From the foreword by Walter G. Bumphus, President &CEO of AACC: "e;Becoming an Equity-CenteredHigher Education Institution is a significant contribution to the on-goingstruggle to find practical approaches to implementing an equity agenda inhigher education."e; The authors had three main goals for this text: Relevance: This book is the result of many yearsof teaching, leading, researching, and coaching individuals and institutionsabout equity inside higher education. The authors place a clear emphasis onawareness and teaching skills first, but also ensure that those skills arebased on practical application in the field. PracticalApplication: To describe and explainequity and transformational change concepts, this book provides step-by-stepimplementation approaches that can be used to integrate equity-centeredprinciples into practices and policies to implement or improve equity work intothe organizational culture. A PurposefulApproach: The authors defined the act of becoming an equity-centeredinstitution in terms of a transformational change approach using Kotter'sEight-Stage Process. Kotter's Model and AACC's Leadership Competencies forCommunity College Leaders are introduced in Chapter 1 and integrated throughoutthe book. This integrated frameworkallows practitioners to place the intersectionality of equity, transformationalchange, and requisite leadership competencies into the larger context of highereducation. While using Kotter's 8-Step Change Model, the authors emphasize thatoperations and situations inside higher educational institutions are not linearas implied in Kotter's model. They show how the stages of change may occur atdifferent times and different situations at different institutions, anddemonstrate what leadership competencies are recommended for each stage in thechange process.
