Equity in education is important. This means giving students all the tools, resources, and opportunities to accomplish their self-directed goals. A syllabus is a start to equity within one’s classroom as it outlines what resources, tools, and opportunities students have at their disposal–whether within the classroom and beyond it. Similarly, a syllabus acts as a first impression that impacts how students approach one’s course and you as an educator and resource for future development.
The Equitable Syllabus Award is meant to honor the work graduate or post-doctoral scholars have done to advance equity within their classrooms. Any graduate student or post-doctoral instructor is eligible to submit a syllabus that centers equity-minded approaches.
Centering equity-minded practices could look like:
Creates an inclusive and welcoming first impression for students to learn
Validates students’ capacity to learn and do well in one’s course
Creates partnerships with students
Deconstructs norms and hidden curriculum of higher education
For more on what an equity minded syllabus could have, please follow this resource titled, "Equitable Syllabus Design Series".
The syllabus submitted for this award can be an original syllabus for a discussion section (i.e a syllabus as a TA) or for an entire course for which you have been the AI.
This could be for a course you've taught or yet to teach (e.g., a dream course you've created with corresponding syllabus).
If the syllabus is one heavily influenced by another instructor (i.e inherited it), I would request permission to submit. Syllabus and all course content are copy-right protected by the original author.
If you receive permission for a syllabus which was a base for your current syllabus, in question X---please explain what edits you made that were focused on equity-mindedness and what parts of the original syllabus you kept that already had this ethos!
Please submit your syllabus for consideration here: https://tinyurl.com/UCDESA!
The form also has a few questions to answer along with submission of the syllabus. The written questions are meant to be brief but allow one to showcase the intentional design of equity within their syllabus.
If you have any questions, please contact the project lead, Daisy Underhill (dunderhill@ucdavis.edu).