Below is a listing of funded Inclusive Practice Grant projects, organized by year. The number of funded projects varies from year to year.
Project Title: Paving the way to a departmental community of learning for inclusive teaching and mentoring practices
Project Team: Candice Thomas, PhD, Lisa Willoughby, Ph.D., and Annie Garner, Ph.D., all from Psychology
Project Description: A departmental conversation series on DEI, inclusive teaching, and mentoring practice topics that will (a) increase faculty engagement and comfort with inclusive teaching and mentoring and (b) support the development of a toolkit that other departments can use to facilitate building their own community of conversations and learning around inclusive teaching and mentoring practices. The proposed project has four phases (see Table 1 for the associated activities and timeline): (1) Information Gathering and Conversation Session Planning, (2) Conversation Sessions, (3) Toolkit development, (4) External feedback and revision for the Toolkit, and (5) Toolkit Dissemination. Participants in the conversation series will be recruited from the psychology faculty through announcements via email and in person at the monthly department meetings.
Project Title: Anti-Racism in Clinical Medical Education
Project Team: Lauren Draper, MD and Marya Strand, MD from Department of Pediatrics. Kira Banks, PhD from Department of Psychology.
Project Description: The overall goal of this project is to improve the ability of pediatric faculty to talk about race and racism with medical students, residents, and fellows in context of the systems in which we work and care for patients.
Project Title: The modification and implementation of diverse and inclusive teaching and learning practices for the MS in Health Data Science program.
Project Team: Divya S. Subramaniam, Ph.D., Srikanth Mudigonda, Ph.D., and Paula Buchanan, Ph.D. all from Health and Clinical Outcomes Research
Project Description: The MS in Health Data Science was developed in the Spring of
2016 and has been growing steadily each year. One of the main pulls that many prospective
applicants and students have towards our program is that students are not required
to have any prior computing or analytics background; during the initial courses in
our program, the curriculum is program is geared towards teaching them these skills.
While our program is inclusive in admitting students from various backgrounds, currently,
we only have a limited implementation of inclusive teaching practices and diverse
perspectives within our classes and curriculum.
Hence, our proposed project aims to: 1) incorporate diverse perspectives (course readings,
case studies, lecture notes and slide decks) into the MS in Health Data Science program;
and 2) make the MS in Health Data Science curriculum more inclusive to all students
coming from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, i.e., from a variety in levels
of prior knowledge related to computing (programming and related concepts), analytics
(statistics) and health/clinical research.
Project Title: Advancing Inclusion of Transgender and Gender Diverse Identities in Clinical Education
Project Team: Whitney Linsenmeyer, PhD, RD, LD and Rabia Rahman, PhD, RD, LD from Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. Katie Heiden-Rootes, PhD, LMFT and Theresa Drallmeier, MD from Family and Community Medicine. Emily Buxbaum, MS, CCC-SLP from Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences.
Project Description: Discourse on inclusion—and exclusion—of transgender and gender
diverse identities is occurring at the national, state and local levels, including
the Saint Louis University campus. Meanwhile, the field of transgender health is
rapidly evolving. Attention on the education of existing healthcare providers has
predominated through the
publication of practice guidelines, continuing education opportunities, and scientific
conferences, with a lesser
focus on clinical education of future healthcare professionals.
Clinical education programs are positioned to impact the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs,
and competency of future
healthcare professionals. As clinical educators at Saint Louis University, we are
poised to shape not only our own
students, but also the future patients and clients of our graduates.
Therefore, the purpose of our project is to advance inclusion of transgender and gender
diverse identities in
clinical education at Saint Louis University. This encompasses both the inclusion
and safety of our own students,
as well as shaping the way our students will ultimately care for transgender and gender
diverse patients and
clients. Our objectives are to: 1) Create a toolkit for clinical educators to advance
inclusion of transgender and
gender diverse identities and to 2) Host Lunch & Learn Workshops for clinical educators
throughout Saint Louis
University to foster dialogue and disseminate resources.
Project Title: Racial Justice Across the Law School Curriculum
Project Team: Belinda Dantley, Elizabeth Pendo, and Brandan Roediger, School of Law
Project Description: SLU LAW is committed to preparing graduates to work effectively in a diverse city and society that continues to struggle with racism and other forms of oppression and structural inequality. This project supports efforts to create a more inclusive learning experience for our students by infusing issues of racial justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) generally throughout the law school curriculum. The project team will guide this work and engage the law school faculty and adjunct faculty in each of the following steps over the academic year.
Project Title: “Equity-Proofing” Curriculum Design and Implementation in Health Sciences
Project Team: Mitzi Brammer, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Cynthia Matlock (Ph.D., MBA, OTR/L), Meghan Doherty (OTD, OTR/L), Robin Murphy (M.S., CCC-SLP), and Julia Henderson-Kalb (OTD, OTR/L), all from Speech-Language & Hearing Sciences
Project Description: This project aims to inform teaching practices of faculty in
Doisy College of Health Sciences
(DCHS) to target inclusive pedagogy in the health sciences. We will 1) explore student
and faculty
perspectives of inclusive learning, 2) review the literature on inclusive practices
in higher education as
an inter-professional team of academic and clinical instructors in DCHS, and 3) create
a web resource
for the DCHS.
Project Title: Assessment and rubric development for advanced BME elective courses: combined emphasis on technical-based and professional-based components
Project Team: Natasha Case, Ph.D., Scott Sell, Ph.D., Silviya Zustiak, Ph.D. all from Biomedical Engineering
Project Description: Undergraduate students majoring in BME are required to take six Advanced BME Elective courses. These elective courses, which build from foundational required courses in the curriculum, are intended to expand students’ technical knowledge, to further develop students’ critical thinking skills, and to provide opportunities for students to practice “professional” skills including teamwork, entrepreneurship and innovation, and written and oral communication. Assessment of “professional skills” has long been recognized by accreditation bodies as a necessary component of higher education (for example see Shuman, Besterfield-Sacre and McGourty. JEE (2005) 94:41). Yet, having meaningful assessments to fully realize the intentions of these advanced BME courses presents a course preparation challenge. These assessments should go beyond more traditional assessments used in lower-level undergraduate courses, such as exams, quizzes, and focused group projects (< 2 – 3 weeks of effort to complete). Such assessments would also require development of more comprehensive grading rubrics, compared to lower-level courses, that will effectively evaluate both technical and “professional” skills (i.e. problem-solving, team-work, communication, leadership, initiative, work ethic, etc). The purpose of this proposal will be the development of at least one meaningful assessment and associated rubric for one advanced BME course that each faculty member teaches.
Project Title: Developing Culturally Responsive Syllabi for College for Public Health and Social Justice. Infusing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into the undergraduate curriculum.
Project Team: Rhonda BeLue, Ph.D. (team leader), Lauren Arnold, Ph.D., Kenya Brumfield-Young, Ph.D., Clare Vogt, RN, BSN, all from College for Public Health and Social Justice
Description of the Project: We intend to analyze the syllabi of undergraduate programs in the SLU College of Public Health and Social Justice. These programs include Criminology, Social Work, Biostatistics, Health Management, and Public Health. We will assess all course syllabi from each major and analyze them to see if they meet the criteria for “equity-minded practice” outlined in the Syllabus Review Guide put out by the Center for Urban Education of the University of Southern California. We intend to develop specific criteria to identify practices in syllabi composition that promote equity and inclusion. The practices include “Demystifying policies and practices,” welcoming students and creating a culture of caring, “validating students’ abilities to be successful,” “creating a partnership for success,” “representing a wide range of experiences,” and “deconstructing the presentation of white students as the norm.”
Project Title: Creating awareness for inclusion in online education at the School for Professional Studies.
Project Team: Katie Devany, Ph.D. (team leader), Chris Tobnick, Ph.D., Alma Torres Rojo, Ph.D. all from the School for Professional Studies
Description of the Project: Authors Coleman and Berge (2018) had discussed the responsibility
of universities to offer through their programs “accessible websites that are compatible
with assistive technologies to be open to students of diverse backgrounds beyond race,
gender, orientation, religion, and class” (p. 5). Moreover, the “push for life long-learning”
has created the need to provide education not only to young students but also to adult
learners accommodating to any possible option of accessibility (Coleman & Berge, 2018).
The Organizational studies department would like to spearhead an initiative to create
awareness of online inclusion by reviewing the current state of inclusion at program,
instructor, and administrative level in the School for Professional Studies.
We will research how the current and proposed learning management systems and classroom
software can accommodate the different levels and types of inclusion and how we can
disseminate an inclusion strategy at School level. We will identify a series of artifacts
and specific tools to promote inclusion at these different levels. We will conduct
workshops to create awareness of inclusion inviting guest speakers and promoting these
artifacts and tools for inclusion. We will conduct pre and post surveys to assess
how inclusion awareness has evolved during our proposed timeline.
Project Title: Universal Design in Higer Education: From Principles to Practice (2nd ed.)
Project Team: Maureen Wikete Lee, Ph.D. (team leader), Karen Myers, Ph.D., and Robert Cole, Ph.D., all from the School of Education
Description of the Project: The faculty of the School of Education’s Undergraduate Teacher Education Program began a curricular reinvention during the 2017-2018 academic year. As of April 2018, program outcomes have been developed for the new curriculum. This project supports continuing work by placing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework at the forefront of the curricular redesign process. As the faculty move to the next stages in curricular development, the Reinert Center’s question, “How can we create more inclusive learning experiences for our students?” provides an essential guide for the curricular work. The Project Team will guide this framing through a book study in which faculty and adjunct instructors in the Undergraduate Teacher Education Program read Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education: From Principles to Practice (2nd ed.) (Burgstahler, Ed., 2015) and the Reinert Center’s Inclusive Teaching Practices web resources, and attend book study lunch gatherings to discuss and reflect on how this information connects to their continued engagement in curricular redesign.
The project is expected to result in multiple artifacts that can be shared with the broader SLU community in order to advance inclusive teaching across the University.