Community colleges in California are coming together to address racism.

The California Community College Equity Leadership Alliance will allow school leaders and faculty from member institutions to pool their resources and learn from one another as they work to improve their campus climate.

More than 60 colleges have already joined up. Each institution will pay $25,000 a year to gain access to tools, resources, classes, campus surveys, and guidance from the University of Southern California’s Race & Equity Center. The effort is led by Shaun Harper, who served as the keynote speaker at NACAC’s 2017 National Conference.

“There are tremendous racial inequities on the California community college campuses,” Harper told the Los Angeles Times. “You have a mostly white faculty teaching a mostly Latino, Black, Asian, and Pacific Islander population. Therefore the curriculum tends to not be reflective of those students’ cultural histories and identities and interests.”

According to the Times, the members of the new alliance will address “topics like hiring and retaining faculty of color, fostering inclusive classrooms, and integrating race across the curriculum. The members will also have access to online tools like case studies and readings on racial equity and will participate in campus surveys to assess how students, faculty, and staff feel about their campus climate when it comes to issues of inclusion and diversity.”

Read the full article and learn more about the alliance.

Admitted writer/editor Mary Stegmeir welcomes additional comments and story ideas at mstegmeir@nacacnet.org.