Students and their success make our work is meaningful. We collect both quantitative and qualitative data about them. We advocate on their behalf through evidence-based recommendations, using the resources shared in this section. Our staff picks, combined with our memberships, provide context beneficial to enhancing the student experience at Lawrence and provide opportunities to engage in conversations about issues in higher education.
Check out our reading list for a list by titles and their authors!
For Students
Lawrence students may find value in reading various titles on our bookshelf that focus on lived experiences and intersectionality. Our picks include: The Privileged Poor and The First-Generation Student Experience. Students can adopt a growth mindset and develop skills to be successful in higher education. Our top picks on these topics include: Mindset and Teach Yourself How to Learn.
For Faculty
Our top picks for faculty arose from professional development associated with a Mellon Grant and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence (HHMI IE) Grant. We highly recommend the following books for faculty interested in learning more about inclusive pedagogy, sense of belonging, and metacognition: Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership, Successful STEM Mentoring Initiatives for Underrepresented Students, What Inclusive Instructors Do, and Teach Students How to Learn.
We recommend two websites stemming from work done in our office on TILT surveys and course syllabi analyses. The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education project (TILT Higher Ed) is an award-winning national educational development and research project that helps faculty to implement a transparent teaching framework that promotes college students' success. Center for Urban Education’s (CUE) syllabus review tool is an online inquiry tool promoting racial and ethnic equity and equity-minded practice through structured self-assessment and reflection.
For Faculty, Staff and Administrators
We all play a role in the success of Lawrence student journey - from recruiting to retaining to graduating to reinvesting.
An awareness of the history of higher education is the key to understanding and navigating the changing national higher education landscape, all of which provide context to our work and offers an opportunity to anticipate how history, trends, and issues impact students and institutions. The Years That Matter Most exposes the inequities in the educational system prior to and including the application process. Becoming a Student-Ready College challenges institutions to adopt a student-centric lens in examining policies and practices to promote student success. The Real World of College highlights decades of research about how students think about a liberal arts experience, specifically exploring the purpose of college and discovering the importance of belonging. Decades of research on belonging prove its significance in retention efforts. Promoting Belonging, Growth Mindset, and Resilience to Foster Student Success offers relatively simple, yet powerful interventions for increasing belonging, self-confidence, and resilience.
Data can inform and guide student success initiatives. We often hear others say, "I'm not a data person." We challenge that assumption and encourage you to read You Are a Data Person. Understanding where gaps may exist can help focus our student success efforts. From Equity Talk to Equity Walk challenges institutions to disaggregate data, explore it, and make sense of it to inform their actions. As part of the HHMI IE Grant, our office produces a grade distribution report disaggregated by various subgroups to encourage conversation within and across departments about potential equity gaps that prompt them to reexamine structures, policies, and practices that exacerbate or perpetuate inequities.
For everyone
Mental Health and Suicide Prevention
Did you know?
- Among college students, 29.1% have been diagnosed with anxiety, and 23.6% have been diagnosed with depression (NCHA, 2021).
- Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for teens and young adults, ages 10-34 (CDC, 2022).
- 25.5% of adults ages 18-24 reported having seriously considered suicide in the past month. This is a higher percentage than any other adult age group (CDC, 2020).
- 1 in 3 (30.6%) young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 experienced a mental, behavioral, or emotional health issue in the past year (SAMHSA, 2021).
These statistics may be alarming, but mental illness is treatable and suicide is preventable.
QPR stands for Question, Persuade, and Refer — the three simple steps anyone can learn to help prevent suicide. People trained in CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver help save thousands of lives each year during a physical health emergency. People trained in QPR learn how to save help lives during a mental health emergency. Preventing physical and mental health emergencies are everyone’s business. Lawrence has several QPR instructors, including Kristin McKinley, who facilitate trainings. Contact Julie Haurykiewicz at julie.a.haurykiewicz@lawrence.edu to schedule a QPR training at Lawrence if you are interested in learning more about: suicide, its risks and warning signs; basic skills to intervene and get someone help; and available resources.
Implicit Bias
The mission of Project Implicit is to educate the public about bias and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for data collection. Login to learn more or take the test below.