Publication Date
10-1-2023
Abstract
The ETSU community is working together to ensure that more underrepresented students and other underserved populations realize their dream of a college degree through the Moon Shot for Equity initiative.
Moot Shot for Equity focuses on removing systemic barriers for students through 15 best practices that can help increase access to higher education for all students, and, more importantly, ensure their long-term success.
Video Transcript
T-minus three, two, one.
Dr. Brian Noland:
As I reflect upon the university's engagement with EAB and the Moon Shot initiative, I'm excited by the opportunities for our outreach, our engagement but our intervention to really touch all students at the institution. We're looking in at ensuring that students have the opportunity to navigate the pipeline from high school through community college on to ETSU, and when they arrive at ETSU that any structural barriers, policy impediments or other elements that might impede their progress towards a degree are removed.
Dr. Keith Johnson:
Equity is about opportunities and inclusion is about pathways. So what does that really mean? Equity is about providing opportunities for all individuals, whether they're from an underrepresented population, whether they're from different backgrounds, ethnicities, etc.
Ethan Hutchinson:
It means everybody has a seat at the table and an opportunity to participate, right? Not only have a seat at the table, but then that seat is the one that they need. We might think about, on occasion, Goldilocks and the Three Bears - we don't all need the same size seat, but we do need to be able to sit at the table and eat our meal together. And so it's ensuring that we're all together in the way that best serves each of us individually.
Leo Williams:
Moon Shot for Equity is an important initiative for ETSU. It helps students not only reach their potential, but also able to chase their dreams while helping out with grants as well as making things work out for them in the end.
Linda W. Calvert:
I think Moon Shot for Equity has identified a number of ways that we can remove the barriers as well as to see things through an equity lens to identify those gaps and then remediate the gaps.
Dr. Brian Noland:
So what Moon Shot is, is a lift to do the impossible. In the sixties when President Kennedy said, "We're going to put a man on the moon," many folks thought that was impossible. And as we as an institution, look at this initiative and say "We're going to take groups of students whose graduation rates historically had been 25% and we're going to move them to 60," some may say that's impossible, but that's our Moon Shot to move past generations of inequity. And within a defined generation, this generation, if we do this right, by the time we're done, all students will have graduation rates that are at the university's objectives. All students will have the opportunity to start college and finish. But all students, irrespective of where they're from, irrespective of preparation or irrespective of income, are going to have the chance to come to this university and realize their dreams. It's difficult, but moonshots have been made possible, if you lean in and work.
Document Type
News Article
