation of new
language, but also from a kind of vicarious learning that came from watching Louis.
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A Growing Agent Identity

She incorporates this lesson and others in her ongoing work, work that encompasses
advocacy for LGBTQ rights, the addressing of offensive events in co-curricular or classroom
settings, and the current exploration of how to build a new Hmong Studies program at the
university, among others. Over time, Bridget has developed a style that balances deference to
the authority of others about their departmental expertise with an increasing assertion of her own
equity expertise.
Certain things are the right way to do things, so I will definitely strongly put those in a
conversation, but always with the assumption that we’re going to end up with some sort
of mix-up, mash-up, of what some people think is the best way to go.
Looking back over this development of her personal sensegiving style over the course of
her work at RSU, she recalls a performance review with her former boss – the former chancellor
who first interviewed her – that caused her to reflect on a skill set that she had perhaps not yet
acknowledged. “I came upon this review [recently] and re-read it. It was about my ability
through congenial engagement of people to get their defenses down in even the most tricky
conversations,” she recalls. Reflecting on this feedback, Bridget has begun to acknowledge her
own ability to be a force of change for these causes. Yet, she acknowledges it with hesitancy, a
hesitancy that she couches in her Midwestern identity.
I think especially people who live here and who are from here have a very bad minimized
sense of our power and what we can do in this kind of Midwestern way and very self-
deprecating. We’re very capable in a lot of ways, and I think we minimize that. Even
with myself, I always knew that I could do things that I set out to do, but to realize some
things you can assist with that are helpful is a really strange awakening.
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Reflections on Positionality
As she experiences this growing recognition about what she can accomplish via
communications, she situates this communicative power in part within her professional position
as a high-level administrator reporting to the chancellor.
Can I boss people around in some small areas? It seems like people think I can boss them
around more than I can. I feel uncomfortable with it, but to kind of recognize that and
use it for the benefit of what I’m trying to get done is valuable.
At the same time that she situates her growing assertion within her professional position,
she equally situates this within her racial positionality. She begins by observing, “you know,
certainly, we are all colleagues and all friends, but we have mixed experiences and some of those
are race-based.” She goes on to reflect on the ways in which this interplays with issues of
message and audience. “Colleagues who are people of color sometimes think the message has to
come from a person of color, and sometimes the message has to come from a White person,
depending on the audience.”
She recalls an event with Shonna, a Black female colleague and one of the D&E Fellows
to succeed Louis. In a nearby small town about 30 miles north, a number of racist incidents –
incited by both teachers and students – had been documented, and Shonna had been asked to
speak. Shonna and Bridget decided to attend together, in part because they felt it would
maximize the effectiveness of the message. “Because if anyone is disinclined to validate or
value something that a person of color says, we know that those are the people who need the
White person to say ‘no’,” Bridget notes. She recalls that Shonna had observed afterward how
Bridget had successfully “shut down” a tense interaction during the visit: After Shonna had
explained to the audience the ways that many persons of color experience the confederate flag, a
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student had challenged her. Recalling what happened next, Bridget says, “I stood up and said,
‘That’s not the case.’ Whatever you think it means to you, this is what it means now and what it
means to others.”
Looking back on the event, Bridget recalls this as another moment in which her
understanding of her own roles and responsibilities to speak on such matters evolved. “I felt like
I didn’t do anything, but she really valued me just being there; your butt in a chair somewhere.
That’s valuable to people sometimes.” She has since incorporated what she has called the “your
butt in a chair” concept into her work approach: At times, it is key that one show up to
discussions on topics of race and equity, by virtue of that person’s positionality – be it
professional, racial or other. By showing that members across race are backing a particular
topic, or by indicating that members of a particular job stature are backing a topic, one serves an
important symbolic role by being present. “I came out of that incident with more awareness of
that function,” she observes, “the importance of forcing myself to be an ally even if it’s
uncomfortable.”
Bridget does not limit her contribution to a symbolic gesture, but continues to participate
more vocally in the dialogue. While acknowledging the complexities of how race my play out in
terms of the speaker and audience, she has simultaneously moved to a point of being
unapologetic and direct with regard to these communications.
I find it easiest to say, “This is what has happened, let’s talk about what that means.”
There are techniques for White people talking about it, there are techniques for people of
color talking about it ... But you know, I do acknowledge sometimes like, “yeah, I’m the
middle aged White lady [and] I’m going to tell you about race,” you know?

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Today

Looking forward in assessing campus direction, Bridget reflects on the areas that have
improved and the areas that have not, and she hopes to continue to revisit the Scorecard data in
ways that keep the conversations moving. Noting her satisfaction that Scorecard measures are
beginning to be incorporated into the university’s reports to the state and system, she shares her
excitement about some possibilities. “My current hope, and I’m actually very excited about it…
is that we’re talking about doing an update of the Equity Scorecard measure and doing a merger
with system & legislative accountability measures.” She hopes, as well, to revisit some internal
measures. “Wouldn’t it be useful now? ... We’ve got this multicultural recruiter in place, Honors
has changed so much … The things that we’ve changed and maybe even some of the things that
we didn’t change … you know, what’s the mathematical difference now?”
One area of doubt that Bridget addresses is the question of turnover in multiple leadership
positions. In particular, she notes her concern about a possible lack of diversity knowledge in
one of the incoming leaders. Yet she couches her doubt in a cautious optimism. “I really hope
the new guy understands the importance of having a real passion for diversity. He doesn’t have
it as much as [his predecessor] did. He seems somewhat lacking as far as that understanding.”
She goes on to add, “He can be taught … and he needs to be taught, too.” As she reflects on the
significance of what she has just said, she adds, “I’m not in a place to say that somebody can’t be
taught, when I have been.”

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Jerry: “I didn’t realize I had one song in my trumpet.”

Jerry, a White male in his sixties, has worked at RSU for twenty-eight years. Beginning
his career there in the middle 1980’s as an English faculty member who progressed to full
professor, he eventually took on more administrative roles, early on as the chair of his
department, and later as Interim Provost and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He
subsequently returned to full-time faculty life, a move prompted by both a shift in leadership as a
new provost entered, and his own identification as a faculty member more so than a career
administrator. With a strong rhetorical bent, Jerry has been at times a visible and vociferous
public figure influencing policy and programs through speeches to large groups, and at other
times a somewhat behind-the-scenes conspirator influencing faculty governance via his written
contributions to proposals and his brainstorming with colleagues.
Across these varied roles, one constant in his career has been a gradual arc of awareness
– coupled with an increasing intentionality – about the social justice cause of racial equity.
Having begun his career with very little understanding of equity and a “sink or swim” attitude
toward students, and eventually becoming known as someone who speaks for equity and social
justice issues, he reflects on the incidents that propelled him into a greater awareness.

Growing Up

Jerry grew up in a lower middle-class suburb of Detroit, an area that was mostly White,
where “the people who were ‘others’… were Italians,” and where the first African-American
family to move in “caused a sensation” among many neighborhood residents. The Detroit riots
of 1967 took place during his childhood, and while these events were not near his neighborhood,
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they were a constant on the news. Reflecting on the ideals instilled by his family during this
time, he notes,
I can’t give my parents any special credit for being particularly enlightened, but they did
know this sort of basic truth that human beings are human beings and you at least have to
be nice to each other. Their thing was about niceness, not about justice.

Having little exposure to racial injustices in his direct experience despite the civil rights
backdrop of surrounding neighborhoods, Jerry’s understanding of “diversity” was largely
centered on the idea of being open-minded and considerate. This continued into his college
attendance years.

Turning Point #1: “There began to be in my life actual circumstances…”

As he entered college, Jerry was excited by a new exposure to diversity in peers, yet his
awareness was still limited in terms of the actual injustices experienced by many of his peers; he
had yet to witness firsthand the discrimination encountered by individuals who are minoritized
within the United States.
One turning point in his racial awareness came when his sister fell in love with a foreign
exchange student from Swaziland. With a new biracial child, the couple had decided to return to
the United States after they had encountered particularly challenging experiences as an
interracial couple in South Africa. While this move may have resulted in a moderately better
environment, the realities of Midwest Whiteness still meant discrimination not only for the
couple, but also for the nephew to whom Jerry had grown close. For the first time, the realities
of race hit close to home, and he was faced with a difficult choice.
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At that point there began to be in my life actual circumstances where strangers would
treat him in a certain way … I found myself having to, again and again, sort of abandon
him by not supporting him. It took me a while, and I’m embarrassed to say this, but it
took me a while to find the courage to start saying to people, “You should apologize to
him. You can’t say things like that.” For a while it was easier to just be quiet, and then I
realized that was a treacherous thing.

Jerry had begun to encounter, for the first time, the realities of discrimination directed at
individuals of color in the United States. Yet, despite this experience, he had yet to understand
more systemic forms of barriers. Upon his entry to the academy after graduate school, he still
had what he describes as very “traditionalist” attitudes toward students.
I thought assimilating was the right thing to do. When I came into my department, I had
to learn the ropes; when students came to college they had to be college students … If
you aren’t this good, you get weeded out, right?

Turning Point #2: “There was really something wrong here that just did not match.”

Yet, as Jerry moved from a primary teaching role to one of chairing his department, he
experienced an early notion of the ways in which individual discrimination – be it intended or
unintended – could result in systemic forms of barriers within the academy. In this case, the
realization was not about barriers for students, per se, but rather the promotional barriers that
were created for faculty of color as their teaching was rated by their predominantly White
students in their classrooms. In observing the often-low ratings and frequent complaints that he
saw for women faculty as compared to men, and for faculty of color as compared to White
faculty, he was struck by the discrepancy. “There was something really wrong here that just did
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not match.” He ultimately developed a kind of litmus test in deciding how to respond to low
teaching ratings for these faculty.
We had [James Schmidt] … German and White as can be. An imposing figure who was
a strict disciplinarian … [If] students wanted someone to be mad at for their high
standards or their unhelpfulness, it surely should have been [James] … [So] I would look
at a set of evaluations and try to imagine the students writing this about [James]. If it was
way wrong then I said, “Okay, what’s operating here?” … The students don’t know how
they reveal this unconscious bias that they have, so we have to find it. We have to look
for it.

As he reflected with other department chairs on this phenomenon and the systemic barrier
to promotion that it created for some women faculty and faculty of color, he began to take a
different view toward the socialization and mentoring of new assistant and associate professors.
Despite his having had to “learn the ropes” as a new faculty member himself, he became
intentional about mentoring faculty, with a conscious awareness of the race and gender of these
younger members of the academy. Nevertheless, his “weeding out” attitude toward students
remained. Jerry acknowledges, “That didn’t change much, even after I changed my orientation
toward faculty retention.”

Turning Point #3: Reflections on privilege

With this revelation serving as one early turning point, another came when he was asked
by a former chancellor to write the first in a series of articles on privilege for the student
newspaper. “I have two or three skills that I’m known for and I’ve got to make the most of them,
right?” Jerry jokes, “One of these is writing.” He further acknowledges, “I had to do it on White
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male privilege … I couldn’t write about any other privilege.” In reflecting on the effect that
came from this kind of written deliberation about his own positionality as a White male, Jerry
observes that the work “really kind of moved me from the notion of thinking of privilege as a
benign … muted force to thinking of it as quite powerful.”
As his understanding of his own positionality and its associated privileges and
responsibilities grew, so did his frustration with others who did not understand, a frustration that
was accompanied by more blunt forms of communication. “Almost from the very first moment I
started thinking of it that way, I realized how much whining out there passes as thoughtful
political dialogue,” he observes. With a new understanding of his own positionality and a new
frustration with what often passed as meaningful dialogue without resulting in systemic changes
– but not yet having re-examined his own lenses about student success and equity – Jerry
stepped into the role of the interim provost for the university. It was while in this role that he
took part on the Equity Scorecard team.

The Equity Scorecard Inquiry Team: “How can you explain that away?”

Excited to participate on the Scorecard process with his team members, Jerry was
nonetheless surprised by what turned out to be a more academic focus than he had anticipated.
What I had thought the Equity Scorecard was going to do was look at different ways that
students are treated by different offices on campus … but not … thinking that there’s an
academic responsibility for some of the problems here. I just wasn’t there yet.

He initially struggled with the idea of breaking students out into racial/ethnic groupings
within the data examination, as this did not fit with his training. “The notion of disaggregating
data according to race is so counterintuitive because you’re supposed to never do that. At least
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that was the conventional wisdom - that you don’t separate people out.” Yet, it was this very
practice that allowed for important realizations, realizations about inequities that could not be
rationalized.
Finding that different performances in college could be measured among the different
races … even when controlling for ACTs, even if students had … very similar high
school scores. They come to college and perform differently … How can you explain
that away? What do you tell yourself that makes that okay?

As the team went on to engage in inquiry activities, this realization was coupled with
realizations about the ways that college practices may have contributed to students’ decisions to
apply, their persistence, or their experiences of the university. For instance, he was surprised to
discover how messages on the admissions web page could be interpreted by students as
discouraging toward their applications.
Every new piece of data was a real eye opener, over and over again, no matter what we
were looking at … Every aspect of what we do … (like) the fact that our admissions page
almost said “Don’t even bother applying if you don’t have a 25 ACT,” that’s almost what
it said.

Turning Point #4: “Race matters, A, and B, it’s our fault.”

As he discovered these implicit messages and examined gaps in outcomes data, Jerry
found the language presented by the Scorecard to be useful in directing the thinking of the team
members. “I mean, just in the definition of deficit-mindedness, I thought, ‘that is the language
that we need!’” Yet the shift toward more equity-minded thinking was not a simple process, he
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concedes, but rather something that took place over the course of many ongoing conversations
with colleagues on the team.
Deficit thinking kept creeping up all throughout the process and it would just surprise us
how often it came up. It was so easy, especially in the first half a year or so, for us … to
talk about it as if the outcome [of our work] would be kind of a concession to weaker
students. It just kept coming up in the conversation in ways that finally became
embarrassing for those of us who were a little earlier to convert than others on the
committee. Finally, it got to the point where none of us were talking like that, because it
was clear.

Key to this evolution for Jerry was the constant return to data as the members dialogued
across disciplines. As they did so, they were required to make sense of data that repeatedly
revealed contradictions between their assumptions and the realities of student performance.
“Again and again we kept running into evidence that all the myths about students being
responsible for their own failure just blew up,” he recalls. Finally, he came to an important
realization: “Race matters, A, and B, it’s our fault.”
Along with his realization came a shifting definition of what equity meant. “I used to
think that equity means you treat everyone equally,” Jerry states. “But now I see it more in terms
of outcomes. Are people able to achieve similar results at the end of their education regardless
of where they started?” He goes on to reflect on the institutional responsibility that is implied in
this question. “You ask, ‘what has the institution got that places a barrier in front of students in a
disproportionate and inequitable way?’”

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Stepping into the role of Sensegiving for Equity: Capitalizing on new conceptions

With these shifts in thinking came a new sense of responsibility for carrying out a
message about this topic to others, as Jerry realized the necessity of explicitly addressing topics
of racial equity within larger discussions of the quality of service to the students.
We have to take responsibility for this … One of us or two of us or eight of us or
whatever have to begin changing the way we do things and changing the way we talk
about things so that race and equity and social justice are always a part of the
conversation no matter what we’re talking about.

In his early communications during and following his Scorecard experience, Jerry was
able to use his position as Interim Provost, followed by his position as the Dean of Arts and
Sciences, to incorporate the language of the Scorecard as he called for equity in programmatic
considerations. “There are ways that I can’t even remember anymore where I was able to bring
this up on a sort of implementation basis.” In doing so, the language and the method of
disaggregating data – combined with the terminology of equity- versus deficit-mindedness –
were key in explaining to others.
It gave me the language. It gave me the methodology, and I can explain the methodology
to anybody. It’s not any more complicated than disaggregating data according to
demographic categories and then just looking at what you have! And then, how to
address it? Remembering that you don’t want to address it from a deficit-minded
perspective. You want to address it by identifying institutional barriers and
programmatic challenges. What can we change as an institution?

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In delivering this message to colleagues, he found that one effective means of convincing
others to act in more intentionally equity-focused ways was to appeal to these actors’ sense of
themselves as liberal and well-intended. As he did so, these actors would find it difficult to
rationalize this self-image when it was coupled with the contrast created by the Scorecard data.
College professors are largely progressive, they want to be progressive. They think of
themselves as liberals so when you put the question to them this way, it’s hard for them
to answer. It’s hard for them to think of a clever intellectual dodge away from the fact
that the institution is responsible.

Admittedly, the approach does not work with all colleagues, as he has found some to be
“curmudgeons” who must simply be outlasted. Yet, in focusing on those who might be
convinced, he relies upon the rhetorical skills that he developed in his combination of literary
and leadership duties:
I say pretty much up front that for me it has become a social justice issue, that we haven’t
yet tried this democratization of higher education for long enough to know that it’s going
to succeed. In fact, it’s threatened now in ways we wouldn’t have dreamed of ten years
ago. And so it could fail. But if it fails, let’s let it be because more powerful forces
succeeded in wrecking it, than that we were complicit in its withering away.

Positionality in Sensegiving: Privilege as responsibility

In reflecting on his professional and racial positionality, Jerry acknowledges how both
play into the ways that his equity messages are received by others. During his time as an
administrator, he found that his having previously been a faculty member helped in gaining the
confidence of faculty. “I had little to no interest in administration … when lightning struck and I
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 114
was appointed Interim Provost.” He subsequently perceived that campus actors who might
normally be skeptical of “roving administrators” were more open to his messages due to his self-
identifying as faculty. At the same time, he found in carrying out messages of racial equity that
his Whiteness allowed a certain benefit-of-the-doubt not always accredited to colleagues of color
in carrying out the same messages.
In some ways I have an advantage there too, which I probably should put under the
category of privilege. My audience isn’t immediately on guard about what I have to gain
by promoting this, by being a White male. I can benefit from their likely assumption that
I don’t have an interested side in that and that I’m not doing this for personal gain.

In processing this privilege, he concluded a certain responsibility for continuing to carry
these messages to multiple settings. “It’s funny how much of the national dialogue is couched in
terms of loss to White males,” he reflects. “The only explanation is that those who want to
normalize that privilege are somehow in control of the dominant view, and as long as that’s true,
we have to keep our gear against it.”
Turning a Critical Lens toward other Causes
In Jerry’s ongoing work, another professional passion – the question of liberal education
reform – was soon informed by what he had learned on the Scorecard. After examining
questions of the RSU liberal education course progression with his Scorecard peers, he came to
bring a greater critical lens – what he calls a “social justice motivation” – to larger questions of
liberal education. Like Louis, he particularly took an interest in the reform of diversity
requirements within RSU’s liberal education curriculum, a local reform question that was
reinforced by a national conversation of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
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As he took these themes into his work, he continued to utilize the communication techniques
fostered by his Scorecard experience into the way he advocated for liberal education reform.
My pitch then became rooted in the social justice motivation … It’s the only thing that
really got traction among many faculty in the question “Why change general ed? Why
change it when it’s working?” No, it’s not working … its racist in the way that it works.
I could almost feel that argument making a difference. It’s an easy argument to make if
you have the data.

Thus, Jerry had not only applied the lens of equity-mindedness to a new area in his work
beyond the Scorecard; he had equally applied a new way of communicating – the language of
data – as he convinced others of the need for reform. As he began to incorporate this language,
another important transition in his communication style came in his movement toward greater
simplicity. This simplicity was modeled for him by a colleague with whom he worked in
addressing issues of equity in faculty representation.
We’re five minutes into this meeting with the marketing department, which had one
woman in it and twelve or fourteen men. I thought things were winding down and then
[my colleague] said, “Well, we haven’t covered the issue of diversity and equity.” You
could see these guys roll their eyes about what was coming. She just stated to them what
the problem was so simply, so directly, and so without being loaded up, not as if it was a
high stakes punishment that they had just called down upon themselves, but like it was an
opportunity for learning the difference between where they think they are and where they
ought to want to be.

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As Jerry continued to find himself in the role of pointing out to others the difference
between their desired and actual states of equity, he began to do so with an increasing simplicity
and straightforwardness as he had witnessed in this woman’s demonstration. “I just thought ‘that
was really easy,’” he states. “I stole from her and she was very inspiring to me in the talking that
I would do.”
Today

With shifts in campus leadership, Jerry has more recently returned to his role as a full-
time English faculty member. In this role, he continues to incite change in areas that he
identifies as equity-focused. Yet, in doing so, he chooses to keep his voice more in the
background, both as he informs the thinking of others and in his writing of speeches that are
publicly delivered by others.
Every time you write up a regulation or a proposed requirement you provide a rationale
for it, so those are a little like rhetorical speeches … A lot of [the statements] from the
academic policies committee [are] language that I’ve had my hand in. I feel good about
and it feels like a real contribution. Yet, as far as the people on the senate floor know …
the committee has put it together and my name won’t be connected to it. That’s not as
important as getting it done. In fact, it might be an advantage that my name isn’t
connected with it because I was so heavily connected with it for three years. It needs to
seem like it’s more than just my voice and I think that’s happened now; there’s a lot of
voices out there.

In reflecting on the number of voices now speaking for causes of equity, and the ways
that these voices have begun to represent a common narrative of the institution, he recalls a
recent meeting with consultants.
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We just had some consultants come in to talk with us about branding ourselves. They
met with our faculty senate and … one of the things they got to … was, “what are the
promises that you’ve made that you’ve broken? What are you not doing that you
promised to do as an institution in your vision, your aims, and your goals?” The senate
said racism. We have not delivered on our promise of diversity. In about four years this
institution has gotten to the point where quite a bit of resistant faculty … are identifying
our institutional racism as a promise not kept.

Placing himself within this movement, he adds “I want to be proud of that … I want to be
proud of us because we’re not better yet but at least we know how we’re sick. We weren’t
admitting how we were sick for a long time. Now we can get better.” Jerry continues to identify
with this movement as his career focus, noting that should he return to an administrative
position, his only desire would be to fill a position where his work could be centered around
D&E topics.
I don’t think it’s something that I ever get to stop talking about until I retire, and then I
hope there is a similarly stubborn person willing to take over later. It’s a process. I don’t
know if we can ever say, “hey we’ve arrived.”

As he reflects on the pieces of his career trajectory that have been important to him, and
parallels across, he notes that the pieces have achieved a nice synergy, one that congeals around
topics of equity. Notably, he observes that it was his experience on the Scorecard where this
became a defining topic for him, despite his early work on behalf of more fair evaluations of
faculty of color and women faculty.
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I didn’t think of it as a defining part of my career until the Equity Scorecard. When I
realized that the institution needs to take responsibility not just for teaching students and
for teaching faculty, mentoring faculty into the mysteries of the academy, not just that but
that the institution has a much larger role to play in taking apart the structures and
practices that stand in people’s way unfairly.

In connecting the two foci of faculty mentoring and student retention, he recalls a
metaphor drawn by a colleague that he has since incorporated into his own thinking. “It’s like the
difference of saying ‘welcome to our home, hope you fit in,’ and ‘we’re continuing to try to
build this home – help us. What do you have that we can gain from?’ I love that metaphor.”
Remembering his earlier “sink or swim” ways of thinking, Jerry remarks on the gradual
evolution of his current orientation toward students and faculty. Having stepped into the role of
sensegiving for equity as he incorporated new language of data, Jerry’s identity as an agent for
these causes did not congeal until the frequency of his equity communications was reflected back
to him by a colleague. “A woman from the state system said, ‘here’s the connection with social
justice that Jerry has talked about for so many years,’” he recalls. “Until I heard that coming
back at me I didn’t realize I had one song in my trumpet. Shoot, if you’re only going to have
one, it’s a good one!”

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 119

Thomas: “Part of my story is learning on that personal level, partner to partner and
colleague to colleague.”
A White male in his fifties and faculty in the humanities, Thomas has worked at RSU for
fifteen years. He has co-directed the Honors program along with the associate director, Michael,
for the past five years, wherein the two have achieved a doubling of students and a near
quadrupling of course offerings. Additionally, they have taken what was a highly inequitable
program – with a dearth of students of color – and reformed it such that the program now
approaches parity with their campus population.
Neither Thomas nor Michael was a participant on the university’s Equity Scorecard team.
The two encountered the information about their program in the Scorecard report and were able
to engage in a series of sensemaking conversations – first with Louis and then with one another
and other campus members – as they acted on the data. While the degree of change that they
ultimately created may not represent what happens in all or even most Scorecard examples, their
work represents what can happen as campus community members incorporate the language of
the Scorecard into their cognitive frames, particularly when this language is well aligned with a
larger campus narrative. The stories of Thomas and Michael are also valuable for the contrast in
each person’s prior experiences with topics of equity. This contrast allows for an illustration of
how individuals with varied previous understandings of structural racism can ultimately come to
hold shared conceptions, and more importantly, take shared action toward greater equity.
Growing Up
Thomas grew up in a suburb north of Detroit, “99.9% White and mostly a residential
community.” Recalling his first close cross-racial contact, he shares,
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We had a so-called cleaning lady when I was four, five, or six … [Ellen Johnson], a
wonderful, caring human being. She worked for us for years and years. She came one
day a week in the morning, had lunch with us – actually breakfast and lunch with us
sometimes, and we usually took her to the bus station in the late afternoon. She cleaned
mostly, but she did childcare sometimes. She was my first close African-American
contact. That’s really it as far as contact with people of color, that’s really about it.

Thomas grew up with a rather academic focus to his interests, having been a “sick kid”
who spent most of his time indoors. “I was a blue baby. I had serious childhood asthma and
spent months and months of my childhood in an oxygen tent.” Here his love of books
developed. “I was always a great reader; I was a ‘book king’ as a kid!” The love of reading and
tendency toward indoor solitary activities continued into his adolescence. “On my own as a
sophomore in high school, I read Paradise Lost. My brother was going off to dances on Friday
nights, and I was sitting and reading Paradise Lost,” he remembers, adding with laughter, “I was
reading the volume with the footnotes! This is the kind of person you’re dealing with right now.
My love for footnotes began early.”
He attended college in the mid-1970’s, beginning as a pre-medical major, an interest that
grew from his desire to help others who suffered from maladies as he had. But after a stint of
poor grades in Calculus and Chemistry, he returned to his love of languages. Having studied
German in high school, he began advanced German classes, as well as courses in philosophy and
writing. “I gravitated to what I was good at and discovered, in doing so, that I felt fulfilled.”
Deciding that a pursuit of German studies would be incomplete without a trip to Germany,
Thomas studied abroad in Freiburg, “the sunniest town in Germany, beautiful place,” where “I
spent a year studying language, literature, philosophy, and living in German for the first time.”
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Though he was actively taking in new cultures and language at this point, race was still
not a topic of contemplation. “I’d never flown before, I’d never been out of the country before.
This was sort of stepping into the wider world.” Thus, as he transitioned from a smaller town
perspective to an international one and from a more internal world to one that looked out, these
realms of change consumed his attention.
A Developing Teaching Philosophy
Looking back on the time and how it informed his academic interests today, Thomas
recalls with enthusiasm a formative course at his university. “We’re reading Kafka, but
Nietzsche entered the picture, and Heidegger entered the picture,” he states, his voice gaining
momentum, “and the modernist response to realism and romanticism entered the picture!
Everything was in German!”
The experience was important not only for how it fueled his parallel excitement for
German and Philosophy, but also for how it informed his teaching strategies for years to come.
“Professor [Schultz] was always a step ahead of me and keeping me reaching for the fruit,” he
remembers. “It remained a kind of touchstone for me. He managed to be motivating and not
dominating and encouraged my developments.” Looking back on the experience from his
current position as a seasoned professor, Thomas observes that his teaching strategies today –
particularly within the Honors program – are still heavily inspired by this professor.
He gave us Kafka’s problems to work out for ourselves. If there’s one thing that
describes my philosophy of teaching, that’s it. That this is not a course that is only
transmitting knowledge about something. It’s a course where I want students to involve
themselves in the material itself … I steer but I don’t lead.

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Going on to pursue his PhD in German Languages & Literatures, Thomas was employed
as a full-time lecturer at various institutions while he engaged in the eleven-year endeavor of
writing his dissertation. “I use it as a prop,” he smiles as he points to the dissertation, a five-
inch-thick paper stack on a shelf. He had met his wife, also an academic, and the two engaged in
a game of “trailing spouses” as one followed another to a series of academic jobs. They finally
landed at RSU as experienced teachers, where both would secure tenure-track positions and
make a home near the campus.
Evolving Conceptions of Equity
It was here that Thomas would eventually come to direct the Honors Program and would
reform the program in conjunction with Michael. Yet, upon entering the director position,
Thomas’s knowledge of equity was nascent and he acknowledges with some modesty that even
today, having achieved great change, his conceptions may be limited in comparison to peers.
I wouldn’t claim today that I have a sophisticated understanding of equity … In part I
think my story is the story of someone who had no experience really in thinking about
these issues and finds himself in a situation where I had a chance to do something about a
practical problem … Part of my story is learning on that personal level, partner to partner
and colleague to colleague.
The first step in Thomas’s learning came from his wife, who, as an English faculty
member, had begun to teach Women’s Studies courses.
[She] began, herself, to get very interested in issues of gender, especially gender theory,
and quickly read her way into literature on gender studies, literature on diversity, and on
equity. She began to wrestle with issues of dominant culture, White privilege and those
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sorts of things. We talk all the time and so I got from her, really, my first exposure to
things. She gave me reading assignments!
An Opportunity to Shape the Honors Program
It was with this developing understanding of equity perhaps in the background rather than
the foreground that Thomas entered the Honors arena. “I was notified, as everybody was, that
the Honors Director’s job was going to be up for grabs. I’d been frustrated about the program
for years,” he recalls. “I did some studying and talked to some people and threw my hat in the
ring.” He included in his application a list of twenty things that he hoped to change about the
program. “Not a great strategy,” he concedes with a smile, “but I did.”
Despite this detailed list of the changes from which the program could benefit, one theme
was absent: equity. “That’s something that wasn’t even on my radar screen at the time,” he
admits, “as a person yeah … and being married and also a colleague with [my wife],” he adds.
Yet, even as he had engaged in intellectual explorations at home, the topic had not yet occurred
to Thomas within the capacity of the structure over which he was to take leadership.
Formative Conversations
The first turning point came when in his interview for the position, when the associate
vice chancellor asked him to define equity. “I fudged,” Thomas acknowledges. “I fudged
because I didn’t really know.” Looking back on the conversation, he reflects on the
understanding from which he operated at the time.
I think I was really operating with the idea of diversity and equity as somehow “fair
treatment” and not really using the larger population to take a look at the smaller
population. Not really looking to see people would be treated equitably in that sense. I
think I was most likely operating with the kind of a vague liberalist idea of diversity.
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Despite a “fudged” definition, Thomas was appointed to the director position based on
his many qualifications. Yet the associate vice chancellor’s first action was to communicate to
Thomas the importance of equity in going forward. “She sat me down and said, ‘Let’s talk’”
Thomas recalls. “She was very encouraging to me, essentially saying, ‘you need to look at this;
this is going to be important going forward. This is a mission driven matter that needs to
happen.’”
In response, Thomas took immediate steps to further his own understanding, the first of
which was to meet with a recognized expert on the topic, Louis.
It was kind of neat because I wrote to him and said, “I’ve just become the Honors director
and I really would like to talk to you about equity.” He said, “Let’s do it right, let’s do it
on your first day.” And so my first meeting on this job was with Louis. He gently led me
through the Equity Scorecard and talked about their work. I think he even presented me
with a copy of the report on Excellence ...We talked about ACT scores, we talked about
their conclusions, we talked about the Whiteness in the Honors program.

Reflecting on the formativeness of his conversation with Louis, Thomas adds, “So, that
was day one.” In pondering what was key in this conversation – where and why a new
understanding and a new goal had crystallized – he contrasts it with other conversations of which
he had been a part. “It’s really easy to talk about diversity and diversifying programs and I’ve
been in parts of those conversations at [RSU] for a long time.” Yet, this was something
different. “The Equity Scorecard essentially took it out of the abstract and made it concrete. It
gave me a way to think about equity work that was concrete and thus apparently doable.”
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Excitement in Concreteness
The concrete and doable nature of this information came in the disaggregation of the data
in illustrating gaps, and perhaps more importantly, the quantifiable nature of the solution in
addressing these gaps.
Louis essentially said, “This is how many African-Americans you have in the program.
This is how many Hispanics you have in the program. To simply make it equitable, make
those representations equitable with the rest of the population, you need two more
students, you need four more students.”

Thomas reflects on the unexpected simplicity of this formula. “It was as if the goal that
was thrown down from the Equity Scorecard report was very easy to pick up because it gave us a
goal to shoot for which seemed doable at the time.” He goes on to remark that the report
presented the information in such a way that very little room for questioning was left. The
problem was clear.
I did not need to be convinced that we had a problem because the Scorecard pointed it
out. I had not looked at the percentages up to now. I had not looked at the data and
disaggregated anything by race. It was clear that there was a problem and that was also a
very concrete thing: “This is what the institution as a whole looks like and this is what
your program looks like.”

He recalls experiencing an excitement and a desire to exceed expectations. “My reaction
to those numbers was that we can do better than that,” he remembers. “It felt like we could
exceed, we could continue this work in good ways … It felt exciting.” It was the clarity of the
situation that facilitated such excitement. “It felt like, hey, this is a problem that’s well defined.”
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An “Accidental Coalescence”

While Thomas’ earlier conversations with his wife, Louis and the associate vice
chancellor had all contributed to a developing understanding of equity, his commitment would be
solidified in his work with Michael, as the two engaged in a process of discovery about what,
exactly, could be done to reform the program. They joined forces when Michael was brought in
as an associate director, in part to fill a personnel need as Thomas planned to guide a student trip
to Germany. When the trip was cancelled, Michael agreed to stay on, an arrangement that
Thomas now refers to as a highly fortunate “accidental coalescence.” They engaged in a
learning journey, with Thomas building on his understandings of equity and both learning a great
deal about the specifics of Honors admissions. Thomas reflects of the time, “It’s amazing when
something comes together and you find yourself in a constellation where learning can happen
and change can come about.”
Expressing his appreciation for Michael’s understanding of equity issues, Thomas
observes, “He’s extraordinary in his depth of knowledge. He’s got a lot of theoretical
background and he wears it very lightly.” Meanwhile, he contrasts, “Here’s Thomas with no
experience in issues of equity, diversity, inclusivity at all, but with a real will to get going on it
and get going quickly.” Reflecting on the experience, he adds, “I felt through this whole process
that we were walking together rather than he was leading me in a particular direction.” Yet, at
the same time that Thomas appreciated Michael’s wearing his equity expertise “lightly,” he
found himself equally appreciative of the directness that Michael employed around such topics.
“One of the wonderful things about Michael is how matter-of-fact he is about truth,” he
describes. “In other words, if he’s concluded that something is right, he has a way of being able
to talk about it, refer, to it, explain it, bring it up, where it’s simply … ‘So let’s just do it.’
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Thomas considers their motivation in moving into this journey. Despite what he calls
“the nudge” from the associate vice chancellor, he notes that the desire to make change was
spurred by an internal sense of responsibility, one that was sparked by the data presented in the
Scorecard. “You could argue, ‘Well, your boss was [the associate vice chancellor] and she
essentially wanted you to do something,’” acknowledges Thomas, “which is true. But it also was
the case that the more we – Michael and I and the Honors council – looked into it, the more it
became clear that there was a real problem to be solved. “It was not a command,” he notes of the
associate vice chancellor’s prompts, “It was her conveying her personal commitment to matters
of equity and her ability to make that make sense to me.”
Revisiting Admissions
The problem and its solutions came largely in the form of the criteria by which students
were being recruited and admitted to the Honors program. “The program, since 1983, had
always done automatic admissions based only on SAT or ACT score and rank in class,” explains
Thomas. “To get an invitation to the Honors program you had to have a 28 ACT plus be in the
top 5% in the high school class.” Thomas and Michael explored potential bias in these scores –
as well as the way in which the almost exclusive focus on such scores would cut out the
consideration of student with other outstanding qualifications – and began to consider
alternatives. Thomas offers an anecdote to illustrate:
My favorite little example: we had one Hmong female student who had a 24 ACT and
was valedictorian of a high school class of over 600 students … Extraordinary student,
extraordinary human being … leadership roles, family stuff, community service. And we
never would have seen her. And that story repeats again and again.

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With an interest in recruiting and admitting more highly qualified students like the one in
his example, they revisited both the criteria for admissions and the process by which they would
evaluate these criteria. Ultimately, they transitioned to a holistic admissions process, one that
was much more time-consuming, but ultimately worth the effort.
Engagin in Holistic Review
In addition to their existing automatic admission for students above a certain SAT, ACT
or class rank, Thomas and Michael began a holistic review process as a complement:
We chose the following categories or numbers: Everybody what had a 26 ACT,
everybody who was top 10% in high school class, everybody who had a 3.75 GPA. We
gave that to the admissions office and asked, “Could you do a search in your database?”
They were excited to do the search and we got a list of 2200 students … Then we
developed a rubric to make a second cut. We moved forward students with certain
characteristics. They had to have two of: Some high academic number, geographical
diversity, like someone someone not in [the Midwest], racial/ethnic diversity, and
interesting major. What we were doing was making our short list – a manageable 500 or
600 students. We moved everybody, every racially and ethnically and geographically
diverse student forward into that smaller pool; that was a key decision … And we
developed this little list of the people we were interested in.
Their hard work did not end here, as the next step was to holistically review the
applications of those in the final pool, a task that was new to both of them. “We’ve never been
involved in that process at all, so we didn’t know what an admissions file looked like [before
that],” says Thomas. “We didn’t know how to read them; we didn’t know what to look for.”
They would learn quickly as they engaged earnestly in the review process. Thomas looks back
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with satisfaction on the outcomes of their work. “We stuck to the process. It resulted in a
number of students that we could give our full attention to by creating a second pool,” he states.
“The commitment to [equity] is really to say, ‘What we’re doing is we’re going out into this pool
and we’re looking for honors students.’”
Thomas emphasizes that in their process of “looking,” he and Michael are not simply
“allowing” the entry of students who might not be as qualified as others. Instead, he explains,
they are actively searching for the most qualified students. In illustration, he describes a recent
class discussion:
Every semester I go into the Honors 100 course and talk about the program that these
students have just entered. This year a student asked me, “Is it better to be automatically
admitted or holistically admitted?” I said, “You tell me. Would you rather be picked by a
computer program on the basis of two data points, or by two professionals who have read
your materials and concluded that you’re an Honors student?” The student responded
that the second option was far more preferable!
“The point,” Thomas adds with a note of pride, “is that this is an incredible compliment
to be discovered through a process that is cutting through some of the barriers and discovering
the great students out there.”
Sensegiving for Equity: Building Campus Support for Honors Reform
The changes that Thomas and Michael would make were not limited to changes in
admission policies, but also included an expansion of curriculum to include more courses on
diversity topics from critical perspectives. These efforts have included recruitment of faculty
across disciplines to teach these topics, as well as the communication to students about why the
courses are valuable. With Michael focused on securing new faculty, Thomas took primary
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responsibility for marketing these courses to students. “Why any particular Honors student
would want to take the Hmong Culture Civilization course,” says Thomas, “[or] why if you’re an
accountant you want to take critical race theory.”
Thus, Thomas found himself not only in the role of employing new considerations of
equity in his programmatic decisions, but also in communicating to others. This was not limited
to communication to students, but included a great deal of advocating to colleagues around
campus as he pushed for these changes. In doing so, Thomas leaned heavily on the Scorecard as
his tool for communicating to others, a tool that allowed him to be simple and direct.
That’s made it easier for me when we go and sit down and talk with people, ranging from
deans to student affairs people to housing people to office of multicultural affairs, to
program directors and chairs across campus. What I’ve often said instead of explaining
the equity piece at all is to say, “the Equity Scorecard has told us that we’re a lot Whiter
than the rest of the campus.” I’ve been that brutal or that forthright.

He used the same communication tactic internally. “I came into an Honors Council
meeting and said, ‘We need to focus on admissions because the Equity Scorecard process is
telling us that we have a problem.’” In addition to the directness and simplicity he achieved via
this tactic, he experienced the added benefit of having Michael there as a respected campus
expert on diversity topics. “That was invaluable,” Thomas acknowledges, “to have someone like
Michael who is trusted to speak about these issues.” And so the two charged forward in
communicating to others:
We just assumed and acted as if people were going to approve of what we’re doing. With
holistic admissions, we didn’t ask permission. We had various people saying, “Equity
Scorecard says this, [the associate vice chancellor] says this, people are interested in this
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problem. Here you have an Honors program, it’s very White … and it’s ignoring a lot of
people who might benefit from it, and that’s the problem, so fix it.” I think that we
haven’t tiptoed with our message out there.

Despite not “tiptoeing” and not asking for permission, the two did engage in a great deal
of reaching out across departments to seek both input and support. In doing so, they were able to
work effectively within a culture of dispersed decision-making.
We always talk about the business world model … that it’s top down. I think the
decision making process on this campus, or campuses in general, is far more dispersed.
There’s a lot more local individual authority spread out across campus … If we’ve done
anything right in this process I think that’s it.
Reflections on Success

As he considers the ultimate success of this campus outreach, Thomas notes, “That was
enormously empowering and also terrifying at the same time.” The word terrifying comes up in
Thomas’s descriptions in multiple instances as he thinks about his own reaction to the influence
that he has had on a campus program like Honors. In particular, having moved from a primarily
faculty role to one that includes administrating, he is both empowered and a bit anxious about the
newfound responsibility and agency.
One of the terrifying things about suddenly finding yourself an administrator after being a
faculty member for years is that you realize that you can actually make decisions and
stuff happens … It took me a while to grow into that knowledge and to realize “we can
do this.”

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Reflecting further on his transition into this role, Thomas notes that he has come to derive
a great deal of satisfaction from it.
Teaching makes sense. What I’ve discovered since taking over the Honors program is
that I like to be able to make change, to move programs in a positive direction for the
benefit of students at the institution. I discovered that I really like to make stuff happen
that needs to happen. Part of my joy in working on the pilot admissions project and then
developing it further has been that we have identified a problem, and we figured out
relatively quickly a solution ... I still remember sitting down and typing out the one page
form which essentially said, “This is what we’re going to do with our pilot admissions
project.” I sent it to the provost, I sent it to my boss, and I sent it to Honors council and
said, “This is what we’re going to do.” That was an extraordinary moment. It was like I
just made a difference. I was able to change the world in a tiny little corner of things to
the benefit of the students, the benefit of the program, and the benefit of the university.
That’s huge, I think, for my personal satisfaction.

In taking up this mantle, he has found himself not only in role of communicating
consistently to others within the institution about the need for equity and how it can be achieved,
but also to a larger audience. He and Michael have begun to present their program changes and
underpinnings at national conferences. Thomas shares his surprise at the interest that they have
encountered among a broader audience.
It really was us discovering that other people might find what we we’re doing to be
interesting. We didn’t know. Frankly, I didn’t know. I don’t think Michael knew either
that anybody out there would care. That this little tiny Honors program in the middle of
this tiny little university is doing something that other people might find interesting.
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Alignment with an Official Campus Narrative
In contemplating what has been achieved within “this tiny little university,” Thomas
observes that it has been useful that some aspect of the larger narrative – particularly the
incorporation of D&E language – has aligned well with his efforts. With the Scorecard as a tool
and the D&E narrative as a context, he has found ways to ensure alignment and point out
contradiction. “I’ve always used the Equity Scorecard as kind of the base,” he notes. At the
same time, the work has benefitted from what he calls “the [D&E] river undergirding
everything” on the RSU campus. “We were able to put our work and what we wanted to do in
the context of large university initiatives, so that has made that conversation easier.” He
acknowledges that there is still work to be done to achieve equity in all areas but at the same
time expresses appreciation for the facilitative nature of the university’s larger plan.
We’ve made great steps forward at this institution. I don’t want this to sound too rosy;
we have a long way to go. But the work that we’ve been able to do post-Equity Scorecard
in Honors probably would not have been as easy as it turned out to be if these other
initiatives had not been there and become part of the understanding of who we are.
Looking Forward
With regard to the Honors program generally, Thomas looks forward to moving it from
its current structure as a general education program to a program that gives students the
opportunity to do high-level work for all four years, culminating in a thesis. In this case,
students who come in with their general education requirements largely fulfilled will still be able
to experience a broad Honors curriculum. While not the only reason, one outcome of this change
would be to better serve students who transfer into the university from community colleges,
which would potentially result in even greater numbers of students of color in the program. He
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hopes, as well, to make high schools more aware of both the quality of the program and the
variety of ways to enter the program, so that counselors are advising their students about the
opportunity. “My line is, ‘There are many ways to get into the Honors program.’” He hopes,
also, to follow up with students who were holistically invited but didn’t join in order to follow
their progress and invite them again. “There’s so much that we could do.”
Perhaps most importantly, Thomas hopes to establish the program, particularly the
holistic admissions process, such that it will outlive his tenure. “So that if I leave, if I step down
from the job, if I get hit by a truck tomorrow,” he states, “someone can step in. And the system
is there for all time.”

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Michael: “Building Bridges is What It’s All About”
Michael is African-American, a man in his fifties who speaks with a soft voice often
punctuated with a laugh and a smile. A faculty member in the humanities, his work focuses on
the narratives and identities of individuals, where he examines the intersecting roles of culture
and socioeconomics. Featured in one of the central halls on campus is a series of diversity-
themed posters; each contains the photo of a faculty, staff or student from the university, coupled
with a quote from that individual. Within this collage sits a matte of Michael, hands folded and
smiling, accompanied by the statement, “Out of many, we are one. I am many generations
American, proudly African-American, proud to seek wisdom on behalf of the one humanity.
The wisdom of the many is the only road to justice and peace.” Michael was selected as an ally
for these interviews in part for the numeric success of the Honors program that he has achieved
in conjunction with Thomas, and in part for the divergent background stories of Michael and
Thomas as each encountered the Equity Scorecard and began their joint Honors work. Michael
was selected, as well, for his discerning focus on the many nuances of communicating with
others as a road to achieving equity.
An Academic Identity Rooted in a Community Identity

Michael grew up in a single-parent household in an urban area of Omaha, Nebraska, a
historically Black neighborhood where there was a strong sense of African-American identity
and common purpose. It was the 1960’s and early 1970’s, and he was still somewhat surrounded
by the civil rights movement. While he was less aware of this as a child than perhaps were his
elders in the family, he nonetheless felt the sense of consciousness shared by community
members. “That definitely had an influence as far as the motivation that people seemed to have
to change,” he recalls. “Change was on the horizon … A lot of emphasis on Black power.”
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There was a palpable enthusiasm, one that came not only from the political movements of
the day, but very much from the music of the era. Recalling his initial home in the projects, he
notes, “at one point I came home and my sister was listening to Hallelujah Day by the Jackson
Five, and it was the day that we were moving to a one family house.” Michael recounts this
incident with some ambivalence; even though the move represented a step toward greater
financial stability, it also meant moving from home of his first five years, a home where he was
comfortable. “I know friends of friends that still live there … My friend’s grandma still lives
there.” When visiting the area, Michael still attends the Baptist church on the hill. In his
present-day teaching, he has occasionally used images from the neighborhood in classroom
presentations to discuss urban development. “In driving through,” he describes, “it’s such a
different visual impression of ‘wow, this is a community that has seen better days,’ and at the
same time it’s still a place where people live.”
In high school Michael developed a love for the classics. He remembers with
appreciation a teacher who taught Julius Caesar and Oliver Twist in a way that incited both a
passion for English and an eventual interest in the question of how to effectively teach others to
develop that same passion. Later majoring in English education, he taught high school English
before returning to graduate school for a doctorate in English with a minor in African-American
Studies. The latter was not an immediate decision. It was propelled by the reading of the book
“Technical Difficulties” by June Jordan, an activist coming out of the Black Arts movement, a
woman who combined academic discourse with a more conversational tone. “I just didn’t know
anyone could do that kind of work,” he reflects. “It just seemed that it’s possible to write like
that and combine those two things was really very transforming.”
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As he explored a minor in African American studies, this realization was further
reinforced in courses in Black Arts and in Black Feminist discourse. The Black Arts movement
had interested him as a “kind of academic packaging for what my growing up experience was.”
Meanwhile, Black Feminist writings exposed him to more nuanced perceptions of gender
inequality than he had previously perceived, “possibly because the households were more
women who were head of the family,” he reflects, “and also because I was 8 or 10 or 12 and I
didn’t really pick up on the conflicts.” As he integrated these areas to create an academic focus,
he found himself ruminating on the ways in which current narratives of the African-American
experience did and did not reflect his own experience. “What seems the same?” he asks in
describing his thoughts at the time, “and what seems different?”
These ruminations would drive his academic work as he developed a written voice that
invited others to understand a more nuanced version of the Black and working class experiences
in the United States, experiences that he found sorely absent from higher education
conversations.
I feel like sometimes the African-American working class perspective is not well
integrated into higher education … I feel like there’s such a richness to how I grew up
and some of that richness was due to the time, some of that richness is due to the family,
and I think that it’s just that we don’t have a very complex understanding of Black
experience in this country. I would like for that experience to be understood according to
its greater number of layers.

Michael adds that anyone can learn from these layers “with relative ease,” but that in
achieving this end, “someone has to be there to present it and someone has to be kind of
welcoming in the sense of folks that don’t have that background knowledge.”
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This outlook directly informs not only his academic stance, but also his pedagogy.
“Some of it is working to help people have a voice,” he observes, “to value the voice that came
out of where you came from.” In teaching predominantly White students in the Midwest, he has
found importance in approaching his teaching such that his students – much like his readers – are
invited into a conversation about race and culture. “If you don’t think your experience is rich
enough, then maybe you need to go there and talk to more people and look at the land forms and
learn about the history … How does that speak to who you are now?”
Building Bridges
Michael’s work in helping students to better understand their heritages is also a matter of
helping them to build bridges with one another. The desire to help others to build bridges stems
from his own experiences in doing so. “If you are, as I am … working class, male African-
American, none of which are common in academic settings,” he observes, “building bridges is
what it’s all about.” He goes on to articulate the necessity of connecting across lines of
positionality. This necessity, while a burden not carried by members of many dominant
positionalities, has contributed to his development of an advanced skill set in communicating with
others in the workplace. It is a skill set that has become central to his identity.
If you wait for someone to be just like you, you’re going to be waiting a long time. Just
getting that habit of mind that this is an opportunity for me to know myself better, to stand
up and be counted, to prepare for the professions with the ability to represent myself
through my language, tell my story. I mean, those are very basic moves that are a part of
what I like to do. It’s an exchange that – it feels like it’s always been a part of my life and
my family’s life and it’s just a little bit of bridging these worlds, whether that’s urban and
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rural, or northern and southern, or whether that’s across racial lines and class lines. I think
that’s such a necessity, in my opinion, is that ability to bridge.
Entering the Academy: Evolving Diversity Discourses
Thus, Michael, by virtue of a lifelong practice of translating his own lived experiences
while helping others to explore theirs – all with lenses toward race, gender, culture, income and
geography – entered the academy with what was arguably a well-developed attunement to issues
of equity and justice. As he reflects on his work with such causes over the course of his higher
education career, he recognizes evolution over time in his language, his approaches and his
orientation and he situates these within larger discourses. He begins by recalling his
undergraduate education, a time when he was both affirmative action-minded and African-
American centered.
I was more just African-American minded in my orientation toward education, just like
“we brothers, we sisters, we gotta get it together and be a part of all social institutions.”
… It was more of your civil rights language of “let’s follow the basic democratic
participating model and make sure everybody is included in that.”

Later, over the course of the 1990’s, he saw the discourses of multiculturalism and
diversity gain prominence across higher education. There was a direct relationship between
these discourses and his academic focus: the dialogues often centered on the backgrounds of
diverse individuals, including their families’ stories of immigration and other struggles and
moving beyond a simple Black-White binary to acknowledge stories of varied groups. Yet
Michael often found these dialogues to be lacking in depth and weak in application to any real
social change. In particular, he found himself frustrated while attempting to work for
transformation within the higher education setting where he worked at the time.
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It lacked sophistication at that time and it actually got tiresome to me at that moment in
the early 90’s … The work did not feel sincere at the time. It felt also like it didn't have
science behind it or strategic planning, or anything that would make it into anything more
than kind of well-intentioned, endless, self -reflective talk.

Shortly thereafter, he transitioned to Rockbourne State University. Still frustrated with
these sometimes-superficial discourses, he refrained from engaging in work at the structural
level. “I just decided at that point I was actually not that interested in working on diversity
issues because it seemed very token the way that the issue was treated.” He chose to focus his
efforts instead in the place where he felt that he could have a meaningful impact: the immediate
learning of students. He recalls, “when I came to the university in 2000 … I could attend or be a
panelist for Black History month events, or I used to do a section of our first-year writing that
was a diversity section.” This focus would remain until he became excited by newer structural
approaches to diversity and equity strategies.
A New Science to Diversity: Re-Shaping the Honors Program
It was after several years of work at RSU that Michael first encountered movements to
make equity efforts more scientifically driven and outcomes-focused. “It was really in the late
2000’s when I started to feel that there was much more science behind the attempts to change the
climate and to include a great variety of students in higher education.” One of these was the
Equity Scorecard. He had heard about the process as it was applied at institutions across his
state, and the approach had appealed to him for its contrast to previous diversity discussions. “It
sounded like a great way to make much more concrete what our actions were,” he recalls. “It
just seemed like a very clear-cut way to do that work.” Despite his interest, Michael was not
immediately involved as a member of the team. His involvement would come as he, like
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Thomas, became engendered with the re-development of the Honors Program. Having applied
for the upcoming opening of the director of the Honors Program, and subsequently been
appointed associate director to work in conjunction with Thomas, Michael had opinions about
the program’s extant shortcomings. One of these shortcomings was the lack of racial
representation.
Michael recalls of his early impressions, “There was a sense that it was not well
represented as far as the diverse body of students.” He observes, “I think was implicit in Honors
at the time was that this is a reward because you're a good student and you deserve it.” He goes
on to contrast this with a developmentally driven mission, one that acknowledges the learning
value of the courses within the program and acknowledges the student populations who, with
preparation and dedication, will thrive on the challenge presented in these formats. His reading
of the Equity Scorecard report further informed his understanding of this concern.
One of the main findings was that the number of multicultural students was in single
digits in each community. I don't even know if out of 400 students there may in sum total
have been 10 or 15 at the most … The numbers clearly were not consistent with even the
university’s fairly modest numbers … The idea of inclusion being that there should at
least not be lower percentages in the high impact programs compared to the broad student
population. This was glaringly the case with Honors.

He quickly identified potential reasons for this shortage, including passive recruitment
and admissions decisions that were focused on a narrow set of criteria strategies. “When you
have a small number of students of color to begin with, and then you narrow it down to whoever
has 28 ACT and 3.75 then self-selects to want to be in Honors … it's just not a very good
recruitment strategy.” Further critiquing the shortcomings of a single-measure approach, he adds
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“I think a general problem with assessment and grading and admissions is that we think that one
measure can say too much … if we make it into too much, the holy grail of achievement, then
we’re not really seeing, and we’re just investing too much in that one measure.” Having
identified the current shortcomings, the next steps would involve determining solutions, as well
as how to communicate these potential solutions to others.
Concreteness in Numerical Targets
Michael reflects on his reaction to the Scorecard as it spoke to these concerns. “It was
very exciting the first time I saw it. It was great to see that it was so concrete.” The Scorecard
played on some of his existing notions of equity, while at the same adding a more concrete
means of assessing for equity. “I don’t know if I quite had that definition of equity that says that
your high impact programs need to enroll the same numbers as your student population, and the
equity gap is there if that isn’t the case.” Further reflecting on his previous conceptions – and
calling back to his former frustrations with lack of action – Michael adds, “If I had put in
informal terms before then, I would say that if we’re not going to hire faculty or admit students,
then why are we spending time and wringing our hands having internal conversations about it?”
In contrast to some of his former experience with “hand-wringing,” the current problem
of equity gaps in Honors admissions – coupled with numerical equity goals outlined by the
Scorecard report – represented for Michael an actionable goal that would have defined targets.
“Just having those concrete targets that the Scorecard specifies made it a little easier, much easier
actually, to conceptualize the direction.” With a clearly defined problem, an early conception of
how to begin tackling the problem, and language for communicating it to others, Michael
embarked with Thomas on the journey of Honors reform.

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The Early Honors Journey: Shared Sensemaking
Echoing similar statements shared by Thomas, Michael recalls the importance of the two
having been able to engage in a series of in-depth, ongoing conversations. These conversations
provided an extended period of shared sensemaking as they determined their intentions. They
did so against a backdrop of the newly released Michigan decision on affirmative action.
We really rolled up our sleeves and did it one step at a time. Between Thomas and me it
was just very helpful to have a lot of meeting time, a lot of discussions, traveling to
conferences together, times that we would be predominantly seeing each other for four
days … I think the Michigan case came out that year – so we talked about the Michigan
case. We talked about the fact that [our state] system had put into its policies that you
can do holistic admission. Those were little threads that we just spent a lot that year of
talking about.

Thus, Michael, like Thomas, attributes their eventual success in part to the intense and
ongoing conversations that allowed for shared meaning-making. And even as Thomas attests to
being the recipient of a great deal of learning from Michael’s expertise on topics of race and
equity, both members make plain the importance of their dialogues in developing a vision. At
the same time that this dialogue was key, their sensemaking was informed by the clarity of early-
identified equity gaps. Reflects Michael, “I think holistic admission was kind of the answer, and
Equity Scorecard was the question.”
“A Very Specific Language”

In creating buy-in for the proposed reforms, Michael found it important to communicate
both the problem and the potential solution in concrete and actionable language. It was in
service of this clarity that he found the Scorecard to be a useful communication tool.
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That’s the clarity part of the Equity Scorecard is just a very specific language to say that
even though the perception is that we’re an all-White community, we have 15%
multicultural students in the [local] school district and we have 8% multicultural students
at RSU, so we don’t have to get on a bus or get on a plane or go anywhere, we can just go
down the street and these equity issues are right here with us…
As he communicated these numbers to his PhD peers who self-identified as liberal-
minded, many of them found it difficult to argue with the data. “It’s hard to argue that there’s
equity there.” Yet, even as these numbers provided a kind of exactitude, Michael also nuanced
and varied his use of the data depending on his disciplinary audience. “That’s just part of the
dance that you do … You can expect for folks to have a different register and manner and sense
of what counts as good evidence. That is part of being from a disciplinary community.” He
equally found success in a balance of straightforwardness and connection-building. “It’s really
important to sit down with people and not to get into the mode where conflict is avoided,” he
notes. “Let’s take 30 minutes, let’s take an hour to really talk through things so you understand
fully where I’m coming from.”
Serving as a Counter Voice

Despite early frustrations with the superficiality of some diversity initiatives, Michael had
developed a renewed sense of excitement for equity work as he encountered a national discourse
of more scientifically driven approaches. Specifically, he had the opportunity to engage in this
discourse as he applied the Equity Scorecard data to his work reforming the Honors program, a
reform that resulted in great success. Continuing his work with a renewed vigor, Michael now
serves as a successor to Louis in a D&E Fellow position at RSU. In the role, he has solidified a
sense of his ability to extend change in both meaningful and measurable ways. “I enjoy it. It’s
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university-wide and I enjoy talking to people … I’m good at finding solutions with
bureaucracies … how can we get 65% change instead of 60%?”
In reflecting on the work he is able to do in the capacity of D&E fellow, he notes that it
goes beyond the emblematic nature of the title itself. “Overall it’s more than symbolic. I think
having someone at the table that has stature within the institution that is interested in diversity
issues as a career commitment – that’s the biggest upside…” Finally, he recognizes the need –
and his own well-developed ability to fill this need – to serve as a voice in many conversations
designated to address diversity and equity topics. “You have at least one counter voice that says
‘how about these ideas?’” he states. “Our path of least resistance isn’t going to confront these
ideas.”
The Flowchart
In preparing for the range of objections that he encounters in confronting these ideas –
such as the charge that inequity results from students not being well-prepared – Michael
declares, “There’s a kind of flowchart answer for every standard objection that all makes sense.
It just takes a while to get that roster together of the arguments.” In communicating these
arguments, he finds it equally important to model his own reflexivity. “It’s important to be
willing to ask, ‘How well does our teaching serve our students?’” he describes. “I ask that
question myself and maybe it’s possible to suggest a few ways that I’ve done it in my own
pedagogy… we’re all doing that together.”
He additionally finds it important to help peers to understand how the experiences of their
students may not always mirror their own. “Many professors were successful in school. They
had a lot of self-concept defined by their academic success,” he observes. In helping these
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professors to connect with all students, he works to help them understand the importance of
valuing the multiple “literacies” that their students may demonstrate.
We only test certain literacies … Those are the literacies we value over the many other
ways that human beings can be proficient. It’s somewhat authoritative because of the
fact that it is a defined system within disciplines of what counts for knowledge and what
doesn’t. There are all kinds of ways to count knowledge, and unless you’re somewhat
skeptical about your own judgments, then it’s going to result in [this]: if someone doesn’t
fit in your fifteen week semester and speak the language of higher education and show
the behaviors or even the physical appearance, all those things are going to affect how
they’re perceived.
Michael is currently involved in the same liberal education reform efforts that have
engaged many of his equity-focused colleagues, efforts that will ideally result in a broadening of
the literacies that are valued within the RSU sphere.
Looking Forward: A Long Movement
Reflecting on how his work is situated within the campus’ evolving narrative about
equity, Michael observes how far the institution has come in his 13 years there. He couches his
evaluation in questions of the science behind the movement, as well as how the institutional
narrative has been situated within a national narrative.
There are more people who value human diversity in their professional work, in student
affairs, among the faculty, among the administrators. I just think there are significantly
more people for whom it’s not a new territory. And they bring, many times, a new kind
of scientific way or new academic languages to talk about diversity … And I think the
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national discourse has come some ways, too. I think the AAC&U can’t be underrated in
its contribution … The national people have really pushed the discourse forward.
At the same time, he acknowledges, the need to recruit more agents remains. “I think the
key thing coming up is to bring more people into the change agent perspective. There have to be
a broader number of people within higher education organizations that are able to do this kind of
work.” The work, he notes, will be ongoing.
It’s a long movement. I had something published, kind of an encyclopedia article, called
“The Long Movement.” It’s talking about civil rights and all the phases of it and how
quick victories aren’t really possible in a lot of cases. So do you have the persistence
based on having strong convictions, based on having the desire of American society as a
whole to be more just? Keep working on that and try to find creative solutions … One
has to keep trying.

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Stacey: “This little place, of all the places.”

Stacey, a White woman in her forties, is a faculty member and former department chair
of Psychology. While not a member of the Equity Scorecard team, she had received information
from Louis and others about equity gaps in matriculation within her department and quickly
sought to act on this data. Stacey was included in this study in part because she was
recommended as an important “ally” by other interviewees and in part because her story provides
a counter-perspective to that of Thomas and Michael.
While this study is focused on the individual, it was intentionally situated within a
campus context in order to allow readers to judge how the context may have facilitated or
impaired these individuals’ efforts, and thus, to judge how the experiences of these individuals
may or may not apply to other settings. Many stories have thus far illustrated a range of
facilitative structures – such as the university’s D&E language – that allowed actors to move
forward. At the same time, as in all institutions there exist within RSU contradictory goals and
varied pockets of resistance or receptivity. Stacey, like Michael and Thomas, encountered the
concepts and data of the Scorecard and situated these within her developing knowledge, using
them to inform ongoing work. Yet, upon encountering certain institutional constraints, she
ultimately located other ways to express her agent identity.
Growing Up
“It’s funny; you can’t grow up around Detroit and not think about race and ethnicity,”
says Stacey, “but for me lots of mixed messages and acceptance in some areas and sort of
rejection in others … ”. She goes on to tell the story of her mother, a probation officer, who
frequently recounted an anecdote from her work.
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My mom was just starting out and couldn’t afford to buy a particular snowsuit that she
really wanted to buy for me. One of her probationers came in, a young Black woman,
single mother who was receiving welfare with a child, in the very snowsuit that my mom
couldn’t afford, and [my mom] would tell that story, and that really shaped her, and then
in turn sort of shaped me.

While her neighborhood encompassed a great diversity of people, including Jewish and
Muslim communities and individuals from various parts of Asia and India, Stacey notes that
other communities – particularly African Americans and Latinos – were absent from this middle
class suburb. And while her family had friends across various groups from the neighborhood,
thus demonstrating a kind of “multiculturalism,” certain prejudices were revealed at the same
time. Reflecting on her own consciousness about such topics at the time, she first recalls her
adolescence, during which point she embraced a “colorblind” perspective that had been
displayed by her grandparents.
In high school I wasn’t thinking really a whole lot about it. My consciousness, I guess
you would say, was sort of in that colorblind point on the continuum. You know, feeling
like I really wanted to value all people and wanted to see everybody the same. I knew
that was important and I had heard stories even from my grandparents - my grandparents
grew up in an area called Pontiac, it’s where the Silver Dome is. People know that old
athletic building. They had some diverse classmates and I remember a story my
grandmother [would tell about] how many Black students were in her class and how the
White students treated them pretty much as they were all the same, meaning treating
them as White or thought of them as being White.

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Thus, Stacey reflects on the contradictions that were present in racial family messages of
the time: Even as her family modeled some prejudices, they simultaneously endorsed an attitude
that racial problems were a phenomenon of the past.
Turning Points: Undergraduate and Graduate Encounters
A series of turning points came over the course of her college education, the first of
which – a kind of simple “awareness” – occurred as she encountered racial groupings of students
for the first time.
[I remember] seeing large groups of Black students in the cafeteria for the first time and I
hadn’t experienced that before and that was within the first week or the first couple of
weeks of being in college and I really thought, “This is a different place than where I’ve
been.”

The next step came in her exposure to various courses; she was influenced by a class in
the philosophy of feminism, “where all the isms” were dissected. “That really opened my eyes
to a different way of thinking about diversity and different kinds of people.” Yet, she notes, she
still had not shifted from a largely color-blind perspective, as her energies and learning were
most heavily focused on the isms and ideologies that pertained directly to her own experiences.
I spent the majority of my time focusing on women and gender, sexism, and gender
oppression … [Also] religious ideologies, political ideologies … All of that was coming
under fire for me, all of that was being challenged. I had been raised in a Republican
community and had notions about what Democrats were like that, you know, were not
positive. Then for the first time recognizing, “Oh my gosh, I think I’m a Democrat! I’m
not sure what this all means.” I was really doing a lot of sorting out just for myself,
where I left Catholicism behind to never look back and all these ideologies were
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changing. All of a sudden I was seeing all these things that I hadn’t seen before, and yet
they were right there in front of me, about my own groups. I was pretty self-focused at
that time in my life.

Thus, while being exposed to topics of race and racism during this time, she was at a
stage in her development wherein topics pertaining to her own experiential questions – topics of
gender, religion, politics – were predominant in her musings. “It wasn’t until I got into graduate
school, honestly,” says Stacey, “that I kind of focused on some others.”
Reflections From a Colleague
In graduate school, while serving as a teaching assistant, she would first ponder the
inherently racist structures that make up our educational system. She recalls a specific instance
that served as an important moment.
I remember I was fortunate to teach Intro Psych … I became friends with someone who
was a clinical student … an African-American woman … I was working with her on a
committee [to write test questions] … This student said, “As a Black person, when I read
these test questions that we generate, that we’re writing for our students,” she said, “they
don’t make a whole lot of sense to me. They’re not in a language that is familiar to me.
They’re not about things that I recognize and examples that kind of resonate with me.”
She said, “It’s almost like this is a foreign language.” These test questions were about as
standard as I could imagine. I didn’t see what she was telling me.

For the first time, Stacey saw how structures could reinforce dominant languages, topics
and pedagogies in ways that might disadvantage students of color, even if unintentionally. “I
think that experience was kind of an important moment for me in thinking about what’s
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happening in the classroom,” she recalls. “Not just with tests but with my instruction and what
our students are making of what I’m saying and how I’m saying it.” This was a turning point for
Stacey, if a small one, “a little one in the right direction,” she notes, “then probably the biggest
change was coming [to RSU].”
Hesitations and Revelations at RSU
Upon graduating, Stacey obtained her first faculty job at RSU, “my first job right out of
graduate school and pretty traditional.” Despite having not yet fully developed in her nuance of
understanding about racial issues, she was aware enough to have reservations about moving to
Rockbourne based on the predominantly White nature of the town.
When I interviewed here I had the realization and thought, “Will I really be happy in this
community?” It seemed very homogenous with respect to race and other kinds of
different groups. I was single and I did not have children at the time and wasn’t thinking
about children, but the thought even crossed my mind that if I were to have them one day,
would I want my kids growing up in a community like this? I had this sort of horrible
image that they might see a person of a different ethnicity and say, “What is that person?”

Echoing a similar note from Bridget, Stacey adds, “There are times when I’m the only
person in a classroom that has brown hair; everybody’s blonde.” With regard to issues of
diversity, she thought of her move to Rockbourne as “a step back in some ways.”
The next step in her evolution came when Stacey began collaborating with the Women’s
Studies department, where she began teaching Psychology of Women, a course that carried a
diversity credit for students. As Stacey prepared for the course, she found herself re-visiting “all
of the isms,” particularly as they played out within psychological research.
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I was learning right along with the students the ways that traditional psychology research
is biased with respect to everything. The ways that bias can creep in at every point in the
research process. I had really never thought that way before, honestly, until I was right
there learning it alongside the students.

Upon learning alongside her students, she began to incorporate this focus into her
ongoing work within psychology, a field with a traditionally positivist epistemological
orientation. Today, one will find on her office door a quote that reads, “Objectivity is the name
given to the subjectivities of those in the dominant group.”
Becoming the chair of the department in her seventh year, she began to take on a larger
perspective about university initiatives and structures. It was at this point that she encountered
two concurrent projects that would alter her thinking about race: the anti-racist group and the
Equity Scorecard. As a member of the first cohort of the anti-racist group, Stacey remembers the
experience as “intense,” “contentious” and “good.” She recalls that some of the early attendees
found that they were in disagreement with certain philosophies, including some members of
color, and eventually dropped out. Yet for those who stayed, she notes, a greater understanding
of institutional racism developed as members sifted through difficult and nuanced concepts. This
experience was a final step for Stacey in taking her understanding of racism from an individual
level to an understanding of systems.
It was while she participated in the regular discussions of this group that she began to
hear from various colleagues about the Equity Scorecard and its underpinnings. She notes that
she intentionally allowed her learning across these initiatives to blend. “I guess I tried really
hard in my own thinking not to compartmentalize those efforts. I can easily do that just like our
students do,” she notes. “I was really trying to keep reminding myself what had I learned
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through [one] … I would bring into the other.” Despite her conscious blending of these efforts,
she goes on to observe that the Scorecard contribution to campus thinking included the specifics
of data and the framing of deficit-mindedness. She recalls that the Equity Scorecard prompted
people around campus to think more about “data-driven decision making, and what do we
actually know about how our students are performing, and the importance of disaggregating data
… and moving away from deficit thinking.”
Stacey recalls the experience of hearing about the barriers in the Introductory Psychology
courses as Louis gave his presentation to the College of Arts and Sciences, an experience that
prompted initial sense of having been exposed.
I remember sitting there with all my college colleagues and [Louis] was presenting some
Equity Scorecard findings and there was Psych 100, like right there, projected for
everyone to see. It was a problem course! ... It was almost that feeling – and this is of
course all in your own mind – but that feeling like a spotlight was about to shine down on
me where everyone in the crowd would be like, “What is your program doing?”

In the immediate moments to follow Louis’s presentation, Stacey had felt a sense of
defensiveness: that somehow this could not be, that another explanation might exist, one that
would might avail the psychology department from any criticism. Yet she moved through this
reaction quickly.
Then I went into problem solving mode like, “Why is it that Psych 100 – why would this
course be causing problems for students?” How could I get more information on why
this class [had this problem], and then what changes could we make to get it off the list
and back having access for students like we wanted?

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Having already been through a series of awakenings – from the insight provided by her
peer in graduate school, to learning along with her students in the Psychology of Women course,
to participating in the anti-racist group – it is likely that Stacey was better prepared to ultimately
process this information through the framework of institutional racism than she might have
otherwise been. At the same time, she notes that it helped her to consider the intentions of the
speaker and the goals of the project.
Knowing [Louis] as a person and knowing that he really is about helping people to raise
awareness, helping people to learn, and bringing people along. He’s not accusing, right?
... [And] I don’t think the Equity Scorecard process is about placing blame, it’s trying to
get information out to raise awareness. This is just the very beginning. These are initial
data, so okay, now we know this. What do we need to do?

Reflecting on her own professional maturity, she adds, “I have to put my own stuff aside
because this is really about other people … I probably would have been a lot more defensive had
I been a new department chair at that point because it took some time to work out that
egocentrism.”
Informing Department Questions

At the time that Stacey encountered this information, the Psychology department had
begun to engage in the development of a cohesive assessment plan for learning outcomes across
courses, one that was guided by principles of the American Psychological Association. Thus,
Stacey took the opportunity to introduce Scorecard-guided questions into this development
process.
For about a year the instructors of all those courses met and worked through [questions
like] “In a Psychology 100 class, what do we expect of our students?” I think by
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focusing on research methods it gave us an opportunity to talk about students who were
not performing as well. It gave us an opportunity to talk about what we had seen in the
Equity Scorecard data and why we thought that that was possibly happening. We worked
through this research methods goal, always coming back and asking ourselves, “Okay …
how will that be for students who are historically underserved?”

She had additionally begun to explore a specific pedagogy that was being utilized at a
neighboring university with great results for underserved students generally and students of color
specifically, having inquired into how to replicate the approach at RSU. Thus, Stacey, despite
her initial defensiveness to the data about Introductory Psychology, had moved quickly through
this reaction as she placed the information within her existing framework of structural racism.
As the department chair, she moved into action by utilizing the data to inform questions that
were situated within current department initiatives.
Unexpected Setbacks

Despite Stacey’s willingness as chair to engage in a systematic following up of the data,
these efforts were interrupted by departmental changes, changes that appeared to come as a result
of other equity efforts on Stacey’s part, as illustrated in the story she begins to tell next. “Now
what is kind of a sad end to that story,” she tells, “is that I didn’t step down voluntarily as
department chair; I was asked to resign.”
Having written a proposal and secured funding for a new full-time position for a “cross-
cultural psychologist,” Stacey prepared to engage in a search. “I think not everybody was
probably on board with it,” she notes, “although we identified diversity as a major gap in our
curriculum.” With the committee having narrowed the search process down to two candidates,
the finalists were brought in to engage in teaching demonstrations. One candidate, a White
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 157
Midwestern woman, engaged in traditional teaching methods. “She was the ‘expert’ and sort of
commanded the room,” recalls Stacey. Meanwhile, the other candidate, a Latina woman from
Los Angeles, whom Stacey describes as having both domestic and global expertise, employed
what Stacey observed to be a feminist teaching approach. “She kind of said ‘I’m now inviting
you all in, what do you think about this? It’s my research, but we’re equals here and I want to
know what you think about it.’”
Confident in both the expertise and teaching approach of the second candidate, Stacey
found herself disappointed when a department personnel committee handed down a
recommendation that the Midwestern White woman be hired. Struggling to make sense of their
recommendation, she consulted Louis, and ultimately interpreted that the committee had largely
granted the benefit-of-the-doubt to this candidate from the beginning, thus leaving it to the
Latina woman to prove that she was as good as her White counterpart. She further concluded
that they had largely misunderstood the Latina woman’s teaching strategy. Blaming herself in
part for not better educating her colleagues on alternative epistemologies and pedagogies, and
troubled by the results, Stacey chose – for the first time in eleven searches – to go against the
committee. “Some folks that I use for advisors said, ‘you realize in doing so you might be
jeopardizing your position here. Are you ready for that?’” Stacey decided that she was ready to
face ensuing consequences. Shortly after offering the position to the Latina candidate, she
received a letter of “no confidence” from the committee and was removed as chair. She
acknowledges that it is impossible to say that this removal was strictly due to the job offer, but
also notes that the timing makes it difficult to interpret otherwise. “It’s a little snapshot into
some of the culture,” she notes. Upon transition to an external interim department chair,
examinations of course learning goals and outcomes were halted.
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Sensegiving for Equity

Despite these setbacks, Stacey continues to communicate the importance of equity within
her work at RSU. At times she encounters deficit-minded perspectives with regard to questions
of “rigor” as they apply to meeting the needs of a diverse population. In these instances she
finds herself reframing the statements by colleagues via the focus on institutional accountability.
I regularly hear people say things like, “We shouldn’t have to reduce the rigor of our
experiences … because these students aren’t prepared.” [I will] reframe that like, “It’s
not about the students; it’s about what we need to do.” These students are here, these are
our students, they have been admitted and now, what do we need to do to reach them?

In a similar vein, she points out to her colleagues that, in fact, ensuring rigor is a part of
effectively serving underserved students. “We want it to be rigorous,” she says, “and I think…
[one] way of framing it is that historically underserved students - they need a rigorous experience
and they want it as much as anybody, if not more than other students.” Thus, as she continues
equity-centered work from her current faculty position, she finds that the key in successful
communication is having developed specific counter-arguments. Stacey notes that she is not a
lone voice in such communications, but rather part of a growing group that continue to publicly
reframe deficit-minded statements as they are encountered.
Like many others at RSU, Stacey finds herself currently focusing her efforts on Liberal
Education reform within the faculty senate. “It’s sort of my life, really.” Like the others, she
finds herself focused at the moment on the question of how many diversity credits should be
required of the students and how these credits should be conceptualized. And like the others, she
is agitating for a greater number of courses, as well as a greater emphasis on “responsibility” as a
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type of learning. “The responsibility is not just content, but it is skills, ways of thinking, habits
of mind.”
An Evolving Campus Narrative

Despite unpleasant constraints encountered within her efforts to diversify faculty, Stacey
nonetheless acknowledges a great deal of change in the dominant narrative of the campus over
her thirteen years at RSU.
It’s palpable to me. I mean, I could feel the shift happening … When I first started
facilitating searches I would have colleagues that would directly challenge me by saying
… “Look, I’ve got to tell you, diversity doesn’t matter” … I think some people have gone
underground, but then others have come along and this is true. My department is a
microcosm of the whole university. I mean, many others have come along that are
speaking for diversity. Now we have more inclusive language and more diverse
applicant pools … At least it’s better, I think, than it’s ever been … I think diversity has
come out in every major document from this institution the last ten or fifteen years in the
strategic plan, everything.

She feels that in getting to this point the alignment of multiple efforts was key,
particularly because of challenges with revolving leadership. As the Equity Scorecard, the anti-
racism group and other initiatives were carried out under the mantle of D&E, she found that that
an impetus developed that was strong enough to withstand the changes in personnel.
Given our challenges with leadership, thank goodness we happen to have all of these
good fortunes and that they’re in the same time frame, relatively speaking, because I
think had it been any one it might not have been enough. It wouldn’t have hit some kind
of threshold, whatever threshold was needed to sort of catapult this campus forward. It’s
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like we needed all of this all at once to catch as many people and to get some sort of
momentum going. Had it been only the Scorecard I don’t know what would have
happened, or only [the anti-racist group], but it’s how all of these converged and how
they involved so many people, and overlapping people. I think that was really needed.

Yet, even with what has been achieved, Stacey notes her frustration in the fact that
language within documents doesn’t always translate immediately to actual changes. And she
points out that a great number of colleagues have begun to acknowledge the disconnect as well.
In describing this evolution, she points to the same branding meeting recounted by Jerry.
The facilitators broke the senate into these small groups and had them respond to
questions and the questions were about identity, the university’s identity. They asked
things like “Who are you and who are you not? What do you promise to your students?
What angers you or frustrates you that you hear about [RSU] and how true is it or how
untrue?” In all but one of the small groups, diversity came up every time. That’s
something that we’re not, it’s something we’re striving to be, what we want to be … I
was shocked! And that my group was willing to even use the word racist. I mean, it was
tremendous that the one theme that cut across almost every group was that diversity
theme.

On one hand, the acknowledgement by senate members was an indication of how far the
university still had to go. At the same time, the very use of the word racism was an indication of
progress, as many members had clearly begun to examine the campus through this more critical
frame.

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Looking Forward
As Stacey moves forward in her current work, it is this very admission that provides
room for her to point out the contradiction between thought and action, the contradiction
between the desired and actual states of diversity, as they apply to the Liberal Education reform
goals.
They’re stating their beliefs in public and now there’s an opportunity to come back
around and say “Okay, you’ve stated your beliefs and now let’s translate them into
action” … There will be a disconnect if the behavior is inconsistent with the beliefs. If
you vote against these beliefs there’s got to be some dissonance there, so reminding
people about their attitudes and saying, “Now this is our opportunity to actually follow
through.”

Stacey reflects on the connections across various efforts in which she is currently or has
been engaged – attempted reform of curriculum or pedagogy toward more equitable student
outcomes; attempted diversification of faculty; reframing deficit-minded understandings of
colleagues; and now her current efforts at reforming Liberal Education.
It’s sort of like higher education is the opportunity to engage in social justice. So I’m just
lucky enough to be at a university, in the job of a faculty member, and to have the ability
to make sure and try to contribute to this place.

Offering a final note, she adds, “This little place, of all the places.”

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Epilogue

I get a call from Jerry after our second interview in Rockbourne. “I hope I’m not
bothering you, but I just thought of something. You know how I was telling you the Liberal
Education reform is really my life right now? They will be discussing it at the Faculty Senate
meeting tomorrow if you’d like to attend.” As the next afternoon rolls around, I enter the large
auditorium. I sit near the front and Jerry soon joins me, looking excited. Having co-written a
good deal of the statement to be delivered today, he is eager to watch the reaction and to support
Stacey, who will be co-delivering the proposal. As people file into the row behind us, I hear
someone joke, “We don’t want to sit too close today, in case stuff starts flying!”
I glance around at the early crowd of faculty – about seventy so far – noticing five or six
faces of color, four of whom I know to be current or former D&E Fellows. The speaker on stage
reviews a number of topics, from the university’s involvement in China, to a proposed certificate
in World Religions, to a committee addressing any unnecessarily gendered language within
campus documents. Some piece of business finish with the call, “All in favor say ‘ay,’”
followed by a small or large chorus of “Ay”s around the auditorium. Jerry begins to fear that we
won’t reach the Liberal Education discussion. “Oh, I hope I didn’t invite you here for nothing!”
However, the preceding items soon come to a close and the speaker looks out to the crowd to ask
one final time, “Any more announcements?” As she is met with silence, she flashes a surprised
smile to the crowd, “I’m so proud of us, we just gained fifteen minutes!”
The senate meeting transitions to the scheduled Liberal Education discussion, and Stacey
and a male colleague take the stage. Her colleague begins to outline specific points of the
proposed reform, which includes both an increase in required diversity experiences, and a shift
toward “integrative” experiences that will attempt to ensure critical, self-reflective learning for
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students. He declares, “A premier institution should focus on engaging social differences …
enabling people to unite together to address social problems … this is what we should be about.
This university has, again and again, stated how important we consider equity and diversity.” I
scan the crowd to notice a combination of responses, some members eagerly nodding, while
other sit motionless.
Stacey soon takes the microphone to elaborate on her colleague’s points. “Integration is
lacking in our current model … the current model assumes that students can integrate on their
own.” Making the case that many of the Rockbourne students do not engage critically with
diversity topics, she goes on to argue that “we can now identify the students most harmed” by the
lack of necessary learning: “historically underserved students.” In urging her colleagues to
consider the reform, she references the recent branding meeting. With a simultaneously calm
and authoritative voice, she charges, “the one thing that emerged across groups was diversity…
We said ‘we’re a racist campus. Students experience prejudice here. We want to be more
diverse.’ When asked about promises we broke, we said diversity. Diversity is our broken
promise. This is our opportunity to make the promise real.”
As the discussion is opened to the audience, a flurry of responses are offered, both in
challenge and in support of the reform. These include questions of faculty personnel resources,
how to determine whether a learning experience will be “credit bearing,” and how the
requirements will play out across disciplines. An older White male stands and expresses his
concern, “This is quite different from what we’ve known before.” Another criticizes, “When we
say ‘two diversity experiences,’ we are really just asking them to repeat experiences.” Near the
back of the auditorium, D&E Fellow Shonna takes the microphone. “I’m going to speak for all
four Fellows past and present. We stand strongly behind this proposal. We think our campus
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culture demands it. We have students who are going out into a more diverse workplace than this
campus. We have White students not used to dealing with minorities. The rest of the world does
not look like [Rockbourne].” She hands the microphone to Louis. He outlines two practical
points about the value of the proposal, then looks around the auditorium. “The philosophical
question is: Is it worth it? That’s a question that only you can answer for yourselves.”
The microphone is soon passed to Michael, who stands near the front of the auditorium.
“Friends, senators, [Rockbourners], lend me your ears! I come to praise reform, not criticize it!”
As light laughter ripples through the auditorium, he directs attention to the positives of what has
already been accomplished, pointing to areas where consensus has been achieved. “Now it just
comes down to: What do we want to say to our students that we value?” He goes on to reference
Bloom’s taxonomy and to assert that “building complex integrative thinking” is a higher-level
goal than simply developing “knowledge.” Michael ends his statement urging, “Let’s
compliment each other, respect each other’s thoughts.”
A paradoxical effect has taken over the room after Michael completes his statements. On
one hand, some faculty are concerned by his charge that “integrative” learning is a higher-order
learning goal and appear eager to pose their counterarguments, particularly in defense of their
disciplines. At the same time, a general shift in the energy of the room has occurred: Even some
of those prepared to disagree are temporarily sitting with a more relaxed posture, more pleasant
facial expressions. One of the most fervent challengers now sits, legs propped up and smiling, as
he waits his turn to disagree.
Several more arguments against the proposal are voiced, including one by a science
faculty member who charges that it will be quite difficult to convince science students of the
value of these courses. “Science students like to believe they don’t need those classes
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BECAUSE they are in the sciences and those topics don’t matter.” In response, a White male
from sociology jumps up to speak. “Let me tell you something. I’m a White guy who dresses as
a working class person most of the time. I hear White people talk in this town. This area has
problems. I can’t tell you the number of times students in my sociology class ask, ‘Why do
THEY do this???’ -Whoever ‘THEY’ are … Whether we are talking about gender, sexual
orientation, race, culture … These questions come from ignorance! These students NEED more
education.” Agreeing, Stacey shares with the audience that three major companies have recently
discontinued hiring graduates from a neighboring large university, “because these companies
have deemed those grads to be culturally incompetent.”
The official meeting comes to a close. About two thirds of the audience stays to continue
the dialogue. A number of additional philosophical and pragmatic challenges are offered, and
then Samantha, a current D&E Fellow stands. “As a [D&E] Fellow new this year, I’ve had to be
part of the Bias Response team … it’s awful, just awful … for students to have their peers write
horrible things about them and not know what to do … I think we need to consider the students,
their experiences … This kind of self understanding doesn’t happen in one course, it happens
over years and multiple experiences. This is minimal in terms of what is necessary.”
The dialogue continues for another twenty minutes, encompassing both impassioned
speeches and practical details. Finally, the remaining faculty start to trickle out. Stacey
approaches to talk with Jerry and they debrief what has happened, beginning to brainstorm about
how they will approach the next senate meeting.

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Epilogue #2
It has been just under a year since my time at Rockbourne, and I am checking in by
telephone with each of my interviewees. Those who have been involved in the Liberal
Education reform report a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. While the diversity increase
has passed, the integrative learning experiences have not. The proposal had looked as if it would
pass in its entirety last year, but two movements by the administration have hampered it: Despite
a passing senate vote, the new chancellor decided not to sign. And in the time that has passed
since, the current dean of arts and science has put a more conservative proposal on the floor, one
that would cut the integrative learning experiences from three to one.
Recalling the excitement of the final senate meeting of last year, Stacey describes how
the D&E Fellows once again stood in support of the proposal. “It was a great moment when they
actually came together and said ‘we support this proposal because it supports the goals of the
[D&E] Fellows.’ I consider it a high honor to have an alignment with that group.” While
disappointed by the slowing movement, she is also encouraged by the integrity of people around
campus engaging in explorations of the proposal’s feasibility. “I’m encouraged that they are
going through exercises and people are being critical. Looking at where there are holes in the
data.”
When I speak with Jerry, he expresses his frustration coupled with determination. “The
administration is trying to convince us to accept the watered-down version, and that’s a problem
for me to accept that. Integrative learning is key to better serving all students,” he says. “I’m
going to resist, of course. I already did in a key senate meeting. The chancellor said, ‘There is
some audacity in your remarks!’ Well, I think I’ve earned the right to be audacious in defending
something that is important.”
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Within the context of the reform, it has been proposed that diversity courses should
include rubrics that address topics of privilege and oppression, and Michael informs me that he
has been working with departments to visit these rubrics. He has found some of these
conversations to be a struggle. “The biggest area of struggle for me has been the resistance to
the idea that privilege and oppression need to be mentioned,” he shares, “so I can’t say every
moment has been a joy in moving it forward. But I enjoy the opportunity to have the dialogue
with people interested in the dialogue,” he states. “And being involved, I’ve been able to
articulate the importance, and I can do that with any audience.”
When I speak with Thomas, he is focused instead on some ongoing Honors work, excited
to give me the updates. One of the developments he shares is that Admissions and Honors are
now partnering in scholarship reading. “We now have a team of fifteen people campus wide
who are partnering to read both honors admissions and scholarship applications. It’s an
incredible collaborative process that is blowing our minds!” Further changes have been made in
scholarship designations. “It used to be that everybody automatically admitted to Honors was
given a $1,000 scholarship, but the holistically admitted students weren’t getting it,” Thomas
explains. “A perfect example of unintended structural racism.” With the help of the interim
admissions director, Thomas, Michael and their team have solved the problem this year. “And
now everybody offered honors admissions is given the $1,000 scholarship, whether they join or
not,” he shares. “It makes everyone in that pool equal. I’m pretty excited about that.” Before
hanging up, we consider our interviews from the previous year and what he hopes will come of
the study. Reflecting on his participation, Thomas declares, “I hope that people who read this
will get a sense that this is a story that could be anybody’s story.”

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Chapter Five: Theoretical Synthesis and Implications
As noted earlier, a number of themes emerged across the six narratives. In the following
section, these themes will be explored with consideration of their relevance to the literature
reviewed in chapter two. Themes were selected for presentation herein not simply based on
frequency, but also for the degree to which they “capture something important in relation to the
overall research question” (Braune & Clark, 2006, p. 10). In other words, in some cases two or
three of the participants may have mentioned a particular topic, and I deemed these points
worthy of review due to their relevance to the questions and frameworks outlined in chapter one.
I acknowledge my own subjectivity as an interpretivist researcher in making these
determinations (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). While some themes were addressed by most or
all interviewees, I have elected in certain sections to focus my discussion on the accounts of two
or three individuals in order to present contextualized alignment or contrasts. After the
theoretical synthesis, implications for practice in equity work, as well as for future research
directions, will be discussed.
Process and Results of the Inquiry Experience
As noted in chapter two, a sensemaking lens provides a particular way to conceptualize
what happens within an action inquiry setting. Specifically, it directs our attention to the concern
that in everyday life, individuals often interpret information in ways that serve to solidify current
notions, even when these notions may be incorrect (Currie & Brown, 2003; Abolafia, 2010;
Weick, 1995). Viewed through this lens, an inquiry setting serves a key function in aiming to
correct potential misperceptions or incomplete understandings: it provides a process by which
individuals return repeatedly to specific cues (Weick, 1995) as they make sense of new
information, particularly new information that may contradict previous assumptions. Weick et
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al. (2005) note, “Explicit efforts at sensemaking tend to occur when the current state of the world
is perceived to be different from the expected state of the world” (p. 409). They further note that
in making sense of the discrepancy, individuals will first search for interpretations that would
justify their current views or practices; however, if this is found to be difficult, then further
sensemaking will take place in the form of searching for alternative explanations or practices.
When the above idea is married with the focus on contradiction as presented by agency
theorists Seo and Creed (2002), it may be suggested that one way that members of a group such
as an Equity Scorecard team are prompted toward agency is via their reaching a sense of the
contradiction between the actual state of inequity in student outcomes, as opposed to what
“should” be happening with regard to equity on campus. Key to reaching this realization would
likely be the ongoing, shared sensemaking as members return to the data to explore differing and
evolving interpretations (Taylor & Robichaud, 2004). And as a result of this shared
sensemaking, members of an action inquiry setting should ideally “adopt new ways of relating to
one another … challenging their own assumptions regarding both their inquiry questions and
their traditional ways of addressing them” (Yorks, 2005, p. 1217). In the next section, comments
from the three team members interviewed illustrate these phenomena.
Awareness of Contradiction Aided by Ongoing Sensemaking
Jerry described the experience of encountering consecutive pieces of student outcomes
data as “a real eye opener.” Similarly, Bridget referred to the data as “striking” and “upsetting”
and to her own reaction as “bummed out.” Yet, understandings were not simply a matter of
examining data. Rather, the mining of these data – via exploring differing explanations – was
key to members’ ongoing developing understandings. For instance, Bridget described data
mining as “an excellent way to start different conversations,” because it provoked the question,
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“What does this mean about us?” Further, she found that the answer to this question was not a
simple one, but rather, one where “personal perspective and where you come from” were
important contributors to the shared understanding of the group.
As data examination and dialogue continued, these members reached realizations about
ways that the state of inequity contrasted with their assumptions about the supposed goals of the
university. For instance, as Bridget realized inequities across various outcomes, she contrasted
this with her assumption that “we’re a public institution that’s supposed to be serving all these
people.” And, as this contradiction became increasingly evident, she observed, “It doesn’t
square.” The data failed to “square” with her sense of the democratic mission of higher
education, as well as her sense of a shared Rockbourne identity about service to students.
Yet, it was reported by Jerry that his own realization of this lack of squaring did not occur
simply or immediately, as he recalls that he and some of his peers were prone initially to
interpret the data in ways that placed the blame on students. Jerry recalls that “Deficit thinking
kept creeping up all throughout the process,” and that this took place even as he and other
members entered with a conscious goal of approaching the data from an equity-minded
perspective. This speaks to the fact that, while practitioners may have conscious intentions of
equity-mindedness, they may have been so powerfully socialized into the view that students are
to blame for their own failures – and by extension, that racial/ethnic groups are somehow to
blame for systemically inequitable failure rates – that it may be difficult to change this mindset
by intent alone.
Meanwhile, Louis had been provoked in the group to de-center himself in class
discussions and to model his own learning journey. He described that this change was prompted
by the group’s ongoing discussions of “gateway” courses (courses through which students of
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color were matriculating at lower rates than their White counterparts) and what might be
happening in these courses. As the group collectively made sense of possible reasons for this
inequity, he was able to reflect more deeply on the approaches of “color-blind” and “gender-
blind” teaching.
What was important, then, was not simply the presentation of the data, but that these
members returned to the data, exploring their own interpretations and the underlying
assumptions for these interpretations, and that they coupled this with additional data to either
strengthen or challenge existing interpretations. In particular, interpretations implying student
responsibility for inequities were challenged by the repeated rounds of data – coupled with
conversation – until, in the words of Jerry, “all the myths about students being responsible for
their own failure just blew up.”
Importance of Language
Notable in an earlier statement by Jerry is the importance of the very words “deficit
thinking.” This is important as an example of terminology that was defined early in the
Scorecard process and subsequently became incorporated into these participants’ discourses.
Weick et al. (2005) outline the importance of “noticing and bracketing” new information in
sensemaking, or “inventing a new meaning for something that has already occurred … but does
not yet have a name” (p. 411, citing Magala, 1997, p. 324); they further point out that
individuals’ noticing and bracketing is guided by their mental models, explaining, “in the early
stages of sensemaking, phenomena ‘have to be … conceptually fixed and labeled so that they can
become the common currency” for shared understandings (p. 411, citing Chia, 2000, p. 517).
Additionally, critical sensemaking theorists Long and Mills (2010) argue that the words used
within the workplace will cue specific ways of thinking, or rules, that will restrict or enable
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certain types of sensemaking and subsequent actions. These authors remind us that “the building
block of sensemaking is language,” noting that we make sense of our realities based on existing
frameworks, “and these frameworks are vocabulary specific” (p. 329).
Language in the inquiry setting. The three inquiry members described the importance of key
terminology to their learning, as language introduced at the beginning of the inquiry experience
began to shape the way that they thought about the topics at hand. In particular, equity – in
conjunction with “equity-mindedness” versus “deficit mindedness” – became a lens by which to
evaluate possible interpretations of data; additionally the language of “outcomes” became a lens
by which to ask the question of whether equity was being achieved. For instance, Bridget noted
the importance of the terminology of equity having “grabbed” her because it provided an
alternative to traditional business cases for diversity. Unlike these diversity arguments, an
emphasis on the word “equity” provoked the question, “what is the end goal?” Jerry recalled
having perceived the usefulness of the terminology of “deficit-mindedness” as he entered the
process, thinking to himself, “that is the language we need!” He found value in this wording
because, as noted above, he felt that this language had allowed members – including himself – to
recognize and consciously work to reject a deficit-centered frame as it occurred within their
attributions.
Jerry noted, as well, the importance of having come to define equity as a matter of
outcomes and the importance of the question of whether students can achieve similar educational
results regardless of where they start, declaring from his current state of understanding, “That, to
me, is equity.” Thus he, like Bridget, had achieved a newly internalized definition that prompted
him to ask new questions. Meanwhile, Louis had perhaps entered the Scorecard setting with a
more previously developed understanding of equity than did some others due to his work as a
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critical scholar. Yet, he nonetheless noted the importance of the addition of “the discourse of
data and outcomes” to his understanding, observing, “That was a quantitative dimension to my
knowledge that I didn’t really have before.”
Importantly, language is discussed by critical sensemaking theorists (Long & Mills,
2010; Mills et al., 2010; Thurlow & Mills, 2009) primarily in the context of how it limits or
constrains actions and ongoing sensemaking. The underlying implication is that dominant
discourse may constrain actors’ interpretations such that these actors avoid critical interpretations
of information. Yet the current study illustrates how language can become incorporated into an
actor’s discourse in a way that begins to shift his or her sensemaking in more critical directions.
It was important that these members incorporated new equity-centered terminology, as it enabled
them to look at problems in the inquiry setting through new critical lenses.
New frameworks for other professional endeavors. As Taylor and Robichaud note, language
becomes a meaning-making resource that influences our actions and interactions with others,
such that “when language evolves, the tools and what we do with them also change” (2004, p.
408). Importantly, the members applied their new language and resulting cognitive frameworks
not only to the questions being explored directly by the team, but also to other aspects of their
jobs. As an example, when Louis pursued subsequent work in his role as the D&E Fellow, the
equity lens that he had gained from the Scorecard greatly influenced his judgment of the campus’
climate survey efforts. With the new lens of equity-mindedness, he had approached the survey
with this equity awareness as a key criterion by which to judge the tool, and having ultimately
deemed it as acceptable, he remarked, “I don’t think the last one had the same kind of equity
consciousness that this one did.”
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Similarly, looking forward in assessing his satisfaction with current campus direction, he
gauged his assessment in the language of outcomes, noting such metrics as faculty of color and
critical courses as important indicators. Louis turned the lens of equity outcomes not only on the
larger work of the university, but on his own students and questions of their learning, as he
observed that the students “didn’t know how to talk about race; they didn’t know how to talk
about outcomes.” He subsequently re-shaped his own teaching strategies so that his students
would develop this discourse themselves.
Meanwhile, Bridget described how she took the concepts of deficit- and equity-
mindedness to apply to her work as an affirmative action officer, particularly with regard to
hiring. She noted that these concepts were useful for her because business arguments for
diversity had never adequately described her goals, since “you can’t just treat everyone equally
and think your work is done.” She had not previously discovered satisfactory terminology
within which to couch her understanding. With new language and definitions around equity and
equity-mindedness, she found verbal tools to help her to further explore and solidify her own
thinking around her duties as a new affirmative action officer. And similar to Louis, Bridget had
begun to incorporate this lens into her discussions with students, both inside and outside of the
classroom. “I’ve tried to portray equity as a goal rather than diversity as a means to an end,” she
noted, “So that’s been kind of a piece that I’ve thrown in that is getting more polemic in my
discussions with students.”
Jerry, as well, had experienced the power of a new conception of equity; while having
used the word itself before, he held a definition that lacked emphasis on the role of the institution
in causing inequities. “I used to think that equity means you treat everyone equally,” he
declared, “But now I see it more in terms of outcomes.” As he internalized this definition, he
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began to look at his administrative responsibilities through the lens, “what has the institution got
that places a barrier in front of students in a disproportionate and inequitable way?” He reported
having raised this question in multiple meetings. Jerry eventually brought his new lenses of
structural inequity discourses and supporting data to the ways that he examined the functionality
of general education. When encountering others who challenged, “Why change [general
education] when it’s working?” he described that he was able to frame his understanding as,
“No, it’s not working … It’s racist in the way that it works.”
Weick (2001, p. 23) declares that “symbolic processes create and sustain reality,” and he
outlines the importance of the moments wherein “social rationales for social commitments are
created.” This takes place as the justification, or interpretation, that one develops for newly
encountered information may become an internalized frame such that it “is always available as a
cue that can guide the search for an underlying pattern” within ongoing endeavors. These
phenomena were illustrated in the stories of Jerry, Bridget and Louis, as the inquiry setting
allowed them to engage in an environment where new terminology (equity and equity-versus-
deficit mindedness) and discourses (the discourses of data and outcomes) were introduced. Via
the team’s ongoing dialogue, shared understanding of these terms or discourses and their
importance were solidified and internalized. As a result, these members had not only come to
view the problems presented by the Scorecard differently (as they moved away from deficit
thinking); they had also come to view and address other problems within their workplaces
through new frameworks.
Allies’ Sensemaking Experiences
As noted earlier, Seo and Creed charge that the likelihood of actors becoming newly
reflective about a topic – and ultimately spurred toward action on the topic – is maximized when
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they “continually and collectively experience tensions arising from contradictions…” (2002, p.
230, italics mine). In the earlier section about the inquiry setting, team members attested that
while the contradictions revealed in the Scorecard data were important (using such words as
“striking” and “upsetting”) their ongoing sensemaking around the contradiction was equally key
to their evolving understandings. Yet allies Stacey, Michael and Thomas had all made similar
commitments to equity-minded thinking and action, prompted in some small or large part by the
Scorecard. In the absence of the inquiry setting, what allowed these agents to respond to their
encounters with the Scorecard report in ways that prompted action? While the three allies
interviewed here do not represent any “exhaustive” list of the ways that such responses might
manifest, they begin to highlight what might be the important elements in the processes by which
campus members respond the Scorecard.
Sensemaking about Data Gaps and Structural Racism
In examining the shared work of Thomas and Michael in their Honors reform, it becomes
apparent that concreteness (translating to a sense of “doability”) and shared sensemaking (both in
making sense of initial data and in developing an ongoing vision for how to respond to the data)
were key to their actions. Thomas speaks of the value of the data in that it made clear what the
equity gap was, and more importantly, that it helped him to conceptualize the numerical change
needed to reach equity. “It was as if the goal that was thrown down from the Equity Scorecard
report was very easy to pick up because it gave us a goal to shoot for which seemed doable at the
time.” Michael similarly describes, “Just having those concrete targets that the Scorecard
specifies made it a little easier, much easier actually, to conceptualize the direction.”
However, Thomas also describes the importance of a number of sensemaking dialogues
in which he was able to engage in order to make meaning of the equity gap. These included
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dialogues with the associate vice chancellor, (where he emphasizes “her ability to make that
make sense to me”), with Louis (where “we talked about the Whiteness in the Honors program
and we talked about all sorts of things”), as well ongoing conversations with Michael in which
his understandings of structural racism and equity were further solidified.
And both Michael and Thomas attested to the importance of an ongoing, highly involved
series of conversations in which they continued to engage in sensemaking with one another, with
the Honors Council and with campus members as they came to develop and implement a
solution. Thomas speaks to the importance of their “walking the path together,” while Michael
describes the value of “a lot of meeting time, a lot of discussions” and he places these in the
context of national dialogues about the Michigan affirmative action case. Thus, it was via a
combination of early sensemaking around the data, and ongoing sensemaking around potential
solutions – both supported by the concreteness of numerical targets – that the two engaged in the
work of pursuing equity in Honors. For Thomas, it was important that this was accompanied by
sensemaking around topics of equity and structural racism.
Early sensemaking was equally key to Stacey’s ownership of the data about her
department and the desire to create change. At the time that Stacey encountered the Scorecard
data, she was involved in the anti-racism group, where she engaged in series of ongoing
sensemaking dialogues about the topic of structural racism. In returning to the earlier notion of
the importance of language and definitions, Stacey’s sensemaking experience in the anti-racism
group had allowed her develop an internalized definition of structural racism from which she
situated her understanding of the Scorecard data. (In fact, she emphasized this point strongly in
an informal conversation between interviews.) Like Thomas and Michael, she began to engage
others in a series of ongoing dialogues about what might be the reasons behind the equity gap
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and what could be done. She states, “It gave us an opportunity to talk about what we had seen in
the Equity Scorecard data and why we thought that that was possibly happening.”
Unfortunately, this ongoing sensemaking around solutions was halted when she was removed as
chair and the subsequent chair did not engage the group in similar discussions. Thus, she would
go on to invest her equity efforts in the area of liberal education reform, guided by what she had
learned from her sensemaking experiences in the anti-racism group and in relation to the
Scorecard.
The three allies did not simply hear about the Scorecard as a kind of “instruction” to take
a particular action. Rather, they engaged in ongoing sensemaking with others in order to make
shared meaning and create shared interpretations of the data. In the cases of Thomas and Stacey,
it was important that the sensemaking in which they were able to engage addressed not only data
but also their evolving conceptions of equity and structural racism. In other words, the
development of key language and associated definitions were important in the case of allies as
they were with members.
Acknowledging Actors’ Previous Point of “Readiness”
As outlined earlier, one of the goals of this study was to capture each individual’s journey
toward increased recognition of structural racism, with attention to individuals’ “self-reported
break points” (Neumann, 1995; Kiesler & Sproull, 1982), or the events that they themselves
deemed important within their unfolding understanding as they deviated from previous ways of
thinking. In attending to this, it is important to acknowledge that each member encountered the
Scorecard with a certain amount of “readiness” to make meaning of the racial inequity data that
they encountered, as their understanding built on previous life events.
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Other players not interviewed in this study (at either the current institution or other
participating institutions) may have encountered similar Scorecard information and yet held
more steadfastly to perceptions that allowed them to blame students and consequently to avoid
responsibility for changing outcomes. In fact, it has been documented that some Scorecard
members do just this (e.g., Bensimon, 2007; Bensimon & Malcolm, 2012). In examining the
picture of the “successful” experiences of these members and allies, it is important to
acknowledge one ingredient that was beyond the inquiry setting or report, yet likely was
important to actors’ willingness to embrace new, potentially uncomfortable (Harper & Patton,
2007) racial understandings. Specifically, each agent had experienced a number of previous
“readiness” points within his or her developmental journey around understandings of diversity
and equity topics, even though these journeys differed dramatically in scope and personal
themes.
Members’ Previous Learning Journeys
For instance, it was important that Louis had entered the Scorecard in search of new,
more action-oriented ways to fulfill his role as a critical scholar. Having reflected in graduate
school on his contribution as a budding writer – and having been prompted to ask himself why
he had focused on stories about White males – he had transitioned to writing in ways more
reflective of “self” as an Asian-American. Later, having further reflected on his role as an
established writer and scholar of Asian-American literature, he had recognized that his
contribution felt intellectual in nature. Thus, he began to crave the opportunity to provoke more
concrete forms of change. It was at this point of readiness that Louis was positioned to view
both the anti-racism discussions and the Equity Scorecard inquiry experience as representing
“other options for my energies,” options that directed him to advocate for structural forms of
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change within his institution. He was positioned, as well, to use the Scorecard as a tool to begin
to critique his own teaching practices to bring about greater change in the thinking of his
students.
Illustrating a different personal journey, Jerry had spent his early life somewhat unaware
of inequities, despite a White family that endorsed “fairness.” At the point that his sister’s
family became interracial, he acknowledges, “there began to be in my life actual circumstances”
where the realities of race within our society were much more present. Not only were these
realities more present, but his initial lack of reaction to the discriminatory acts by others – and
the subsequent sense of disappointment with his own lack of reaction – prompted a more self-
critical reflection. This is illustrated in his statement, “For a while it was easier to just be quiet,
and then I realized that was a treacherous thing.”
Later, in his role as a new department chair, Jerry encountered the disparities in the
teaching evaluations given to faculty of color as opposed to White faculty. In situating this
realization within his journey of awareness about racial equity issues, one might argue for the
relevance of both preceding and subsequent events. In other words, his experience encountering
racial discrimination on a personal level may have helped “ready” him to interpret the disparities
in teaching evaluations to the personal bias of students. Similarly, having made this
interpretation about these disparities – one that highlighted not only bias, but systematic forms of
bias as they affect decisions about tenure and promotion – may have readied him for the
subsequent Scorecard experience of examining the question of systematic inequities encountered
by students.
Finally, Bridget had engaged in a journey of gradual realizations around issues of
systemic inequity, having first engaged in global questions as a student, and later having noted
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disparities in legal resources within both tribal law and criminal law. Importantly, she
acknowledges that from a place of intellectual distance and privilege, she did not have
frameworks to evaluate this information in more meaningful ways. She later worked extensively
with issues of women’s rights and disability rights but notes with regard to her affirmative action
responsibilities, “I never handled race discrimination cases – none ever came in the door!” Upon
her entrée to higher education, she was alerted within her interview that this additional piece of
experience would be key. As such, she notes in hindsight that she was consciously “ripe for
learning.” She entered her new affirmative action position recognizing that, despite a wealth of
knowledge about systemic inequities more generally, her knowledge of racial inequities
specifically as they manifest within higher education represented a knowledge gap to be filled.
She was positioned to use the language of equity- and deficit-mindedness as she began to fill this
gap.
Thus, while each of the three members interviewed here had encountered the Scorecard
from a different series of previous experiences with regard to race and equity, all had been
“readied” in some way by a series of awakenings. They each identified previous key points
where they came to re-evaluate their positionalities within society. Neumann argues that
“subjective reports of deviations of this sort are likely to be important because they represent
events that people have experienced as being important” (1990, p. 272, citing Schein, 1989). She
further notes that “critical realizations of this sort signal moments of ‘conscious thought’ and the
possibility that long-established routines will be questioned and reassessed (p. 273, citing
Isabella, 1990).
Importantly, interviewees were asked broadly about their previous exposure to topics of
race, diversity or equity. They were not directly prompted for consecutive moments of
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“realization.” Yet they generally shared their stories in this way. This speaks to the importance
that they had placed upon these series of awakenings, as each member took their previous
acknowledgements as a way to situate new acknowledgements. The allies interviewed similarly
represented a diverse range of previous points of readiness; thus, it is useful to begin by
acknowledging key developmental points for these individuals, after which I will proceed to
analyses that involve the sensegiving of both the team members and allies.
Allies’ Previous Learning Journeys
The so-called “allies” selected for this study were included because, while not having
participated in the action inquiry process itself, they had responded to the Scorecard report and
related communications in ways that ultimately led to (or folded into) a kind of equity agency on
their respective parts. Therefore, the inclusion of these members allowed for a picture of what
can happen as a result of an inquiry team’s findings and the language or other artifacts that result
from these findings, not only for members but for others who must make sense of the
information. These narratives revealed that the Scorecard findings can become situated for allies
in an array of ways similar to the array for members. That is to say, these allies situated the
findings and related concepts within their developing understandings of equity, as a new
conceptual tool for a developing understanding of equity, or as a new communication and action
tool to be placed within a well-developed understanding and an ongoing work of equity agency.
In the case of Thomas, his early upbringing was largely void of racial diversity beyond
the African-American woman who had helped in his household. And upon studying first at a
local university and then abroad, both of which were more racially diverse environments, his
attention was at the time consumed by his experience of having stepped from a local world into a
much wider one. Later, as his academic career took way in the Unites States, his wife became
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interested in issues of gender, racial diversity and equity within her own academic career. She
began to explore questions of privilege and of dominant culture, questions that would become
conversation topics – and even reading assignments – at home. Thus, Thomas was introduced in
an exploratory manner to deeper questions of privilege and inequities. It was at this point of
readiness that Thomas would encounter the Scorecard report and the information contained
therein. He had not yet begun to look through this lens consistently as he tackled new topics
within his work, but he had been made aware of this lens as one potential frame. As he was later
alerted to the importance of this frame within his interview for the Honors director position, he
was arguably more open to the need to further understand the state of inequity within Honors –
and thus to seek out teachers like Louis and Michael – than he might have been without his
wife’s promptings.
Stacey, while having been exposed to various courses in college about different forms of
diversity, notes that her understanding at the time was limited to just this: a “diversity”
orientation. In other words, while she had learned about differences across cultures, genders,
sexual orientations, religions and others, she was not immediately oriented to the systematic
forms of oppression that accompany the treatment or opportunities of said groups within our
society. A key point in her developing understanding came when she later took courses in
feminism, courses that, while centering on gender, nonetheless addressed a range of “isms”
within society. Yet, even with this new exposure, she was not yet ready to think in a
foregrounded way about race as a construct of oppression, as she was still more oriented to
thinking about gender, a category that was relevant to her positionality as a White woman.
Furthermore, a focus on other worldviews that were “coming under fire” for her took precedence
at this time, as she explored questions of her religious and political identity. She recalls that,
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“All of that was being challenged,” and “All of a sudden I was seeing all these things that I
hadn’t seen before, and yet they were right there in front of me, about my own groups.”
Having begun to sort some of these questions out, it was in graduate school that she
“focused on some others,” a transition prompted by an enlightening conversation with her
African-American peer. It served as a “turning point,” even if a small one, when she realized
that undergraduate test questions were posed in a foreign way in the eyes of her peer, despite
their being quite familiar and resonant for Stacey. She recalls, “that experience was kind of an
important moment for me in thinking about what’s happening in the classroom…” And it was
with this new level of readiness that she entered Rockbourne, where she later taught a course
about the “isms” within psychological research, one in which she learned, along with her
students, the extent to which “bias can creep in at every point in the research process.” Next, she
entered the campus’ anti-racism group, where she engaged with others in a series of difficult
discussions that included the topic of structural racism.
Finally, it was having experienced these two previous realizations within academia, and
having begun to take part in the campus’ anti-racism group, that she encountered the Scorecard
report as shared by Louis. While Stacey admits to having felt an initial defensiveness at the
sense that a “spotlight” was directed at her department, she recalls moving quickly through this
defensiveness and on to a sense of departmental accountability, asking what her department
could do to remedy the situation. It is likely that these earlier realizations and newly developed
conceptions helped prompt her to take responsibility upon hearing the message, as it may have
allowed her to place this inequity within her developing understanding of equity issues.
Michael entered the Rockbourne State University environment with a more developed
understanding than did some others, an understanding that was built on his own life experiences
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as an African-American man of working class background, where he came from a community
with a strong sense of racial unity and pride. In finding his life’s work in the task of translating
his experience across academic and non-academic vernaculars – and helping others to do the
same – he had refined his understanding of different positionalities as they are situated within
systems of our society. Yet he had also grown frustrated in some of his work as an advocate of
“diversity” and “multicultural” causes in higher education, as he saw a lack of meaningful
change resulting from these campus efforts.
It was at this point of readiness that Michael encountered the Scorecard report and the
Scorecard’s theoretical underpinnings. And while he had a somewhat refined understanding of
equity, he found the specific quantitative definition appealing for the clarity that it lent. “I don't
know if I quite had that definition of equity that says that your high impact programs need to
enroll certain numbers as your student population and the equity gap is there, if that isn't the
case. I just had never conceptualized it in that fashion,” he says. And so, the Scorecard “did
play on previous exposure” while at the same time offering a concrete goal and concrete means
of assessing progress toward that goal.
Self-Narrations and Retroactive Sensemaking
The stories from each member and ally are relevant here as they reveal to the reader the
nuances in the ways that individuals have made sense of their own developmental journeys. In
most cases, these journeys included not only important learning points, but also admitted
limitations in earlier thinking about structural racism. Those interviewed were highly open in
sharing about earlier “blind spots” as they retroactively made sense of earlier ways of thinking
from the standpoint of their current understandings. In the words of Polkinghorne as noted in
chapter three, we do not have the ability “to alter or neglect those life events of which we are
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ashamed or about which we are guilty. Rather, we are narrators of our self-stories, constructing
plots or story lines that integrate and give meaning to all the critical events that have been part of
our existence (1991, p. 146).” From a practice standpoint, these stories are valuable for their
illustrations of the varied experiences from which practitioners will enter higher education equity
conversations, both the previous learning on which they build and the gaps that they may seek to
fill.
At the same time, from a theoretical standpoint, these narratives illustrate the
“retroactive” nature of sensemaking (Weick, 2001). In attending to this, one may note the ways
in which these members look back on events now and formulate explanations of those events (be
they explanations of the actions of others or their own) from the lens of current understandings.
In some cases individuals critiqued their early understandings that were shaped by family, such
as Jerry’s acknowledgement that his family taught him “niceness” but not justice, and Stacey’s
acknowledgement of explicit statements of colorblindness, coupled with occasional implicit
messages of prejudice, in the conversations of her parents and grandparents.
We further see participants framing their interpretations of earlier events within their
current language and definitions. For instance, Thomas looks back on his attempt to define
equity in his honors interview as “fudged” as he compares his then understanding to that of
today. From the perspective of his current understanding, he labels his previous conception of
equity meaning “somehow fair treatment” as being a “vague liberalist idea of diversity.” We
similarly see this retroactive sensemaking framed within newly obtained language in Bridget, as
she explains the interview questions asked of her by the then-chancellor when she applied for her
job. Interestingly, Bridget explains that he was probably thinking, “she seems equity-minded,
but where’s the depth there?” In each case, the individual recalls a given event not as he/she had
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processed the event at the time, but rather, as he/she makes sense of these events looking back
through current cognitive frames, frames that are structured in part by specific language.

Sensegiving for Equity

As discussed in chapter three, when actors are meaningfully engaged in sensemaking
around a topic, this is often accompanied by the variant of sensegiving, or the act of working to
create shared meanings for others (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). Rather than a simple process of
persuasion or advertisement, this is conceived as “engag(ing) in cycles of negotiated social
construction” (p. 434) in attempt to “influence the sensemaking and meaning construction of
others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality” (p. 442). This is particularly
relevant to the idea of equity agents, as these agents must work to help others to understand the
need for greater equity within the organization. Yet in doing so, they are likely to deal with
uncertainty about whether others will ultimately reach this shared construction (Maitlis &
Lawrence, 2007), since “asymmetry of belief … is the normal state of an organization” (Taylor
& Robichaud, p. 403). Therefore, consideration of how to communicate ideas of equity “in the
face of possible indifference or resistance” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991, p. 435) becomes an
important consideration.
The members and allies included in this study were all selected because they had come to
identify with a sense of personal responsibility to make race and equity part of the conversation
with others. This is exemplified in the statement by Jerry: “We have to take responsibility for
this … One of us or two of us or eight of us or whatever have to begin changing the way we do
things and changing the way we talk about things so that race and equity and social justice are
always a part of the conversation no matter what we’re talking about.”
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Thus, these interviews were valuable for the opportunity to examine the ways that these
actors chose to engage in the act of “sensegiving for equity” and how they made meaning of it
for themselves. Similar to what was noted earlier, other inquiry members or other campus
individuals who may not have taken up the mantle of communicating about this topic are not
interviewed herein; thus, the question is not one of how effective this inquiry setting was in
prompting a certain amount of sensegiving across the community. Rather, the question is: for
these active communicators, what did the decision to communicate look like? As they continued
and evolved in this role, what themes emerged? In subsequent sections, the experiences and
meaning-making of inquiry members and allies will be synthesized, as all were engaged in this
act in similar ways despite having come to the information from different origins.
Language as a Resource in Sensegiving

In the earlier discussion of language, it was noted that the sensemaking framework
acknowledges the importance of “noticing and bracketing” new information, and the subsequent
importance of being able to label or name such information (i.e. to attach specific language) such
that this language can serve as “a currency for communicational exchanges” (Weick et al., 2005,
p. 411). Additionally, the review of agency theories pointed in part to the importance of
resources, with Sewell arguing that “part of what it means to conceive of human beings as agents
is to conceive of them as empowered by access to resources of one kind or another” (1992, p.9-
10), and that what becomes important is an agent’s ability to interpret and mobilize any array of
resources. In bridging these two ideas, one emergent theme is language as a resource. Indeed,
common across narratives was the importance of language as a resource in sensegiving for
equity. Just as language was important as a means of developing a new “lens” to look at these
problems in new ways, it equally became important as a resource in helping others to do so. This
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included both the language of data in explaining equity gaps to others, and the terminology of
equity-mindedess as a way of framing one’s explanations and interpreting others’ responses.
For instance, Louis noted of the data, “That was very helpful for me to have that language
and to have that discourse. It turned out to be a very persuasive one with my colleagues when
you could show them the numbers.” Bridget similarly described the usefulness of measurable
outcomes, not only in striving to convince others to hear the message, but in engaging in
solution-based sensemaking by asking, “How do we come up with the equitable outcome?” She
further observed that “the data-focused approach … makes your argument stronger and more
believable in many people’s minds.” And Bridget observed about the language of deficit-to-
equity mindedness, “I think once there is a word for it, it becomes more powerful.” By being
able to recognize deficit-mindedness in action, Bridget felt an increased ability to work against it.
Similarly, Jerry described of his ongoing work in pointing to problems of structural racism in
Liberal Education reform, “I could almost feel that argument making a difference. It’s an easy
argument to make if you have the data…” Jerry further observed of his equity communications
more broadly:
It gave me the language. It gave me the methodology, and I can explain the methodology
to anybody. It’s not any more complicated than disaggregating data according to
demographic categories and then just looking at what you have! And then, how to
address it? Remembering that you don’t want to address it from a deficit-minded
perspective. You want to address it by identifying institutional barriers and
programmatic challenges. What can we change as an institution?

Indeed, all participants spoke in some ways to the importance of data disaggregation (as it was
used within the Scorecard and the need to do so beyond), as well as the language of equity and
equity-mindedness, in their ongoing work to convince others to engage in programmatic reform
efforts toward greater racial equity. In utilizing this language of equity and discourse of data,
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they were better able to illustrate contradictions between assumed and actual equity in their
conversations with others.
Agency Manifesting as the Highlighting of Contradictions
In keeping with Seo and Creed’s focus on the importance of contradictions, it is worthy
of note that one way in which sensegiving for equity manifested across several actors was in
their use of new language and data as a means of highlighting contradictions in their
communications with others. One way they did so was to highlight the contradiction between
peers’ potential assumptions of equity (particularly peers who self-identified as “liberal”) as
opposed to the actual state of inequity. In other words, just as this contradiction had been key in
the early realizations of some inquiry members and allies, they similarly found it to be key to the
awakenings of some campus others.
For instance, Jerry described how, in delivering messages based on the Equity Scorecard,
he found an effective means of convincing others to act was to appeal to their sense of
themselves as liberal and well-intended and to couple this appeal with the contrast created by the
Scorecard data. He noted that it was powerful to be able to say that “an instrument like the
Equity Scorecard shows us” that students of color are failing at disproportionate rates even when
controlling for incoming characteristics; this was powerful for the contrast that it provided to
academics’ vision of themselves as wanting positive outcomes for all students. “College
professors are largely progressive, they want to be progressive,” he added. “They think of
themselves as liberals, so when you put the question to them this way, it’s hard for them to
answer. It’s hard for them to think of a clever intellectual dodge away from the fact that the
institution is responsible.”
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The importance of this contradiction was echoed by Michael. As he spoke of “liberal
minded PhD holders,” he noted “That’s the clarity part of the Equity Scorecard is just a very
specific language to say that … we have 15% multicultural students in the [Rockbourne] school
district and we have 8% multicultural students at [RSU].” He added that for these liberal-minded
PhD holders, “It’s hard to argue that there’s equity there…”
These examples highlight an important point about racial conversation in higher
education raised in chapter one. Race is often treated as a “four letter word” (Harper & Hurtado,
2011, p. 211), largely or in part because the awareness or acknowledgement that the problem of
racism still exists should lead to a sense of personal responsibility for change, a responsibility
some practitioners may not want (Harper & Patton, 2007). These agents found the Scorecard to
be a useful resource in bringing an awareness to others such that these others would find it
difficult to rationalize the discrepancy between a vision of “self” as liberal and a lack of response
to inequities. Further, this may be contextualized within the sensemaking thesis that
organizational members, in encountering data that contradict expectations, are likely to respond
in ways that confirm existing identities and enhance self-esteem (Coopey, Keegan & Emler,
1997; Brown, 2000; Currie & Brown, 2003). While this might mean that some individuals
would initially avoid processing such information in order to maintain a positive vision of self as
“liberal,” the Scorecard made this avoidance more difficult.
The utilization of contradiction was seen not only in the ways that some members
communicated about the Scorecard, but also in the ongoing diversity and equity work of some
actors. Stacey, in particular, was intentional about her use of individual contradictions as she
advocated for liberal education reform. She referenced the recent “branding” meeting and the
fact that many participants had acknowledged the institution’s current shortcomings with regard
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to diversity and racism. “They’re stating their beliefs in public and now there’s an opportunity to
come back around and say ‘Okay, you’ve stated your beliefs and now let’s translate them into
action’ … there will be a disconnect if the behavior is inconsistent with the beliefs.” Important
to this and the previous examples was the fact that they were carried out against a backdrop of an
“official” campus narrative of Diversity and Equity, to be explored next.
Situating Sensegiving within a Campus Narrative
As previously noted, despite the current study’s focus on individual journeys, the
situating of these individuals within a common institution allows for a contextual consideration
of the ways that their work plays out against a backdrop of an organizational narrative (whether a
dominant narrative or competing organizational narratives). In chapter two it was argued, based
on the conceptions of Seo and Creed, that equity agents within a common institution (and
affected by a common process/tool such as the Scorecard) should ideally develop: (1) a shared
understanding of what is “happening” with regard to student equity on their campus, (2) a shared
sense of what “should” be happening based on the organization’s mission, the public mission of
higher education or other discussed standards, and (3) a shared narrative about the existing
contradiction between desired and actual equity.
The predominance of the language of Diversity and Equity, or D&E, at Rockbourne State
University was arguably a part of the success of the latter two. This language was key because
the institution’s public endorsement of the idea of equity and diversity as “goals” amounted to an
official endorsement of what “should” be happening. Thus, this language provided a backdrop
against which the agents could highlight the contradiction between desired and actual equity. It
remains to be argued as to whether the D&E narrative qualifies as the “dominant” narrative, as
the current study did not engage in an assessment of the extent to which most members across
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the campus community agreed with D&E as a high level priority. Regardless of this question,
causes of diversity and equity had undoubtedly been granted a kind of legitimacy via their
ubiquitous presence in RSU planning, and thus served as a kind of “frame” to which agents
could point in highlighting existing contradictions. In the words of Seo and Creed,
The mobilizing potential of a particular frame or logic can be understood as a function of
(1) the degree to which it is endowed with some level of legitimacy by other
institutionalized meaning systems … and (2) the degree to which those meaning systems
potentially give rise to tension and contestation over the legitimacy of the particular
institutional arrangements targeted for change (2002, p.237).

The importance of this institutional frame and its associated language was observed by
Louis, for instance, who noted that despite the need for ongoing improvement, and despite
pockets of resistance, “[D&E] language has become normalized to the extent where people begin
to understand that this is going to be a concern wherever decisions are being made.” This
equally was noted by Stacey, who described the importance of the fact that “diversity has come
out in every major document from this institution the last ten or fifteen years in the strategic
plan; everything.” Similarly, Thomas acknowledged the importance of “the [D&E] river
undergirding everything that’s happening on campus.” Importantly, all actors described that this
narrative did not automatically translate to a valuing of diversity and equity across all campus
members or campus situations. Rather, the couching of their own equity work within this larger
narrative frame allowed for many campus members to begin to observe contradictions between
these goals and reality and to articulate this contradiction to others.
In addition to Scorecard-related work, the importance of D&E “river” was illustrated in
the story of the recent branding meeting as shared by both Jerry and Stacey. Jerry described that
the branding company had asked, “What are the promises that you’ve made that you’ve broken?
What are you not doing that you promised to do as an institution in your vision, your aims, and
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your goals?” He and Stacey described that a response from a number of members of the
academic senate was that “We have not delivered on our promise of diversity.” Thus, Jerry,
Stacey and others perceived that as a part of RSU’s “ever-produced narrative” (Czarniawska,
1997), wherein members of the campus community were involved in “formulating, editing,
applauding, and refusing various elements” (p.49), it was important that diversity and equity had
been centered as pieces to be continually brought into question.
Michael spoke to the importance of this backdrop, further situating it within a national
movement, and situating the appeal to individuals within this:
It’s nice to have some of that at the top because I think that you can always point people
toward those documents … we are aligning the work we do here with some national
research. The AAC&U, [state] system, there’s lots of national voices that are saying the
same thing. Going back to the liberal minded PhD holders, they like to see that there’s
research behind something … At least then you have to argue with the research and not
just argue with me.

Thus, the alignment between the national and state-level discourse about the need for equity,
RSU’s language of equity, and finally the Scorecard language of equity, coupled with the
highlighting of the lack of actual equity, created a contrast that made it difficult for “liberal
minded PhD holders” to simply avoid the dialogue.
Revisiting an earlier consideration of critical sensemaking: Mills et al. (2010) emphasize
the importance of attending to language that is given legitimacy, as it may serve a hegemonic
function that silences attempts to ask critical questions; yet the D&E language of Rockbourne
arguably served the function of giving a kind of legitimacy to more critical questions, such that it
was expected that these questions would be raised. Thus, while critical sensemaking is a useful
framework in directing attention to the ways that some discourses or voices may be legitimated
over others – coupled with the question of why – this lens may be equally applied to ask the
more goal-oriented question: How can it be ensured that critical questions are granted
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legitimacy by an institution such that these questions will continue to be raised? It was within
the context of these critical questions that the RSU equity agents in the study were able to place
their own developed or developing equity-centered language and frames as they engaged in
journeys of evolving sensegiving.
A Chronology of Sensegiving

In returning to the current study’s focus on individuals, two strengths offered by the
individual storied approach are its foci on chronology and identity. With regard to the former, it
allows the differences between individual actors to be displayed such that varied ways of
incorporating new equity sensegiving into one’s professional role are highlighted. The equity
sensegiving role manifested differently for each actor, as each was able to situate the Scorecard
language and data resources within an existing communication repertoire. Further, as time
passed beyond the Scorecard, actors continued to evolve in how they used the language and data.
Situated within a Repertoire
Jerry, as an English professor and an experienced administrator, had an arguably well-
developed rhetorical skill set prior to his Scorecard experience. He had already developed a way
of speaking to broad social issues with a kind of breadth and flair in order to address the multiple
members present in a meeting room or auditorium. Thus, as he became more aware of the
presence of structural racism in higher education, he began to emphasize this as a cause more
centrally within his rhetorical communications to groups. This can be seen in such described
statements as, “We haven’t yet tried this democratization of higher education for long enough to
know that it’s going to succeed … And so it could fail. But if it fails, let’s let it be because more
powerful forces succeeded in wrecking it than that we were complicit in its withering away,”
statements designed to spark a sense of shared responsibility in others based on broad ideals of
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education. As he later becomes more focused on agitation for the change of general education, a
cause that he sees as closely related, his now more behind-the-scenes work continues to anchor
on his rhetorical skills. He now contributes via his writing, noting, “A lot of (the statements)
from the academic policies committee (are) language that I’ve had my hand in. I feel good about
and it feels like a real contribution.”
In Bridget one can see the evolution of an interpersonal style, a style in which she
initially placed a heavy focus on the importance of being highly respectful, but has incorporated
a developing sense of her own expertise and an accompanying assertiveness. Having historically
been highly democratic and perhaps modest in the way that she accommodates the perspectives
of others, she acknowledges that this has largely been an effective means of working with peers,
recalling the praise from her former supervisor about her “ability through congenial engagement
of people to get their defenses down in even the most tricky conversations.” At the same time
that Bridget continues her skill in engaging others via a strong respect for their expertise and a
modesty about her own perspective, she also describes having added a greater degree of
assertiveness about equity issues as she has developed a stronger sense of equity expertise.
Thus, she describes that, even as she enters a conversation expecting an ultimate “mix up, mash
up” of the perspectives involved, she equally owns now that “certain things are the right way to
do things so I will definitely strongly put those in a conversation.” In doing so, she begins to
acknowledge, if slowly and hesitantly, her ability to be a force for change around equity-centered
causes.
The contrast of Jerry and Bridget’s development is valuable for its illustration of two of
the ways that new language resources (and accompanying cognitive frameworks) might enter
one’s sensegiving repertoire. For Jerry, his sense of “voice” in aiming to persuade others was
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arguably well-owned; as he became more aware of the importance of issues of equity within the
goals of higher education, he situated this as a newly-centered topic around which to focus his
rhetorical skill set. For Bridget, her style in engaging with colleagues had encompassed an
accommodating approach that included a great deal of respect for the expertise of others at the
table and an acknowledgement that their perspectives would shape the outcomes as much as
would hers. Even as she continued to use this style with success, she incorporated a greater
sense of her own expertise around equity – and thus her right to be more forthright in asserting
the correctness of certain equity-centered points – within these conversations.
Meanwhile, Michael likewise described how he placed a great deal of emphasis on the
mutual respect of such conversations, noting, “if you are as I am African-American and again
working class, male African-American, none of which are common in academic settings,
building bridges is what it’s all about.” At the same time, however, his many years of
negotiating such conversations had evolved such that he described in great nuance not only the
ways that he built bridges and respected others, but equally the ways that he included a great deal
of directness about the topic at-hand and his stance on the topic. Having endured waves of
varied institutional approaches to topics of diversity and multiculturalism, he found that, while
conversation can be important, this conversation was sometimes no more than “endless self-
reflective talk.” The Scorecard represented a departure for Michael in that it provided “a more
specific language for understanding how to apply those goals.” Thus, as Michael incorporated
this more specific language, he did so by placing it into a well-developed and nuanced approach
to negotiating with others, one in which he skillfully balanced the need to hear others’ stories and
perspectives, even as he assertively shared his own.
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This placement of a specific language tool within a well-developed repertoire stands in
contrast to the ways in which Thomas situated this new communication agency. Having recently
begun to explore such topics in his personal life, and being new to such communications in the
work setting, Thomas relied greatly on the Scorecard itself as his primary resource for
communicating to others about the need for greater equity. He explained, “What I’ve often said
instead of explaining the equity piece at all is to say ‘the Equity Scorecard has told us that we’re
a lot Whiter than the rest of the campus.’ I’ve been that brutal or that forthright.” Thus,
Thomas’s incorporation illustrates that with some previous personal “points of readiness” to
receive information about racial inequity, and with the actionability that can come from concrete
goals and articulations, one can potentially step into the role of advocating for equity without
having previously developed a strong repertoire.
Evolution Over Time

As noted in chapter two, one of the goals of action research settings and tools is to move
individuals, upon identifying their own gaps and making personal changes, to obtain a kind of
“power” to engage thoughtfully, and with behavioral flexibility, in transformational
conversations with members within their immediate or larger institutional communities (Torbert,
2001; Reason, 1994). Furthermore, the conception of agency offered by Emirbayer and Mische
(1998) directs attention to the ways that agents may adjust to situational contingencies both in
the moment and in looking forward, based upon “evolving desires and purposes” (p. 984).
Finally, the idea of “adaptive sensemaking” (and by association, adaptive sensegiving) is defined
as the ability to demonstrate “ambivalent use of previous knowledge” as one recognizes that a
“seemingly incorrect action ‘back then’ is becoming an incorrect action ‘now’” (Weick et al.,
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2005, p. 412-414). In bringing these points together, another important theme for consideration
is the ways that agents evolved in their equity sensegiving strategies.
Across the six individuals, a number of communication strategies were shared, some of
which were already in the repertoires of the individuals and many of which developed over time
as they began to engage in greater sensegiving for equity. These included (but were not limited
to): using varied “registers” or types of data to speak to different audiences, developing a list of
specific counterarguments or reframing techniques for the common challenges encountered,
modeling one’s own reflexivity, using concrete examples to illustrate the concept of structural
racism, and as noted earlier, appealing to others’ views of themselves as liberal.
While these strategies are numerous, two themes that emerged will be further explored:
(1) an almost paradoxical movement toward varied messaging styles while simultaneously
becoming more straightforward and direct, and (2) an occasional adjustment not only in response
to one’s assessment of how others are responding to one’s own messages, but also a kind of
“vicarious” adjustment to the responses incurred by peers.
Movement toward greater variation and directness. In initially taking out the message of the
Scorecard findings to the larger campus community, Louis had encountered both a receptive
majority and a “vocal minority” who sought to negate the findings on various grounds. In
responding to the latter, Louis developed, over time, a range of communication strategies. He
began to bring in concrete examples like the ACT and high school tracking that allowed him to
illustrate to others how the effects of institutional racism could be both unintentional and very
real. He also began to develop varied approaches depending on audience, including a number of
“registers” depending on a given audience’s receptivity to topics of race, as well as depending on
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the epistemological orientation (and thus the conception of good research or good data) of
various disciplines.
Yet, even as Louis came to vary and nuance his explanations, he also came, over time, to
approach the topic with more simplicity and straightforwardness. He increasingly does so by
presenting to others a proposition with implied choices. Louis describes, “[My approach] has
evolved in that I’ve been trying to make the case for decision-making that would promote
[diversity and equity] in as simple terms as possible … by putting [others] to a decision that I
think really ought to be fairly simple to make and expressed in very simple language … It’s like
‘you really have to answer this question for yourself. I can’t answer it for you.’” Michael
similarly spoke of the value of directness, even as he listed a number of specific strategies for
specific audiences.
Jerry, as well, moved in this direction of directness despite having developed a wide
repertoire. He described his having observed a communication by a colleague about a problem
of lack of diversity within a department, “She just stated to them what the problem was so
simply, so directly, and so without being loaded up … I just thought, ‘that was really easy’… not
just comfortable, because that’s not always the best thing, but she made it really simple … I
thought, ‘gosh that was easy.’ I stole from her and she was very inspiring to me in the talking
that I would do.”
Revising strategies based on others’ receptions. Notable in the above example, this departure
toward more directness and simplicity came for Jerry, not in making sense of others’ responses
to his own sensegiving, but in making sense of others’ responses to the communication strategy
of another person. Thus, it was a kind of vicarious sensemaking process. Bridget described a
similar phenomenon. She noted that the she had observed the ways in which others responded to
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Louis’s initial messages and found herself developing beliefs about the best means of
communication based on these observations. Having observed that some departments “were just
mad at Louis and the concept,” she went on to conclude, “you have to be careful how you
communicate the concepts and talk about institutional responsibility. What do faculty need from
the institution are tools, rather than ‘you specific departments or faculties are doing something
wrong here.’” Thus, both Jerry and Bridget described evolving in their styles based on their
observations of the receptions to the equity-sensegiving of peers. Weick et al. (2005) note that
those who must engage in intentional sensegiving around an issue will inevitably find themselves
having to make sense of others’ responses; as they do so, they may choose to incorporate this
interpretation into their consideration of whether to continue in a similar vein or to adjust their
sensegiving strategies. However, less explored is the question of the extent to which those
engaging in sensegiving around a common topic may find themselves equally making sense of
how others are received and making personal adjustments based on these interpretations, or a
kind of vicarious adjustment in sensegiving.
Identities as Critical Agents
As noted earlier, this study answers a call from Weick, et al. (2005) to examine the
currently understudied topic of the ways in which sensegiving may affect the identities of those
who engage in the act. It further responds to a call to take sensemaking research in a more
critical direction by incorporating questions of power and privilege into a “critical sensemaking”
framework (Mills et al., 2010; Thurlow & Mills, 2009). In bringing the two together, the study
contributes to an understanding of how engagement in sensegiving around a critical topic like
racial equity may involve a process of identity development, both as an “agent” for equity, and
with regard to the individual’s varied positionalities.
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Seeing Oneself as Agent for Change

In some cases, the realization that one had taken up this role – and in particular, that there
existed in this role the ability to make real change – was held tentatively and modestly by these
actors. This modesty may have been in part reflective of their Midwestern “niceness.” For
instance, Thomas, in reflecting on the success of his campus outreach work to improve Honors
equity, had stated, “That was enormously empowering and also terrifying at the same time.” As
the word terrifying came up repeatedly in his descriptions, he observed of the leap from faculty
to partial administrator, “you realize that you can actually make decisions and stuff happens.”
Having incorporated an equity lens to this decision-making ability, he described, “I was able to
change the world in a tiny little corner of things to the benefit of the students, the benefit of the
program, and the benefit of the university. That’s huge, I think, for my personal satisfaction.”
Yet despite this satisfaction, he was nonetheless surprised that a larger audience found his work
to be relevant, noting of the reception by a national audience, “I didn’t know … That this little
tiny honors program in the middle of this tiny little university is doing something that other
people might find interesting.”
Bridget similarly held her ability to contribute to change tentatively, describing her
realization that she could do so – both generally and with regard to causes of equity specifically
– as “a really strange awakening.” She placed this within a Midwestern context explicitly,
describing, “I think especially people who live here and who are from here have a very bad
minimized sense of our power and what we can do in this kind of Midwestern way and very self-
deprecating. We’re very capable in a lot of ways, and I think we minimize that. Even with
myself, I always knew that I could do things that I set out to do, but to realize some things you
can assist with that are helpful is a really strange awakening.”
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Reflections from Others
Some members spoke not only of what it was like to reflect on their own actions and the
change that came from these actions; they also spoke extensively of the importance of others
having reflected back to them that they were perceived as agents of equity. These reflections
from others served the purpose of cementing this equity role as a part of each person’s larger
personal/professional identity.
This can be seen in Jerry’s recollection of the woman from the state system stating,
“here’s the connection with social justice that Jerry has talked about for so many years.” He
reflects on the importance of hearing this observation, “Until I heard that coming back at me I
didn’t realize I had one song in my trumpet. Shoot, if you’re only going to have one it’s a good
one!” and he goes on to declare, “I don’t think it’s something that I ever get to stop talking about
until I retire.” The importance of reflections back from others is equally seen within Bridget’s
narrative as she recalls the observation by her former supervisor about her “ability through
congenial engagement of people to get their defenses down in even the most tricky
conversations.” In Bridget’s reflecting on this feedback, it becomes clear that hearing the
comment from another person (in this case, in fact, seeing it in print) played a role in her
incorporating an acknowledgement of her ability into her identity.
Meanwhile, Louis, who had attempted after a great deal of engagement with equity topics
to temporarily retreat from the work, found that others had come to see him in this role such that
they expected it of him. Thus, he found it challenging to pull away, as it was difficult to deny
the expectations of others as they requested his participation. At the same time, his own identity
as an equity agent had been cemented such that he felt the pull not only from these others, but
from his own developed interest. Thus, he begins his recollection by describing “all these things
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that I agreed to do for my colleagues,” but goes on to reflect, “I do want to participate in these
things and contribute what I know about them.” Further reflecting on this pull, he observes, “It’s
a consciousness, it’s a movement. It’s not work because, for me at least, it’s life.”
In each case, the ways in which these individuals came to reflect on their abilities to
create change – particularly as cemented in the recognition or expectation of others – contributed
to a more solidified “identity” as an agent. This speaks to the point raised by Weick et al.
(2005): “Yet to be examined is the effect of efforts at sensegiving on the (sensegivers) …When
you hear yourself talk, you see more clearly what matters and what you had hoped to say.
Sensegiving therefore may affect the (sensegiver) as well as the target” (2005, p. 416). For these
individuals, this ultimate development of an agent identity came not only from reflecting on what
they had said, but equally from the change resulting from those messages (whether programmatic
change or change in other people’s thinking), as well as the expectation and/or recognition of
one’s engagement in equity conversations being reflected back to the self from others.
Considerations of Positionality: “Acknowledgement of” and “Moving through”
In the context of communicating about race and the need for racial equity, one’s own
racial positionality (and in some cases other positionalities) were acknowledged as important by
these agents. While nearly ALL members talked at some point about their racial positionality in
relation to talking about the topic of race to others, Louis (a person of color and a faculty
member) and Bridget (a White person and administrator) are utilized here to provide a contrast
and alignment.
Louis observed that his being a faculty member had earned him credibility with other
faculty, as they were likely to give him more credence than they gave to members of the
administration. He had also observed the contradictory dynamics of race with regard to these
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 205
communications. He felt that, in some cases, White colleagues were disinclined to challenge
what he said out of what might be a fear that they would appear racist. In other cases, he felt that
he was discredited for being a person of color speaking about race, as if he were going to gain
something by promoting this agenda. Meanwhile, he felt that his position as a person of color
earned him credibility with colleagues of color, particularly those who were American-born and
might have had similar background (and present-day) experiences to his own. Regarding his role
in communicating increasingly about these issues, he had experienced an awakening point during
a conversation in the anti-racism group, as he was prompted to reflect on the fact that he
sometimes avoided talking about race out of a fear of making his White colleagues
uncomfortable, and he subsequently articulated to himself that he had a desire to be speaking
about race more explicitly and more often in his dialogues with others.
Bridget, meanwhile, noted the importance of “showing up” to certain conversations as a
symbolic means of lending one’s support to topics of race. In describing this, she acknowledged
the role of one’s professional positionality, in particular that the presence of someone in a high-
status role may lend an officiality to the topic at hand. Meanwhile, she acknowledged – as did
Louis – that the race of conversation participants can play out in almost paradoxical or
complementary ways. Specifically, she observed that White people may be given more
credibility by a largely White audience, and thus their presence may help garner support from
other White people, while people of color lend credibility for their lived experience with the
topic. Bridget further spoke about her position of privilege in relation to the topic and how she
found it important to acknowledge this as a potential limitation, yet also to move beyond this
sense of limitation to speak about the topic of race in direct and unapologetic ways.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 206
Interestingly, both Louis and Bridget point to the importance of one’s professional role,
while they highlight different, if not exactly contradictory, points to this dilemma. Louis
describes the value of being faculty, as this makes one a “peer” when speaking to other faculty.
Meanwhile, Bridget notes the importance of one’s officiality as a high-level administrator, and
thus one’s symbolic importance within conversations about race. It may be that these two points
are not contradictory, but rather complementary, as the receptivity of a person potentially
resistant to conversations about race may be increased by both the presence of administration
(indicating the topic’s “importance”) and the presence of one’s peers (indicating a kind of
accessibility or relatability), whether together or at different times.
Meanwhile, both actors spoke about their own racial positionality in relation to the
conversation. Interestingly, both acknowledged the importance of their race (both as a White
person and as a person of color), even as they spoke about their ongoing development in aiming
to speak more freely and less apologetically about the topic. Each acknowledged that their race
might lend credibility with certain audiences while serving as a limitation with others. Yet, each
spoke, as well, about his/her developmental journey through this realization – not necessarily
leaving it behind, but rather moving into a place of speaking more directly and unapologetically
about topics of race even as they acknowledged how their race might influence the perceptions of
audiences. In other words, each was beginning to reach a point of not allowing fears of others’
negative perceptions (including fears based on racial make-up of self and audience) to prevent
their raising of the conversation.
Critical Sensegiving Synthesis
Critical sensemaking theorists (Mills et al., 2010; Thurlow & Mills, 2009), have
encouraged a particular focus on the sensemaking constructs of identity and plausibility, or more
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 207
specifically, the ways in which individuals’ meaning-making with regard to what is happening in
the institution is influenced by – and influences – their individual identities. In connecting this to
the idea of sensegiving, a similar question arises: What are the potentially iterative ways in
which the engagement in “critical sensegiving” (i.e., sensegiving around a critical topic like
racial equity) may influence and be influenced by one’s identities?
As suggested in the above heading, these stories highlighted, in part, the engagement in a
potential pattern of “acknowledgement of” and “moving through” implications of one’s
positionality. That is to say, the decision to engage in such conversations was coupled with a
heightened awareness of one’s positionality in relation to the topic (partly one’s professional
positionality, and particularly one’s racial positionality). This included a reflection on the ways
that one’s positionality might serve as either an advantage or detriment in communicating with
given audiences. At the same time, these actors eventually began to move “through” this
awareness, such that they became increasingly comfortable with speaking to all audiences about
the topic of racial equity.
Additionally, a characteristic that may be specific to the act of “critical sensegiving” (as
opposed to other, more general forms of sensegiving) may be the extent to which one comes to
identify with the act and thus to incorporate it into one’s personal/professional identity. Much
research in sensegiving has focused on the task within corporate organizations (e.g., Rouleua,
2005; Snell, 2002). In such agencies, the act of sensegiving may be attached to a current
organizational direction and may therefore be job-contingent, based primarily on instructions
from one’s superiors. Conversely, the narratives presented here suggest that these individuals
had come to identify with racial equity sensegiving such that it became personally important
beyond a specific job (as illustrated in Louis’s statement, “This is not work, this is life. This is
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 208
consciousness.”) Thus, while all of these actors were in some ways prompted or assisted by
institutional initiatives and language (the Scorecard and D&E), the topic became personally
important such that it was incorporated into their identities.
In returning to the earlier discussion of language, the equity discourses that these
individuals developed became important not only as a resource for communicating to others, but
also a way of framing their own stories. In the words of narrative theorist Jerome Bruner,
“eventually the culturally shaped cognitive and linguistic processes that guide the self-telling of
life narratives achieve the power to structure perceptual experience, to organize memory, to
segment and purpose-build the very ‘events’ of a life.” (1987, p. 15, italics mine). This
statement is fitting in that these individuals came to find purpose in their work as equity agents
such that many attested to the likelihood that they will engage in the work indefinitely.
Implications

The previous narratives and theoretical syntheses have implications for both practice and
research. At the level of practice, considerations may apply to institutional leaders interested in
equity and hoping to ingrain in faculty or other institutional members a sense of agency for
equity. These findings may also prompt specific considerations for Equity Scorecard facilitators.
At the level of research, the current study may have implications for future research conducted
on the results and processes of the Equity Scorecard. Finally, the study may inform ongoing
conceptual considerations in the area of critical sensemaking and sensegiving.
Implications for Practice: Institutional Leadership Considerations
For higher education leaders interested in attaining greater equity in outcomes, this study
speaks to the fact that one important way to frame this question might be: How might I ingrain
more institutional members with a sense of agency for equity? While not exhaustive, specific
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 209
lessons may come from the stories shared. For instance, it was apparent that the highly visible
and ubiquitous D&E language provided agents with an institutional frame that could be used in
highlighting contradiction between the desired and actual states of equity as they sought to
engage others in collaborative reform efforts. In the absence of such language, the presentation
of the Scorecard inequity data may have resulted in a greater number of dismissive responses
from peers or refuge in deficit-minded attributions. However, with the backdrop of D&E, it was
easier for these agents to pose to others the contradiction that “We have decided that this is
important, and yet it is absent.” Thus, leaders should ask the critical question: Where is language
of equity present in the institutional mission and other documents? In what ways can the
visibility, frequency and explicitness of such language be increased?
Additionally, a certain tension was present in the ways that these agents described their
experiences with leaders, both sides of which should be acknowledged. On one hand, there were
instances in which statements by specific leaders served as key events in prompting individuals
to further investigate and take up the cause of equity. Therefore, it becomes apparent that an
important accompaniment to official institutional language can be the statements by leaders that
this language and its underlying concepts are, in fact, valued. Leaders should ask the question of
institutional equity language: Where do there exist opportunities to express, publicly and one-
on-one, the importance of putting this language into action?
At the same time, these were not simply one-time instructions or directives from leaders.
Rather, they were accompanied by opportunities for actors to engage in ongoing sensemaking as
they came to better understand the meaning of the language and underlying concepts of equity.
In this way, as actors came to “identify” with equity as a cause, they outlasted many of the same
leaders who had first expressed its importance. In fact, several of the Rockbourne agents
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 210
ultimately engaged in efforts to help ensure that equity frames persist despite turnover in
leadership. Thus, institutional leaders should ask: How might it be possible to set up
opportunities for actors to continue to engage in the process of making meaning of equity for
themselves? Can this be aided by data?
Implications for Practice: Equity Scorecard Inquiry Facilitation
For Equity Scorecard facilitators (and by extension, other action researchers) who hope to
maximize the equity agency of their participants, what lessons may be taken from these
individuals’ experiences? Early in the inquiry experience, the realization of contradiction was
key for participants. This was aided by a strong existing sense of what the institution “should”
be doing (i.e., the assumption that equity “should” exist, or equity as an ideal for which to strive).
While one source of this assumption was the institutional language of equity, another was an
actor’s existing sense of the democratic mission of higher education. How can the inquiry
experience benefit from an exploration of members’ existing assumptions about the mission of
higher education? What other assumptions should be clarified, and ideally shared, among
members in order to maximize the “contradiction” presented by the data?
In their sensegiving, members were aided by the presence of institutional language of
equity in highlighting the existing contradiction to others. It may be important, then, to assist
future Scorecard participants in identifying the institutional language that they should use in
contextualizing their messages to others. Additionally, in highlighting this contradiction, most of
these individuals engaged in a trial-and-error process by which they developed a range of
strategies in communicating to others. How can the sensegiving repertoires of members be
maximized prior to their completion of the Scorecard? These may include role-plays;
considerations of the expectations of different disciplinary audiences; lists of specific responses
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 211
the specific challenges that may be encountered; or other techniques to prepare these participants
for sensegiving.
Finally, some individuals in this study shared their initial hesitancy to “own” their power
as institutional agents. Some shared, as well, their initial concerns about their own racial or other
positionalities in relation to the topic. Ultimately, as effective agents, these members had
“moved through” this acknowledgement to become comfortable addressing or raising the topic
with various audiences. Can Equity Scorecard team members benefit from more explicit
conversations around the question of their respective positionalities, both acknowledging
implications of positionality and exploring how to become more comfortable within this?

Implications for Future Research: The Equity Scorecard
The current study serves as an important addition to existing studies of the process and
results of Equity Scorecard settings. Many previous examinations have been rich in their use of
participant observation and therefore in their ability to capture learning as it does or does not
happen within the setting (as evidenced, for example, by changes in members’ statements). The
present study complements these approaches as it adds: (1) a temporal dimension that allows for
a “looking backward” by former members, and (2) the incorporation of allies who were not team
members yet attest to their having been influenced to take action for equity, based (largely or in
part) on their Scorecard encounters. As such, this study takes a first step in the direction of
examining potential longer-term effects of the Scorecard on campus members.
As with any study, the strengths of the specific methodology and research questions
selected ultimately translate to the study’s weaknesses. In other words, as specific aspects of the
phenomena under study were emphasized, others were necessarily neglected. Thus, related
questions remain to be explored by future studies. For instance, the current study is rich in its
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 212
narrative data, allowing for nuanced insight into the meaning-making and identity-building
processes of these individuals. At the same time, this study should be complemented by future
studies that emphasize more “objective” forms of data collection, such as “impact studies” that
examine programmatic reform, or large-scale surveys that examine the equity- or deficit-minded
attributions by former members.
Similarly, in focusing on individuals who represented an “intensity sample” of equity
agents, the question of those who are less prompted toward agency by the Scorecard was left
unattended. Future long-term follow-up studies should attend to the question of why some
members may not ultimately take up action for equity. Finally, this study centered on a case site
where equity-centric language was highly visible, and support by at least some key leaders
existed. Other long-term case studies should address what happens at sites with less support
among leaders or less alignment in language. How do potential agents at these institutions
operate within such constraints?

Critical Sensegiving Conceptualizations
Finally, this study offers an initial exploration of a phenomenon to be titled “critical
sensegiving.” Many studies have explored the act of sensegiving. These have included
explorations of sensegiving by members at multiple organizational levels and within tightly or
loosely coupled systems. Yet, previous studies have not specifically explored the phenomenon
of sensegiving around a critical, social justice-focused topic and how the engagement in this act
might ultimately relate to one’s construction of self. This study suggests that engagement in
sensegiving around this kind of subject may take on a kind of personalized meaning such that,
even if initially prompted by leaders or organizational initiatives, the activity ultimately becomes
strongly incorporated within one’s sense of self. And engagement in the act may be related
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 213
iteratively to reflection on one’s positional identity, such that early reflections on positionality
may serve as “points of readiness” to engage in sensegiving, while the choice to engage will
prompt ongoing reflections on one’s positionality. Again, engagement in the act of critical
sensegiving may have stronger implications for one’s ongoing construction of self than does
engagement in other forms of sensegiving.
Language was illustrated as a highly important resource for such sensegiving, both as it
was incorporated into one’s individual discourse (ultimately shaping one’s thinking) and as it
aligned with organizational discourses. This finding is in line with the suggestion by
sensemaking theorists generally – and by critical sensemaking theorists particularly – that the
topic of language should be highly attended to in examinations of the ways that individuals
“make sense” of information. Yet, as noted earlier, critical sensemaking theorists suggest special
attention to the ways in which the lack of legitimation for some discourses may result in
constraining sensemaking away from certain topics. While acknowledging this to be true, I
suggest via the current study that a critical sensemaking (or critical sensegiving) lens may
equally direct our attention to the ways that the presence of critical, equity-centered language
may shape sensemaking (and sensegiving) in the direction of prompting action (e.g. agency)
toward uprooting existing social inequities. In this sense, a critical lens is applied not simply to
ask the “critical” question of which discourses are not being legitimated; rather, it provokes the
question of how the legitimizing of critical discourses may prompt critical action.

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 214
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JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 228
Appendix A : Rockbourne State University demographic information

(Rockbourne) Undergraduate Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity, Fall 2010

Source: National Center for Education Statistics (2010), Integrated Postsecondary Education
Data System.

6-Year Graduation Rate by Race/Ethnicity for Students Pursuing Bachelor’s Degrees

Source: National Center for Education Statistics (2010), Integrated Postsecondary Education
Data System.
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 229
Appendix B: Interview Protocol

In all cases, the ongoing questions selected will be based on what is initially shared by the
individual. Therefore, the discussion questions below are listed by general topic and not exact
wording. Follow-ups and prompts will be highly conversational and will encourage the
remembering of specific events that stand out as illustrative of what the interviewee is
describing. I will make notes of instances in which the interviewee has difficulty recalling a
specific event that is illustrative (e.g., “It was generally like ___, but nothing specific is coming
to mind right now”) in my notes so that, if judged important, I can return to these in later
interviews or intermediary email or phone communications. While this protocol provides initial
ideas for questions, additional questions will be developed based on the themes emerging in the
first round of interviews. Furthermore, it is recognized that I will likely not complete all of these
question topics within one interview setting; thus, those prioritized as most central will be
emphasized first.

Interviews will be conducted to focus on questions of:
*continuity – connecting past experiences & understanding to the present
*“break points” – reaching new understandings/perceptions or engaging in new behaviors
*identity – connecting these behaviors & understandings to the ways in which ones defines
oneself
*tools and language from the Equity Scorecard setting as mediators of one’s own and others’
understanding

Introductory conversation:

Follow up on any previous contact… Clarification of goals of the study… my relationship to the
topic.

Personal questions:

Your position at UW Eau Claire is _____. How long have you worked here?
Have you worked at other institutions of higher education?

Tell me about where you grew up.
follow up questions about: demographic make-up of area, what was witnessed, how
s/he situated self within this, how s/he saw herself, friendship groups, family make-up.
Prompt for events that stand out.

How about college?
follow up questions about demographic make-up, involvement, what witnessed, how
situated within this (see self as a racialized/gendered/other being? Involved in “causes”?
etc.), friendship groups.
So you studied ____. How did you come to choose this? Graduate school?
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 230

Professional roles:

What have been some of your activities/responsibilities here at UWEC?

Had you been involved in other equity-focused activities prior to your work on the Scorecard?
Tell me more about this.
Why were you drawn to this work/Why was this important to you?

Equity Scorecard:

How did you bring this into your Equity Scorecard experience?

Tell me a little bit about what stood out to you as your team went through findings…
Data findings
Discussion with others

What surprised you?
 Why was this a surprise? How did you feel about it? What did it make you think?
 Hunches / What was your initial response? / How did you make sense of that?

How did you connect with this as something that mattered?
(elaboration: This is about students… students of color in particular… how was this a personal
concern for you?)

Follow-ups about additional data & findings, key events over the team’s two-year story.
(building a chronology)

Sensegiving & Equity Agency:

At the time that your team was approaching wrap-up, what thoughts did you have about taking
your findings out to others on campus?

At that point in time, what was your sense of the organizational culture with regard to topics of
diversity and equity? Did you feel that there was a common “narrative” about equity/diversity
campus? (For instance, was it commonly talked about or generally not talked about; spoken
about positively, i.e., “we are doing a great job with diversity”, or discussed as a challenge? Was
this largely consistent, or different across departments/pockets?) examples

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 231
You mentioned that you discovered _____ on the Scorecard. How about the topic of equity
more broadly? How would you describe the way that you thought about this prior to your
Scorecard experience?
experiences or events that informed developing understanding/awareness
situate in earlier stories about professional activities
How did you come to think about it over the Scorecard experience? (the same, differently,
more nuanced, other….)
How would you define “equity-mindedness” today?

I’d like for you to think now about some of the things that you did, personally, in response to
what you learned on the Scorecard.

examples of application to own job responsibilities (teaching, advising, committee work, etc.)

examples of ways in which it was shared officially (presentations, formal committee agendas)

examples of ways in which it was shared informally (conversations with others)

Utilize former interviews to build specific questions and prompt further examples & details
(e.g., “You told me when we talked before about ____. Could you tell me more about ____?
What was your response? What did you decide to do next based on that?”)

Contextualize within earlier descriptions of former equity work (if any)
Bring in questions of identity (“You formerly saw yourself as ____... Now…”)

What are some of the barriers (if any) you have encountered in this work? (in conversations with
others, in attempting programmatic change, etc.)
additional examples
how do you deal with this type of barrier?

In addition to these barriers, do you identify certain resources that you have at your disposal?
from the institution
audiences that listen
building on existing skills
allies
from the Equity Scorecard
language
data
conversations

Consistency & evolution in the way you advocate for equity:
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 232
What are ways that you have built on existing skills; techniques that work for you across
settings, so you have continued to use them?
Have there been points where you have shifted or evolved? Why? Examples

Would you say that you often share what you think with regard to equity topics? Are there times
when you moderate or suppress this?
What prompts sharing?
What prompts editing/suppressing?
examples

Do you speak differently to different audiences about the topic?
When you speak with others, are you conscious of:
professional position
race, gender

When you speak about equity concerns, what do want others to understand?
about the institution
about the students

In observing where your campus is with regard to equity, how do feel? What are you happy to
see? What would you like to see?
What actions do you plan to take in moving forward?

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 233
Appendix C: Content of Rockbourne Equity Scorecard Report “Conclusion” Page*
(Recommendations situated within campus “D&E” Language)

*Note: Highlighting added by researcher to illustrate use of extant D&E language in Scorecard
report recommendations. Rockbourne identifiers removed.

In this final report, our team has highlighted only those measures whose outcomes most
obviously contradict our shared values of [diversity and equity]. However, we also believe that
these measures are some of the most actionable, offering the opportunity to institutionalize those
best practices with a history of success. The most basic institutional change brought by the
Equity Scorecard, the one that enables other changes, is the transition into a data-driven culture
that routinely disaggregates outcomes by race/ethnicity. Only by finding the inequities will we
be able to address them.

For almost all of our measures, the first recommended action is to set specific diversity and
equity goals for individual departments and units. These may be listed in mission statements,
evaluation plans, etc. It is important that all personnel in the department or unit to know what
these goals are and why they are there. Too often, compositional diversity is seen as an end unto
itself, making for a one-dimensional justification of goals. Rather, research shows that focusing
on the engagement with diversity—understanding diversity a process as well as an outcome—
yields the greatest learning benefits for students. While this complex topic is beyond the scope
of this report, we have included a bibliography on the subject for your further review.

[ ] is well poised to meet the challenges presented by our report, largely because much
institutional capacity for [diversity and equity] has already been added since the beginning of our
project: the [ ] Commitment, [ ] Beginnings, liberal education learning goals and
outcomes for diversity, the Campus Climate Survey data, positions for the [D&E Fellow] and a
dedicated multicultural recruiter, and many other successes we wish we could list. At the same
time, this new capacity should not diminish the need for shared responsibility by all for [D&E]
outcomes, particularly as they pertain to our students.

Indeed, at the individual level, our most formidable challenge is accepting this shared
responsibility and rejecting the deficit thinking that serves to maintain the status quo.
Commitment at the institutional level requires additional resources, and so we encourage our
colleagues to see [D&E] as a paramount institutional priority, one that is already stated in our
Centennial Plan, liberal education learning outcomes, and proposed mission statement. The
Equity Scorecard process gives us the means to be accountable to our own aspirations.

In sum, our report assesses where we are and calls us to envision what we can be. From the
inception of the Equity Scorecard process, our team has regarded this final report to be a
beginning rather than an end. It is an introduction to the principles of Inclusive Excellence,
the new framework for diversity adopted by the [state] system. And it is an invitation to
rededicate ourselves to transforming our institution into a leader for excellence in learning for all
of our students. We hope that this report will launch the collective inquiry and action necessary
to match our reality to our aspirations.

JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 234
Appendix D: Excerpt from Rockbourne Honors Council Meeting
and Holistic Admission Proposal

*Note: Highlighting added by researcher to direct attention to holistic admission proposal.
Identifying information removed.

Approved Minutes Meeting of the Honors Council
University Honors Program, […]
Friday, 4 December 2009
11 a.m.–11:50 a.m.

Present: [ …….. ]

I. Approval of Minutes. The minutes of 20 November 2009 were approved as distributed.

II. Director’s Report. [ … ] reminded the Council about the Honors 100 Chili dinner scheduled
for Monday, December 7, from 5:30–7:00 p.m. in the Council Fire Room. Purpose of the event
is to congratulate first-year Honors students on the end of their first semester and to mark the
transition toward a University Honors Program in which community-building events play a
larger role. [ … ] noted that he is working with Publications on a new program brochure and
with students in Honors 400, the senior seminar, on simplifying the unhelpfully complex priority
registration policy. (This semester and next semester, the seminar is subtitled “Transforming
Honors”; students are researching other program models, reflecting on their own experiences,
exploring the scholarly literature on Honors education, and proposing plans for program change.)

III. Pilot Admissions Proposal. After helpful discussion and editing, the Pilot Project on Honors
Admissions was approved unanimously (see attachment below). This project will help us prepare
to revise the University Honors Program’s admissions criteria and process ‘for good,’ but also
give us the opportunity to use new criteria to invite some students to join the program this
coming fall. All Honors Council members who were present at this meeting are willing to read
applications as their schedules permit.

IV. Colloquium Proposal: Arts and Ideas. The innovative interdisciplinary course entitled Arts
and Ideas, which was developed by [ …. ].

V. Adjournment. This concludes the Honors Council’s meetings for fall semester, 2009. The
meeting was adjourned at 11:57 a.m.

Respectfully submitted by [ … ], secretary for the meeting

Attachment

Attachment to University Honors Council minutes of December 4, 2009

From: [ …. ]
JOURNEYS OF EQUITY AGENTS 235
To: University Honors Council mailing list

Date: December 4, 2009

Re: Pilot Project on Honors Admissions

1. For Academic Year (AY) 2010-2011, the criteria for admission to the University Honors
Program will remain as they have always been: Admission will be offered to all admitted
students who achieve a composite score of 28 or higher on the ACT and a class rank in the top
5%.

2. Beginning in December 2009, we will work together with the Admissions Office on a pilot
project to supplement our current admissions process by identifying admitted students who meet
the following new criteria: class rank in the top 10% (or a GPA of 3.75 for schools that do not
publish class rankings) or an ACT composite of 26 or higher.

3. We will review the applications of all such students admitted by February 15th and, for AY
2010-2011, select 50 of them to receive invitations to join the University Honors Program based
on a holistic evaluation of these factors (listed in alphabetical order):

Academic accomplishments and potential
Extracurricular, employment, and service activities
Potential to diversify the University Honors Program
Rigor of high school course work
Special talents, abilities, experiences, achievements

4. We will use what we learn in this pilot project to finalize new admissions
criteria and a new admissions process to be introduced in fall 2010 for AY 2011-2012.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Critical scholars of higher education note that, despite the clear need to address issues of racial inequity in postsecondary student outcomes, the topic of race is often avoided or treated superficially in campus conversations. One potential remedy to this dilemma is the intentional creation of an action inquiry setting in which members examine racially disaggregated student data and utilize equity‐centric language as they collectively make sense of said data. The present narrative case study examines the respective developmental journeys of several individuals who engaged in, or were affiliated with, such an action research setting. In doing so, it places their incorporation of the languages of equity and data within their larger developing understandings of the problem of structural racism. The study brings together lenses of sensegiving, critical sensemaking and agency in the examination of the ways in which each individual came to identify with responsibility for fostering equity, particularly the role of communicating about equity to others. As these individuals engaged in equity‐focused sensegiving, they came to identify with the work such that it was largely incorporated into their professional (and in some cases, personal) identities. Furthermore, as they drew on a larger, official institutional narrative that incorporated goals of equity and diversity, they were able to align personal and institutional language in communicating to others the contradiction between desired and actual equity. The study makes two contributions to the sensemaking literature: (a) It highlights the ways in which individuals engaged in sensegiving around a critical topic like racial equity (deemed ""critical sensegiving"") may bring positional identities into the work more so than with other forms of sensegiving, and (b) it prompts consideration of the use of a critical sensemaking lens to investigate how the legitimation of critical language within an institution can be a tool in prompting actors to ask more critical questions, such as questions about racial equity. In its use of individual life narratives, the study allows for nuanced depiction of differences and similarities across the life experiences of participants.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bishop, Robin Michael (author)

Core Title Language and identity in critical sensegiving: journeys of higher education equity agents

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Education

Publication Date 07/25/2014

Defense Date 03/12/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag action inquiry,action research,agency,critical sensegiving,critical sensemaking,Equity Scorecard,Higher education,narrative,OAI-PMH Harvest,racial equity,sensegiving,sensemaking,structural racism

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bensimon, Estela Mara (committee chair), Polkinghorne, Donald (committee member), Riley, Patricia (committee member)

Creator Email rbishop@msmc.la.edu,robinbishop8@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-449680

Unique identifier UC11286668

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Legacy Identifier etd-BishopRobi-2745.pdf

Dmrecord 449680

Document Type Dissertation

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