The Change Initiative Leadership Academy (CILA) is a faculty learning community with a focus on decreasing withdrawal rates in the top eight high-enrollment, high-withdrawal courses at ACC: EDUC-1300, ENGL-1301, ENGL-1302, HIST-1301, HIST-1302, MATH-1314, MATH-1342, and MATH-1414. By participating in CILA, faculty learn how to design an equity-minded and welcoming syllabus using inclusive language, foster an increasingly welcoming and inclusive learning environment, incorporate culturally responsive pedagogy, recognize current classroom practices that might lead to unintended negative consequences for students, and use ACC’s academic alert system to support students who struggle.
The inaugural cohort began their work in fall 2022, and the second cohort started in fall 2023. The CILA approach is at a focused scale and impacted 10,000 students over the first year AY2022-23 and 12,000 students over the second year.
Related Data & Evaluation Efforts
OIRA has partnered with CILA to provide cohort faculty with data. OIRA also conducts surveys with cohort faculty and the students taught by these faculty in the eight high-enrollment, high-withdrawal courses to understand experiences with CILA and help inform the continuous improvement of the initiative.
Resources
In fall 2023, OIRA conducted a research study using data collected from the students of CILA faculty in high-enrollment, high-withdrawal courses to identify whether there is a statistically significant relationship between two student survey items related to instructor practices and course-level success. This report provides a summary of the key findings from this study.