Shared Equity Leadership: Scaling Equity Work Campus-wide
Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) is a research and practice driven model that emphasizes tenets and practices that help advance equity through both individual and institutional change practices. Recognizing that equity work requires personal work to advance equity, SEL emphasizes the journey individuals need to engage in to enhance the critical consciousness that equity leadership requires. Addressing the common lament of equity workers that “only the choir” is involved in transformation efforts, SEL is also built on the premise that “equity is everyone’s work” and offers a research-based approach to building a critical mass of individuals, departments and divisions in the work of campus-wide equity work through the application of specific values and practices.
Bridging Equity Research and Equity Practice
SEL aligns with and helps to advance the REJI’s model of practice in a number of key ways:
- Both models are premised in the necessity of advancing equity to support the success of our students, enhancing campus climate for all, and addressing long-standing inequities and disparate outcomes. As pointed out by Kezar and Holcombe in the REJI Practitioner Handbook, Volume 2, it is hard to argue against shared equity leadership practice that is engaged in campus-wide, characterized by personal and institutional transformation, and centers students’ needs and their success (2024, pp. 25-43).
- The REJI and SEL recognize that racial equity work requires both personal and institutional transformation.
- SEL and the REJI emphasize using evidence, inquiry, and setting and advancing measurable goals in our work for equity.
- Shared Equity Leadership is premised on the importance of equity work being engaged in institution-wide. The REJI recognizes that racial equity is the work of everyone on campus; our use of cross-functional teams is a demonstration of this.
- Inquiry is key to both the REJI’s work and shared equity leadership. SEL enhances our understanding of the fact that we all need to interrogate our practices to ensure equity-minded practice. Every SEL monograph includes inquiry questions that can help inform equity-minded practice.
- Accountability (to ourselves, our campus community and the REJI) is key to advancing the work.
This booklet offers a synthesis of key Shared Equity Leadership monographs. We are grateful for the Pullias Center for Higher Education and the American Council on Education, creators of the SEL model, for asking us to create this summary for practitioners.
Please access the REJI Shared Equity Leadership booklet here:
