Orientation, transition, and retention strategies and practices are critical components in access to higher education for diverse student populations. OTR practitioners value the intersectionality of students’ identities and serve as allies through inclusive transitional practices.
Levels
- Read the NODA Statement of Non-Discrimination and Equity, Inclusion, & Social Justice Commitment.
- Read the NODA Indigenous Land Acknowledgement Statement and any acknowledgements on your campus.
- Review research and best practices for supporting the needs of historically marginalized communities in higher education.
- Identify elements of your identity including, your attitudes, values, beliefs, assumptions, lived experiences, biases, privileges, power, and impacts.
- Review your institution’s documents, reports, plans, and statements, etc. (e.g. campus climate survey, strategic plans) related to diversity, inclusion, and access.
- Articulate your institution’s philosophy and vision for diversity and inclusion.
- Identify your campus’s departments and units that serve as experts in, focus on providing, and promoting resources that support access and equity for the needs of historically marginalized communities.
- Participate in on-campus and off-campus trainings, lectures, workshops, classes,
and retreats focused around diversity, inclusion, and access topics. - Name the demographics of your institution in order to identify gaps in current programs and services.
- Articulate the concept of organizational structure and organizational behavior and its impact on marginalized communities.
- Identify access barriers to the student experience.
- Describe the concept of universal design and how it can be used in OTR.
- Recognize how hiring can and has been used in maintaining systems of oppression, privilege, and power within an organization.
- Identify examples of inclusive recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and supervision practices.
- Review the historical context of your institution and the current actions or inactions it is taking to better support indigenous communities, especially for those on which the land of the institution resides.
- Articulate the elements of your identity including your attitudes, values, beliefs, assumptions, lived experiences, biases, privileges, power, and impacts in connection with orientation, transition, and retention.
- Synthesize the content you are learning from your on-campus and off-campus trainings, lectures, workshops, classes, and retreats focused around diversity, inclusion, and access topics.
- Review how your institutional policy on inclusion and access relates to the areas of orientation, transition, and retention.
- Identify resources focused on supporting the needs of historically marginalized communities that are being implemented at your institution.
- Provide examples of your institution and area’s organizational structure and organizational behavior around diversity, inclusion, and access.
- Examine how your institution’s documents, plans, statements, etc. (e.g. campus climate survey, strategic plans) related to diversity, equity, and inclusion are connected to current institution practices and how you can implement those practices in your work.
- Collaborate across campus with other institutional areas/units that support and provide resources to historically marginalized communities.
- Articulate how your institution is currently applying universal design in orientation, transition, and retention programs.
- Implement support mechanisms for indigenous communities, especially for those on which the land of the institution resides, in partnership with campus experts.
- Implement inclusive recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and supervision practices at your institution in partnership with experts in diversity, inclusion, and access and human resources.
- Report how your organization’s current recruitment and hiring procedures could be impacting systems of privilege/power/oppression at the institution.
- Design on-campus and off-campus trainings, lectures, workshops, classes, and retreats focused around diversity, inclusion, and access topics (e.g. specialized yield and retention programs, mentor programs, and online programs/initiatives).
- Evaluate inequality from a variety of intersectional perspectives to become better informed with working with historically marginalized communities.
- Assess your institution’s access barriers in the orientation, transition and retention process for historically underrepresented groups across campus.
- Analyze your institution and area’s organizational structure around diversity, inclusion, and access with others.
- Administer processes and practices focused at addressing organizational behavior on orientation, transition, and retention at your institution and area (e.g. policies, mission statements, culture).
- Appraise how your institution’s policies and practice on diversity, inclusion, and access are impacting historically underrepresented groups at your institution.
- Create opportunities to engage with historically marginalized communities at your institution to determine their needs and develop solutions.
- Implement educational technologies to promote digital equity for diverse learners.
- Examine current recruitment and hiring documents and processes to support impact on prospective candidates from historically marginalized communities.
- Assess recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and supervision processes focused on inclusion and retention for employees.
Courses
Find our upcoming Core Competency courses on the NODA Event Calendar.
Resource Materials
Coming soon!